Two Faces of Devotion : A Comparative Study of the Manuscripts of the Tadkhira of Sūt Bībī

We possess two separate manuscripts for the Tadhkira of Sūt Bībī, about the life and deeds of Sūt Bībī, a prominent saint of Yarkand. One of these is from the Jarring collection (Prov. 6), the other from the Hartmann collection (Ms. or. oct. 1727). Both manuscripts originate from Yarkand and tell the same story, but from different time periods: Hartmann’s from 1836 and Jarring’s from 1928. A comparison of the two manuscripts’ similarities and differences, including their language and handwriting, provides an interesting case study for examining scribal culture and linguistic developments in Turkestan during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

From a literary standpoint, these differences offer indications about different regional influences, textual traditions, and how the story might have been passed down orally over time. Moreover, given the comparatively smaller presence of female Islamic saints in Central Asia, focusing on Sūt Bībī, a well-known female saint in Eastern Turkestan, can help shed light on the role of women in Islamic sainthood in the region. Finally, from a linguistic perspective, the manuscripts show some interesting changes in the language itself. There are subtle differences in phonetics, morphology, and dialect, indicative of how the Eastern Türki language was evolving during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.