In the Tārīkh that Mahmūd Churās presents as a continuation of Mīrzā Haydar's history of the Moghuls, he narrates events that occur among Moghul elites and their interactions with Qalmaqs, Qazaqs, and Qirghiz. He and other members of the Churās clan support the Ishāqi Khwājas, who become closely tied to the leaders of the Sa‘īdī Moghul Khanate, and in his history he ignores the Āfāqī Khwājas, apparently joining other Churās who oppose this Sufi faction. In return, Mīr Khāl ad-Dīn Kātib al-Yārkandī, author of the Āfāqī hagiography Hidāyat Nāma, accuses Mahmūd Churās of promoting Moghul opposition to the Āfāqiyya, living in sin, and being an opium user (p. 187). Such comments remind us that these are rhetorically shaped histories, not simple presentations of factual events.
In his important study of the place of Khwāja Sufism and politics in East Turkistani history, Alexandre Papas starts from well-known sources but then...