ABSTRACT
This chapter examines popular conversion narratives among rural Muslim communities in Central Asia and explores the possibilities that these narratives offer for understanding the historical process of Islamization. I present three case studies of conversion narratives maintained among the Ismaili Shiʿi communities of the mountainous Badakhshan region. Despite the substantial differences between Ismailis and Sunnis in matters of theology and doctrine, Ismaili conversion narratives nonetheless demonstrate certain fundamental similarities with those maintained among other Muslim communities in Central Asia. I argue that these shared narrative structures point to underlying commonalities in the types of social processes that catalyzed Islamization outside the sedentary “core” of the Islamic world.
