Author's note: Earlier versions of this article were presented at Yale University, the University of California, Los Angeles, Ohio State University, and Pomona College. I am grateful to Abbas Amanat, Nikki Keddie, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Stephen Dale, Michael Bonine, and Dana Young for their helpful comments along the way. In particular, Beth Baron, Sara Pursley, and the four anonymous reviewers from IJMES thoroughly changed the nature of this article with their thoughtful comments, opening the manuscript in ways that I had not seen. Any mistakes in the article are mine to keep.

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¹² For other recent studies that similarly suggest that the literature of travel and exploration could indeed reflect the world it set out to observe and was not a dead-end journey into the mindset and culture of the observer, see Cook, Matters of Exchange, 5–6, 21; Matthee, Rudi, “The Safavids under Western Eyes: Seventeenth-Century European Travelers to Iran,” Journal of Early Modern History 13 (2009): 137–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁴ On the campaigns of ʿAbbas Mirza against the Turkmen in Khurasan as recorded in Qajar chronicles, see Shirazi, Fazlallah, Tarikh-i Zu-l-Qarnayn, ed. Afsharfar, Nasir (Tehran: Kitabkhana, Muza, va Markaz-i Asnad-i Majlis, 1380/2001), 2:819–36, 872–87Google Scholar; Sipihr, Lisan al-Mulk, Nasikh al-Tavarikh, ed. Kiyanfar, Jamshid (Tehran: Asatir, 1377/1998), 1:457, 483–88, 500–505Google Scholar; Hidayat, Riza Quli Khan, Rawzat al-Safa-yi Nasiri, ed. Kiyanfar, Jamshid (Tehran: Asatir, 1380/2001), 9:7948, 8022–29Google Scholar. Also see Hambly, Gavin, “Iran during the Reigns of Fath ʿAli Shah and Muhammad Shah,” in Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 166Google Scholar; Najmi, Nasir, Iran dar Miyan-i Tufan ya Zindigani-yi ʿAbbas Mirza (Tehran: Kanun-i Maʿrifat, 1336/1957)Google Scholar; Nategh, Homa, “ʿAbbas Mirza va Turkamanan-i Khurasan,” Nigin 10 (22 September 1974): 13–17Google Scholar; Pakravan, Emineh, Abbas Mirza (Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1973)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Hambly, “Iran during the Reigns of Fath ʿAli Shah and Muhammad Shah,” 169.

¹⁶ On the settlement of the Herat frontier, see Amanat, Abbas, Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah and the Iranian Monarchy (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar; idem, “Herat Question,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. Ehsan Yarshater, 14 vols. (New York: Columbia University, 2003), 12:219–24.

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¹⁹ Losensky, Paul, “Reza Qoli Khan Hedayat,” in Yarshater, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 12:119–21Google Scholar.

²⁰ On Riza Quli Khan's historical writings, see Amanat, Abbas, “Historiography: Qajar Period,” in Yarshater, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 12:369–77Google Scholar; Browne, Edward G., A Literary History of Persia, vol. 4, Modern Times, 1500–1924 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930)Google Scholar.

²¹ “Dastur al-Amal-i Amir bi Riza Quli Khan Hidayat dar Mamuriyat-i Khvarazm,” Namaha-yi Amir-Kabir: Asnad, Namaha, Dastanha-yi Tarikhi, ed. Sayyid ʿAli Davud (Tehran: Nashr-i Tarikh-i Iran, 2005), 238–39.

²² On the history of the traverse survey and the mapping of imperial territory, see Burnett, D. Graham, Masters of All They Surveyed: Exploration, Geography, and a British El Dorado (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

²³ See Hidayat, Riza Quli Khan, Sifaratnama-yi Khvarazm (Relation de l'Ambassade au Kharezm [Khiva] De Riza Qouly Khan. Texte Persan), ed. Schefer, Charles (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1876)Google Scholar. A French translation of this text was published in 1879. See Schefer, Charles, Relation de l'Ambassade au Kharezm (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1879)Google Scholar. All citations refer to the Paris 1876 edition of the nastaʿlīq Persian text originally published by Bulaq.

