About the Project
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries, in partnership with the Sayyid Amir Shah Qadiri library and the Khanaqah-i Naqshbandiya Hazratkhel, have catalogued and digitized endangered archives of Sufi monasteries and shrines within the Pashtun tribal regions on the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier.
This collection brings to life the dynamic intellectual and spiritual environment of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and neighboring Afghanistan, regions often mischaracterized as hubs of extremism in modern narratives. Instead, these materials provide a nuanced view of the questions that preoccupied the regions’ poets, scholars, and mystics, while also shedding light on one of the most significant theological and ideological conflicts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries: the tension between traditional Sufi-infused Sunnism and puritanical, often violent, fundamentalism.
This team has worked at three religious sites in Waziristan, Peshawar and Malakand:
- Shah Mohammad Ghous Academy Peshawar (Sayyid Amir Shah Qadiri Khanaqah and Library)
- Khanaqah-i Garhi Hazratkhel, Thana, Malakand
- Khanaqah-i Naqshbandiya Mujaddidiya, Idak, North Waziristan
Using a post-custodial model, the project has empowered local stakeholders to preserve their collections, training them in digitization and cataloguing, and building preservation infrastructure for sustainable community-driven archiving.
Project Leadership
- Primary Investigator: Waleed Ziad
- Co-investigator: Rustin Zarkar
- Lead archivist: Taqi Hassan Syed
- Technical Lead: Nazia Akram
- Technical specialist: Mudassar Shoaib
Host Institution
More Information
About the Collection
Digital Collection
The border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan has historically been an important crossroads for travelers, traders, cultures, and communities. It has also been an important locus of intellectual and spiritual activity, where multiple languages and traditions have melded and coalesced. This collection draws from two diverse and eclectic libraries housed within Sufi shrines and monasteries in North Waziristan, Malakand, and Peshawar. These are unexplored collections revealing a rich sacred tradition in a region embroiled in one of the most brutal conflicts in recent history.
Sayyid Amir Shah Qadiri Library, Shah Mohammad Ghous Academy, Peshawar
At the heart of this digital archive are 234 carefully selected items from the renowned library of Sayyid Amir Shah Qadiri(opens in a new tab), Peshawar’s preeminent Sufi master and a towering intellectual of the 20th century. Known as Mawlawi Ji, he was the inheritor of Peshawar’s oldest surviving mystical-scholarly lineage, tracing back to Shah Muhammad Ghawth Peshawari. His library at the Sufi center in Yakatut, the largest of its kind in the Peshawar Valley, houses over 5,000 volumes and hundreds of manuscripts, forming the foundation of his scholarly and spiritual endeavors.
The archive provides an unparalleled glimpse into the thriving intellectual and religious milieu of Peshawar, and more broadly Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Afghanistan, while also documenting the dramatic transformations that shaped the region during the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the materials are Amir Shah Qadiri’s own writings, and rare works addressing seemingly mundane ritual practices that reflect deeper theological and political conflicts. Particularly notable is the material on the Akhund of Swat, a 19th-century Sufi saint and spiritual leader who governed the highland state of Swat and spearheaded anti-colonial resistance movements
Hazrat ‘Abdullah Jan Farooqi Library, housed at the Khanaqah-i Naqshbandiya-Mujaddidiya, Idak, North Waziristan, and Khanaqah-i Garhi Hazratkhel, Thana, Malakand.
This archive(opens in a new tab) comprises materials that were once scattered across Sufi centers and private homes in North Waziristan and Malakand connected to the influential Sufi master Abdullah Jan Farooqi (d. 2006), a pivotal figure in the religious and intellectual landscape of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The materials, in Persian, Pashto, Arabic, and Urdu, include a wide range of documents, such as locally produced biographies, private letters, scholarly texts on healing, metaphysics, scholastic theology, shariah, and poetry. In addition to these scholarly works, the collection also includes unconventional items such as polemical posters, land records associated with sacred sites, and notes tracking the spiritual progress of disciples. These materials also offer a fascinating view of the resistance to puritanical militancy within the Sufi community.
