This dissertation examines Badakhshani Isma'ili hagiographical texts written between approximately the late 16th and the late 20th centuries in their socio-political context. It analyses the narratives by drawing attention to how their authors expressed ideals, values, beliefs, practices, and concerns through the medium of hagiography. Unlike much previous scholarly work on the Badakhshani hagiographical tradition, which dismisses this substantial body of valuable material as entirely "fictional, " and, therefore, useless as a source of "historical" information, the present study approaches the data in a novel manner, and analyses it for clues about the ideological, polemical, apologetic, pedagogic, moral, and didactic concerns of Badakhshani sma'ilis. This dissertation focuses on the hagiographies of Nas&dotbelow; ir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1070), the celebrated Persian sma'ili thinker, poet and missionary.

Badakhshani sma'ilis, a minority Central Asian Muslim community concentrated primarily in the Afghan Badakhsh?n Province and Tajik Gorno-Badakhsh?n Autonomous Oblast, revere Nas&dotbelow; ir-i Khusraw as the founder of the sma'ili Shi'i tradition, calling their religious tradition the da'vat-i Shah Nas&dotbelow; ir, or "Nas&dotbelow; ir-i Khusraw's summoning." Upon analyzing the persistent and transient elements of Nas&dotbelow; ir-i Khusraw's portrayals in Badakhshani hagiographies of the said period, this dissertation concludes that, although Nas&dotbelow; ir-i Khusraw's sanctity takes an "idealized" form in the hagiographies, it was never fully solidified or standardized, but was constantly negotiated between the hagiographers and the narratives about him. What the sources say about Nas&dotbelow; ir-i Khusraw changes throughout the period under study. Hagiographies of the Soviet period differ from those written by the pre-Soviet sma'ilis in motives and agendas, in their selection of the material, and in their views on sanctity. In the earliest sources, produced in the 16th century, Nas&dotbelow; ir-i Khusraw is represented as a Muslim wrongly accused of unbelief and as a person with ambiguous sectarian affiliations. In the hagiographical works created in the early 18th century, he emerges as a great Shi'i saint on par with the last Twelver Shi'i Imam. In middle hagiographical works composed between the late 18th and early 20th centuries, he is presented as a foundational figure and a great saint in the service of the sma'ili Imam, whom he followed. The late sources, written in the Soviet period, present him as a saint championing the rights of ordinary people and an opponent of oppressors. The dissertation argues that this difference in the representation of Nas&dotbelow; ir-i Khusraw in the hagiographical sources is related to the dictates of the changing historical environments to which the writers responded.