²⁴ Perhaps the most well known of the 19th-century Persian travel accounts to the Central Eurasian frontier are the two safarnāma about Khurasan based on Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar's (1848–96) tours of the province in 1865 and in 1882. See al-Mamalik, ʿAli Quli Hakim, Safarnama-yi Khurasan (1283/1865) (Tehran: Intisharat-i Farhang-i Iran-Zamin, 1356/1977)Google Scholar; Qajar, Nasir al-Din Shah, Safarnama-yi Duvvum-i Khurasan (1300/1882) (Tehran: Intisharat-i Kavush, 1363/1984)Google Scholar. There are, however, dozens of extant Persian frontier narratives about the steppes of Central Eurasia. See Bukhari, Mir ʿAbd al-Karim, Histoire de l'Asie Centrale. Texte Persan, ed. Schefer, Charles (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1876)Google Scholar; Anonymous, Safarnama-yi Bukhara (1259–1260/1844), ed. Husayn Zamani (Tehran: Vizarat-i Farhang, 1373/1994); “Safarnama-yi Herat” (1267/1850), in Sih Safarnama: Herat, Marv, Mashhad, ed. Qudrat Allah Rushani Zafaranlu (Tehran: Danishgah-i Tehran, 1347/1968), 1–71; Sayyid Muhammad Lashkarnivis Nuri, “Safarnama-yi Marv” [1277/1859], in Sih Safarnama: Herat, Marv, Mashhad, 73–144; Ibrahim, Mirza, Safarnama-yi Astarabad [1276–77/1859], ed. Gulzari, Masʿud (Tehran: Bunyad-i Farhang-i Iran, 1355/1976)Google Scholar; Ashtiyani, Mirza Mahmud Taqi, ʿIbratnama. Khatirati az Dawran-i Pas az Jangha-yi Herat va Marv [c. 1278–88/1860–70], ed. Ashtiyani, Husayn ʿImadi (Tehran, 1382/2003)Google Scholar; Mirpanja, Sarhang Ismaʿil, Khatirat-i Asarat: Ruznama-yi Safar-i Khvarazm va Khiva [1280/1862], ed. Tabarrayan, Safa al-Din (Tehran: Muʿassasa-yi Pajhuhish va Mutalaʿat-i Farhangi, 1370/1991)Google Scholar; Ghafur, Muhammad ʿAli Khan, Ruznama-yi Safar-i Khvarazm [1257–58/1841–42], ed. Kavusi, Muhammad Hasan and Muqaddam, Muhammad Nadir Nasiri (Tehran, 1373/1994)Google Scholar; Qaragazlu, ʿAbdallah Khan, “Guzarish-i Sarakhs va Qalʿa-yi Nasriyya,” Majmuʿa-yi Asar, ed. Majidi, Inayatallah (Tehran: Miras-i Maktub, 1382/2003)Google Scholar; idem, “Kitabchih-yi Marv,” Majmuʿa-yi Asar; Munshi, Muhammad ʿAli, Safarnama-yi Rukn al-Mulk bih Sarakhs [1299/1882], ed. Gulbun, Muhammad (Tehran: Danishgah-i Tehran, 1356/1977)Google Scholar; “Guzarish-i Muhammad Husayn Muhandis” [1310/1893], Safarnama-yi Rukn al-Mulk bih Sarakhs. In addition to travel books, Persian imperial histories, geographies, and gazetteers surveyed 19th-century Central Eurasia. See Sipihr, Lisan al-Mulk, Nasikh al-Tavarikh, ed. Kiyanfar, Jamshid (Tehran: Asatir, 1377/1998)Google Scholar; Khan Hidayat, Riza Quli, Rawzat al-Safa-yi Nasiri, ed. Kiyanfar, Jamshid (Tehran: Asatir, 1380/2001)Google Scholar; Khan, Muhammad Hasanal-Saltana, Iʿtimad, Matlaʿ al-Shams: Dar Tarikh va Jughrafiyyih-i Balad va Amakin-i Khurasan (Tehran: Farhangsara, 1301–1302/1883–84)Google Scholar; al-Saltana, Iʿtimad, Mirʾat al-Buldan, ed. Navaʾi, ʿAbd al-Husayn, 3 vols. (Tehran: Danishgah-i Tehran, 1367/1988)Google Scholar; Khan, Mirza Abu al-HasanGhaffari, Saniʿ al-Mulk, Ruznama-yi Dawlat-i ʿAlliya-yi Iran (1281/1863) (Tehran: National Library of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1370/1991)Google Scholar; Government of Iran, Ruznama-yi Vaqaʾiʿ-yi Ittifaqiya (Tehran: National Library of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1373/1994).

