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This paper briefly discusses the rise of the Mahmudiyya in
post-Soviet Daghestan, and the political strategies of its leading authority,
Shaykh Said-Afandi Chirkeevskii (Atsaev, 1937-2012). How did the
Said-Afandi's Mahmudiyya branch of the Naqshbandiyya khalidiyya Sufi
brotherhood become a state-supporting and state-supported institution
in contemporary Daghestan? I argue that key elements of Said-Afandi's
rise into the spotlight were his take-over of the republican Muftiate in
the period when the old Soviet Muftiate for the North Caucasus was
disintegrating, and the subsequent establishment of a network of Islamic
teaching institutes that reached out to both Kumyks and Avars. Here
the Mahmudiyya competes with another Khalidiyya branch and especially
with the Salafi groups; the latter now appear as the major threat to the
secular and multinational republic, while Said-Afandi's propagation of a
conservative ethos matched the general conservative stance of the
Daghestani and Russian leaderships. Also of importance is the integration
of Shadhiliyya elements into Mahmudiyya teaching and practice that
make the group's appeal more diverse. Said-Afandi's writings (originally
written in Avar) were professionally translated into Russian, with a broad
Islamic discourse for the masses and a specialized Sufi discourse for the
inner circle. With these missionary policies Said-Afandi reached out not
only to the Daghestani nationalities but also to Muslims in other parts
of the Russian Federation, from Moscow over Tatarstan to Siberia. At
the same not only the Salafi challenge but also the ethnic cleavages in
Daghestan itself pose serious limitations to the Mahmudiyya success,and the question remains whether the current leadership of the
brotherhood - after Said-Afandi's tragic death at the hands of a female
suicide bomber in the summer of 2012 - will be able to hold the group
together.
