The study of Dawlatshah al-Ispijabi’s “Burhan az-Zakirin” (“Evidence for those who remember”) by A.K. Bustanov and E.L. Nikitenko has been published.
The publication was prepared with the support of the Ibn Sina Foundation as part of the TAIF professorship on the history of Islamic peoples in Russia at the European University at St. Petersburg (2013-2017).
The publication contains two works in Persian written by Dawlatshah b. Abd al-Wahhab al-Ispijabi (d. 1714), a Sufi Sheikh of the Yasawiya brotherhood, as well as a detailed historical and philological commentary. The author was one of the most active Sufi preachers in Desht-i Qipchaq (Cumania) at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries. Dawlatshah al-Ispijabi was originally from Sairam (present-day Southern Kazakhstan), studied in Bukhara with the Yasawi Sheikh Muhammad Sharif, travelled a lot and spent a few years in Tobolsk. According to some Siberian legends, Dawlatshah al-Ispijabi played the key role in “discovering” the graves of saints around Tobolsk and, in fact, in establishing the cult of saints in the region.
The book is intended for experts in Oriental and Iranian studies, historians and all those interested in the history of Islam in Russia.