²⁵ On the subject of print and “ink” in Mughal India, see Ogborn, Miles, Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East India Company (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On printing in Qajar Iran, see Green, “Journeymen, Middlemen”; idem, “Among the Dissenters,” Journal of Global History 4 (2009): 293–315.

²⁶ Riza Quli Khan, Sifaratnama-yi Khvarazm, 6.

²⁷ Ibid., 102.

²⁸ Cosmo, Nicola Di, Frank, Allen J., and Golden, Peter, eds., “Introduction,” in The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ Létolle, René, “Histoire de l'Ouzboi, cours fossile de l'Amou Darya,” Studia Iranica 29 (2000): 195–240CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Philip Micklin, Nikolay Aladin, Igor Plotnikov, “Uzboy and the Aral Regressions: A Hydrological Approach,” Qauternary International 173–74 (2007): 125–36.

³⁰ This article uses the terms “Persianate” and “Persianate world” to refer to the geographical area where Persian languages and cultures have historically thrived, including parts of West Asia, Central Asia, India, and the Indian Ocean region. It includes not only the Persians but also Iranian peoples speaking Persian languages—Afghan, Baluch, Tajik, Hazara—many of whom today live outside the boundaries of modern Iran. In this article, “Iran” refers to the imperial domain known in the West until 1935 as “Persia.”

³¹ Strange, G. Le, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905)Google Scholar, 433. Also see Frye, Richard N., The Heritage of Central Asia: From Antiquity to the Turkish Expansion (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996), 243Google Scholar.

³² Crossing the Oxus was a difficult task and was not taken lightly. The 13th-century Muslim geographer Yaqut recounted in his voluminous geographical dictionary, Muʿjam al-Buldan, how on a journey from Marv he and his companions nearly died from the cold, snow, and ice they had endured on the river. See Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, 444–45.

³³ See, for instance, the 16th-century illustrated manuscript page of Mirkhvand's Rawzat al-Safa showing Mirza Abul-Qasim crossing the Oxus with a sense of fear and caution. British Library, India Office, 15724, Or. 5736, folio 368.

³⁴ The map collection at the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran includes a number of 19th-century maps of the Eurasian frontier, from the Caspian to the Oxus.

³⁵ In the 1860s, these maps were commissioned by Sipahsalar-i Aʿzam and were made by Sartip Muhandis Muhammad Mirza and Monsieur Bohler, both of whom were affiliated with the Dar al-Funun. See Mirza Abu al-Hasan Khan Saniʿ al-Mulk Ghaffari, Ruznama-yi Dawlat-i ʿAlliya-yi Iran, 569, 8–9. In a similar cartographic project in the 1880s, Mirza Muhammad ʿAli Khan Sarhang Muhandis mapped the eastern borderlands of Qajar Persia from Sarakhs to the Tejend oasis. See Muhammad ʿAli Munshi, Safarnama-yi Rukn al-Mulk bih Sarakhs, 84.

³⁶ Riza Quli Khan, Sifaratnama-yi Khvarazm, 31.

³⁷ Ibid., 33–34.

³⁸ Ibid., 43.

³⁹ Ibid., 43.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 102.

⁴¹ Ibid., 102–103. See also Kropotkin, P., “The Old Beds of the Amu-Daria,” Geographical Journal 12 (1898): 306–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴² Riza Quli Khan, Sifaratnama-yi Khvarazm, 117–18.

⁴³ Ibid., 37.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 43.

⁴⁵ See William Cronen, “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” Journal of American History (1992): 1347–376; Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome.

⁴⁶ Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome, xi–xii.

⁴⁷ Such a view of the discovery of facts about nature has been presented in Cook, Matters of Exchange, 5–7, 82–132.

