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In this episode, Belle interviews Dr. Annika Schmeding, Senior Researcher at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and a Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), about her first book, Sufi Civilities: Religious Authority and Political Change in Afghanistan (Stanford University Press, 2023).
In Sufi Civilities (and in our podcast episode), Schmeding examines how contemporary urban Sufi communities in Afghanistan deal with violence and transition. She addresses how threads from Afghanistan’s history shape the experiences and practices of Sufi communities in the present, particularly through ongoing poetic traditions, and she examines how they navigate tensions and ambiguities internally as well as amid the wider political and social context. Schmeding shows how Sufis in Afghanistan have adapted to political changes in recent decades, demonstrating resilience by creatively responding to and navigating historic shifts rather than remaining unchanged.
Sufi communities have thousands of members across Afghanistan, where they form part of a traditional civil society sphere. Sufi Civilities gives us insight into marginalized groups in Herat and Kabul in particular, where Schmeding conducted years of fieldwork throughout the 2010s, to explore dynamics of authority and adaptation in different settings.
In the podcast episode, we discuss some of the preconceived notions about Afghan history that the book addresses, such as the role of women in positions of influence and authority. For example, in the Faizani Sufi community that is active in many provinces of Afghanistan, women served as spiritual and community leaders, even beyond kinship connections that often characterized a majority of leadership transitions.
A woman who appears throughout Sufi Civilities, Asma Mahjor, also took on an exceptional position in terms of gendered authority in Sufi poetry circles. Mahjor followed in her own father’s footsteps in leading the Sufi community she was a part of through significant moments of political upheaval in Afghanistan in recent decades. However, she forged her own path in adapting to the constantly shifting political landscape. We discuss her family’s history of bringing Bedil poetry into a wider public through alliances with musicians, and some of the gendered familial tensions that marked her own nascent role in leadership, as well as in expanding and encouraging access to poetry.
We end with a discussion of Afghanistan and these Sufi communities after the Taliban took over in August of 2021, and how they continue to navigate and adapt to the ongoing changes in the country.
Guest
Annika Schmeding
Dr. Annika Schmeding is a cultural anthropologist and currently a Senior Researcher at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and a Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Her work examines the fallout of decades of war, violence and migration on civilians in Afghanistan and the greater Middle East, with particular focus on minorities. Before joining KNAW & UvA, Annika was a Harvard Society Fellow. Her first book, Sufi Civilities: Religious Authority and Political Change in Afghanistan, was published by Stanford University Press in 2023, and won the 2024 Nikki Keddie Book Award, sponsored by the Middle East Studies Association (MESA).
Host
Belle Cheves
Belle Cheves is a senior editor at Ajam Media Collective and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Bard College. Her research focuses on the history of family in Qajar Iran, specifically on how transformations of marital practices and affective perceptions of gender, race, and ethnicity shifted understandings of kinship, enslavement, and domestic service over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Credits
Episode No. 46
Release Date: 3 March 2025
Recording Location: remote
Recording Date: 17 January 2025
Produced by Belle Cheves
Audio Editing: Belle Cheves and Nicholas Gunty
Music: Yavaran (Intro: “404 day in heaven;” Outro: “Har Chi”)
Cover Image: Photograph by Annika Schmeding, Ziyarat of Khaja Abdullah Ansari, Gazargah, Herat, Afghanistan, 2016.
