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.

Chapter 1 examines the Timurid-era tradition of ʿAlid devotion and its continuation under the early Shibanid dynasty. Tīmūr’s tombstone inscriptions leave no doubt regarding the ʿAlid orientation of the Timurids. The imagery of ʿAlī that links the Chingizid and Timurid genealogical trees in the tombstone suggests the preeminence of ʿAlī’s authority over the legacy of Chingiz Khan in the Timurid legitimation narrative. However, the decline of the Timurid dynasty in the early sixteenth century brought about large-scale religious and political turmoil in the Persianate world. The contest between the newly founded Shibanid and Safavid dynasties facilitated the Shibanids’ development of a self-conscious Sunni orientation in response to the militant Shiʿism promoted by the Safavids, thus furthering Sunni–Shiʿi antagonism.