⁴⁸ For some studies of the Turkmen and their history, see Guli, Amin, Tarikhi Siyasi va Ijtimaʿi-yi Turkmenha (Tehran: n.p., 1366/1987)Google Scholar; Baygdili, Muhammad Riza, Turkmenha-yi Iran (Tehran: n.p., yr /1991)Google Scholar; Bregel, Yuri, Khorezmskie Turkmeny v XIX Veke (Moscow: Vostochnaia Literatura)Google Scholar; idem, Notes on the Study of Central Asia: Papers on Inner Asia (Bloomington, Ind.: Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1996), 28; idem, The Administration of Bukhara under the Manghits and Some Tashkent Manuscripts: Papers on Inner Asia (Bloomington, Ind.: Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 2000), 34; idem, An Historical Atlas of Central Asia (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003); idem, “Uzbeks, Qazaqs, and Turkmens,” in The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age, ed. Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen J. Frank, and Peter Golden (Cambridge University Press, 2009); Edgar, Adrienne Lynn, Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Irons, William, The Yomut Turkmen: A Study of Kinship in a Pastoral Society (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1975)Google Scholar. On the material culture of the Turkmen, see Moshkova, V. G., Die Teppiche der Volker Mittelasiens (Hamburg, Germany: Reinhold Schletzer Verlag, 1977)Google Scholar; Mackie, Louise W. and Thompson, John, Turkmen: Tribal Carpets and Traditions (Washington, D.C.: The Textile Museum, 1980)Google Scholar; Pinner, Robert and Eiland, Murray L. Jr., Between the Black Desert and the Red: Turkmen Carpets from the Wiedersperg Collection (San Francisco, Calif.: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1999)Google Scholar; Pinner, Robert and Michael, Franses, Turkoman Studies I (London: Oghuz Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Loge, Werner, Turkoman Tribal Rugs (Munich, Germany: Humanities Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Beresneva, L., The Decorative and Applied Art of Turkmenia (Leningrad, Russia: Aurora, 1976)Google Scholar; Azadi, Siawosch, Turkoman Carpets and the Ethnographic Significance of Their Ornaments (Fishguard, U.K.: Crosby Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Reed, C. D., Turkoman Rugs (Boston: Fogg Art Museum, 1966)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Mir ʿAbd al-Karim Bukhari, Histoire de l'Asie Centrale, 77.

⁵⁰ Population figures based on Fraser, James Baillie, Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan in 1821 and 1822 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1825)Google Scholar; Burnes, Alexander, Travels into Bokhara; Being the Account of a Journey from India to Cabool, Tartary, and Persia, 3 vols. (London: John Murray, 1834)Google Scholar; Safarnama-yi Bukhara; Vambery, Arminius, Travels in Central Asia: Being the Account of a Journey from Teheran Across the Turkoman Desert on the Eastern Shore of the Caspian to Khiva, Bokhara, and Samarcand Performed in the Year 1863 (London: John Murray, 1864)Google Scholar; British National Archives, FO 60/379, “Report by Ronald Thomson on the Toorkoman tribes occupying districts between the Caspian and the Oxus,” Tehran, 29 February 1876; Marvin, Charles, Merv, the Queen of the World; and the Scourge of the Man-Stealing Turkomans (London: W. H. Allen and Company, 1881)Google Scholar; Moser, Henri, A Travers L'Asie Centrale (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1885)Google Scholar. An anonymously written safarnāma from 1844 with the title Safarnama-yi Bukhara lists the names of the different Turkmen tribes and their populations, figures that need to be taken with a grain of salt. These included the Tekke, numbering 80,000 tents, the largest and most powerful of the Turkmen tribes, whose territory was around the oases of Marv and Akhal near the Murghab River as well as around Tejend and Sarakhs. Another group, the Ersari, was said to number 40,000 tents and dwelled on the edge of the Upper Oxus in an area known as Lab-i Ab (“Lip of the Water” or “Water Bank”). The Ersari were recognized as the most settled of the Turkmen and kept close commercial contacts with the city of Bukhara, where they traded their sought-after textiles and weavings. Joining the Tekke in the Qara Qum oasis of Marv were the Salur, numbering 8,000 tents, and the Sariq, numbering 12,000 tents. Westward near the Caspian Sea, the Yamut tribes migrated between the eastern Iranian province of Astarabad and the Oxus and numbered 30,000 tents. See Anonymous, Safarnama-yi Bukhara, 72–73.

⁵¹ See Safarnama-yi Bukhara, 29, where the travelers meet a Tekke tribesman named Qalich with the skin of a tiger he had killed strung over the back of his camel near the border town of Sarakhs.

⁵² Riza Quli Khan, Sifaratnama-yi Khvarazm, 117–18.

⁵³ Ibid., 117.

⁵⁴ Martyros Davud Khanov's “Safarnama-yi Turkistan” (1861) is a Persian translation of the Russian travelogue by Peter Ivanovich Pashino, produced at the Qajar imperial school, Dar al-Funun. National Library, Tehran, Mss. 1368.

⁵⁵ Riza Quli Khan, Sifaratnama-yi Khvarazm, 39–40.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 39–40.

⁵⁷ On transecological exchanges, see Christian, David, “Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Road in World History,” Journal of World History 11 (2000): 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Writing in the 1920s, the pioneering scholar of Central Asia V. V. Barthold claimed to have come across only one reference to Turkmen merchants and traders, found in the history of Abul Ghazi. See V. V. Barthold, Four Studies on the History of Central Asia, vol. 3, A History of the Turkman People, trans. V. and T. Minorsky (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1962), 154.

⁵⁸ For the classic articulation of this thesis, which was subsequently echoed in the works of others, see Steensgaard, Niels, The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century: The East India Companies and the Decline of the Caravan Trade (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974)Google Scholar. Recent studies have revealed the buoyancy of early modern Central Eurasian trade through the prism of South Asian trade diasporas. See Dale, Stephen, Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alam, Muzaffar, “Trade, State Policy, and Regional Change: Aspects of Mughal–Uzbek Commercial Relations, c. 1550–1750,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 37 (1994): 202–27Google Scholar; Gommans, Jos, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, 1710–1780 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995)Google Scholar; idem, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 1500–1700 (London: Routledge, 2002); Levi, Scott, The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and Its Trade, 1550–1900 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002)Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ In Histoire de l'Asie Centrale, Mir ʿAbd al-Karim Bukhari depicts these transecological ties on the overland caravan routes of Central Eurasia: “In the environs of Bukhara there are many nomadic tribes [aḥshām-nishīnān]: Arabs, Turkmen, Uzbak, Qaraqalpaq. . . . The number of nomads is equal to the number of townsfolk and from Bukhara to Samarqand one passes a succession of villages, towns, and nomadic encampments” (77).

⁶⁰ Sifaratnama-yi Khvarazm, 39–40.

⁶¹ Ibid., 86.

⁶² Ibid., 72.

⁶³ Ibid., 39–40.

⁶⁴ Qaragazlu, Majmuʿa-yi Asar, 128–29.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 129.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 133–34.

⁶⁷ For an account of the bazaar of Marv in the late 19th century, see Qaragazlu, “Kitabchih-yi Marv,” Majmuʿa-yi Asar, 103–140; O'Donovan, Edmund, The Merv Oasis (London: Smith, Elder, and Company, 1882), 2:321–37Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ In the 19th century, the Turkmen horse trade extended from Central Eurasia to the interior of Iran, spreading the Tekke Turkmen breed. See Iʿtimad al-Saltana, Mirʾat al-Buldan, 1:352.

⁶⁹ For some 19th-century sources on Turkmen slave raids, see Ashtiyani, ʿIbratnama; Mirpanja, Khatirat-i Asarat: Ruznama-yi Safar-i Khvarazm va Khiva; Shirazi, Tarikh-i Zu-l-Qarnayn; Sipihr, Nasikh al-Tavarikh; de Couliboeuf de Blocqueville, Henri, “Quatorze mois de captivite, chez les Turcomans aux frontieres du Turkestan et de la Perse, 1860–1861 (Frontières du Turkestan et de la Perse),” in Le Tour du Monde, ed. Charton, Edouard (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1866), 225–72Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Ferrier, Caravan Journeys and Wanderings in Persia, Afghanistan, Turkistan, and Beloochistan (London: John Murray, 1857), 1:87.

⁷¹ Conolly, Arthur, Journey to the North of India, Overland from England, Through Russia, Persia, and Affghaunistaun (London: Richard Bentley, n.d.), 1:181–82Google Scholar.

⁷² Moser, A Travers L'Asie Centrale, 248.

⁷³ See Wolff, Joseph, Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, in the Years 1843–1845 (London: John W. Parker, 1946), 176Google Scholar. For an estimate of the number of slaves in 19th-century Khiva, see Marvin, Merv, 181.

⁷⁴ For some studies of the Naqshbandis in Central Asia, see Fletcher, Joseph, “The Naqshbandiyya in Northwest China,” Studies on Chinese and Islamic Inner Asia (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate Variorum, 1995), 6Google Scholar. Paul, Jurgen, The Khwajagan/Naqshbandiya in the First Generation after Baha'uddin (Berlin: Halle, 1998)Google Scholar; Algar, Hamid, “A Brief History of the Naqshbandi Order,” in Naqshbandis: Cheminements et situation actuelle d'un ordre mytique Musulman, ed. Gaborieau, Marc, Popovic, Alexandre, Zarcone, Thierry (Istanbul and Paris: Editions Isis, 1990), 3–44Google Scholar; idem, “From Kashghar to Eyup: The Lineages and Legacy of Sheikh Abdullah Nidai,” in Naqshbandis in Western and Central Asia: Change and Continuity, ed. Elisabeth Ozdalga (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 1999), 1–16; DeWeese, Devin, “Khojagani Origins and the Critique of Sufism: The Critique of Communal Uniqueness in the Manaqib of Khoja ʿAli ʿAzizan Ramitani,” Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics, ed. Jong, Frederick de and Radtke, Bernard (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999), 492–519Google Scholar; Jo-Ann Gross, “The Waqf of Khoja ʿUbayd Allah Ahrar in Nineteenth-Century Central Asia: A Preliminary Study of a Tsarist Record,” in Naqshbandis in Western and Central Asia, 47–60; Papas, Alexandre, Soufisme et politique entre Chine, Tibet et Turkestan: Étude sur les Khwajas Naqshbandis du Turkestan orientale (Paris: Librarie d'Amérique et d'Orient, 2005)Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Sifaratnama-yi Khvarazm, 96–101. Khvaja Baha al-Din Naqshband, a Tajik, preached the principles that a Sufi could live on earth “externally” (ẓāhir) while reserving an “inner” (bāṭin) closeness to God. An important element in Naqshbandi beliefs was the silent remembrance of the divine (zikr-i khafī), a practice that could take place under any temporal circumstances.

⁷⁶ For discussion of the Naqshbandi Sufi order in Riza Quli Khan's travelogue, see Sifaratnama-yi Khvarazm, 98–99, 101, 133.

⁷⁷ Although he did not belong to a tariqa, Riza Quli Khan had an interest in Sufism and was the author of a biographical dictionary of saints. See Tazkira-yi Riyaz al-ʿArifin (Tehran: Kitabkhana-yi Mahdiyyih, 1316/1937).

⁷⁸ Soucek, Svat, A History of Inner Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 150CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This view has been challenged by Robert McChesney, who has questioned the notion of Safavid Iran as “a barrier of heterodoxy,” suggesting instead the perseverance of social and cultural contacts between Safavid Iran and Central Eurasia. See McChesney, “‘Barrier of Heterodoxy’? Rethinking the Ties between Iran and Central Asia in the Seventeenth Century,” in Safavid Persia: The History and Politics of an Islamic Society, ed. Charles Melville (London: I. B. Tauris, 1996), 231–67.

⁷⁹ Sifaratnama-yi Khvarazm, 98–99.

⁸⁰ Ibid., 101.

⁸¹ Ibid., 101.

⁸² Ibid., 41.

⁸³ Ibid., 132.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 78.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 135; Schefer, Relation de l'Ambassade au Kharezm, 206.

⁸⁶ Ibid., 115, 71–74.

⁸⁷ For a narrative of the disastrous Persian campaign on Marv in 1861, see de Blocqueville, “Quatorze mois de captivite, chez les Turcomans aux frontieres du Turkestan et de la Perse,” 225–72.

⁸⁸ Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 225–32.

⁸⁹ White, The Middle Ground, ix–93.