Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India 9780198077961

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Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

Title Pages (p.i) Making Space (p.ii) (p.iii) Making Space

(p.iv) Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in India by Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, 1 Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110001, India © Oxford University Press 2012 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First published 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted Page 1 of 2

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Dedication

Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

Dedication (p.v) For Sanjay Subrahmanyam

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[UNTITLED]

Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

[UNTITLED] (p.vi) Junbish-e asma bih ma surat numa-ast Har koja oftad nishan muqaddar-e ma-ast Only the migration of names is revealed to us. Where’er the signs fall is all that is left to us.

—Jamali Dihlawi (d. 1542), Mir’at al-Ma‘ani

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Illustrations

Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

(p.ix) Illustrations 1.1. Texts of Territory: Genealogical Memory Space of a Deccani Sufi 7 1.2. Territories of Text: The Space of Writing 22 1.3. Movement Fixed in Space: Shrine of Migrant Saint Shah Khalilullah, Bidar 27 2.1. Lineages Linked through Burial: Tombs of Nizam al-Din Awliya and Princess Jahanara 53 2.2. The Architecture of Ritual: Mughal Era Naqqarakhana, Khuldabad 60 3.1. The Space of Settlement: The Central Asian Takiyya, Aurangabad 104 4.1. Migration Writ in Stone: Bilgrami’s Poem at the Shrine of Shah Musafir 135 4.2. An Imaginary Migrant? Wall Painting of Shah Nur Hammami 141 5.1. Making the Deccan Mughal: Mausoleum of Rabi‘a Dawrani, Aurangabad 150 5.2. A Central Asian Lineage in the Deccan: Shrine of ‘Inayatullah, Balapur 161 5.3. Shaded Spaces of Learning: Wooden Dalan at Shrine of Jan Allah Shah, Jalna 187 5.4. The Body as Nine Yards: Cenotaph of No-Gazi Baba, Vaizapur 194 6.1. Blessed Names as Textual Body: Muhyi al-Din of Bukhara’s Caligraphic Microcosm, Aurangabad (1759) 206 6.2. The Book as Object: Wooden Quran Sura from Shrine of Jan Allah Shah, Jalna 211 (p.x) 6.3. The Embodiment of Written Memory: A Sajjada Nashin Reads from his Library 216 7.1. A Narrative Landscape: The Great Fort of Deogiri/Daulatabad 230 7.2. Medieval Muslim Forebears: Bahmani Minaret at Deogiri/Daulatabad 235 7.3. The Space as Text: Bilgrami’s Geo-history Rawzat al-Awliya 238 Page 1 of 2

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Illustrations 7.4. Rawzat al-Awliya: The Heavenly Garden of the Saints at Khuldabad 257 8.1. The Emperor and the Saint: The Grave of Awrangzeb in Shrine of Zayn al-Din 273 *(All photographs/illustrations courtesy of Nile Green, except Fig. 6.1, which has been published here with kind permission of Salar Jang Museum, Hyderabad)

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Preface

Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

(p.xi) Preface The historian André Wink has described medieval Islamic India as a ‘world on the move’.1 In substantial part, this world of overland connections that tied India to the cities and steppes of Central Asia and Iran survived until the economic and geographical shifts that accompanied the onset of colonial rule.2 Even if early modern India did see the increasing interaction of India with maritime networks ultimately reaching as far as Europe and China, the major Indian cities of the period were inland and continental rather than coastal and oceanic.3 These urban spaces were in turn connected by long but effective culture routes that tied the peoples and places of Muslim India into patterns of long-term interaction, imaginary as well as actual, with a Gedächtnisraum or ‘memory space’ composed of texts as much as territories.4 In looking at different aspects of this interdependence of communities and the narratives and places in which they creatively ‘located’ their senses of history and memory of belonging and home, the essays in this volume examine the implications of this ‘world on the move’ for the different Muslim communities that emerged in early modern India. The aim is to explore the ambiguities and tensions no less than the opportunities that such mobility brought, particularly when mediated by the rituals, narratives, (p.xii) and architectures of the Sufis. The overarching themes are those of mobility and space and the ways in which, as a repository of bodies and rituals, texts, and institutions, the Sufi Islam that effectively was Islam in early modern India either reflected or responded to the demands brought about by moving and settling. In short, the key problem at the heart of this collection is how, in its cultural and emotional no less than its linguistic and institutional senses, settlement could emerge from the itineracy of a ‘world on the move’. This basic question has further ramifications. How were homes made by communities that either factually or imaginatively constructed themselves as migrants from other regions of the subcontinent or beyond?5 How were Page 1 of 6

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Preface emotional bonds of belonging made in places of settlement at the same time as maintaining roots of memory to more distant places of origin? And crucially, what were the roles in these processes of this Sufi Islam of charismatic migrants and the shrines and narratives that surrounded them? Given that to migrate and to settle are two aspects of the same process, different chapters of this collection examine one side of the process more than the other. But whether through the role of Sufi writings in preserving memories of former homelands or through the importance of Sufi shrines in forging new Muslim settlements, the essays attempt to collectively develop a combined reading of the texts and territories involved by spatializing the reading of textual sources and textualizing the reading of spatial sources. What we see as a result is a repeated interplay between, on the one hand, the mobile and portable religious resources of Sufi Islam by way of migrant blessed men and the books, rituals, and occasional relics they imported and, on the other hand, the static and immobile resources of sacred landscapes, shrine architecture, and landholdings in which settler and convert communities invested. In India as in other regions, this Sufi Islam of saints, shrines, and miracles reached its zenith of influence in the early modern era.6 And in the final analysis, it was the ability of these religious resources to be adapted to the interchangeable demands of mobile individuals, (p.xiii) settlers, and acculturating convert communities that rendered the Sufis so central to the social and political no less than the cultural life of the period. In order to gain some sense of both the practical and the imaginative work accomplished with these religious resources, the following chapters develop holistic ways of tracing the connections between books and narratives, physical places and cultural geographies, and the living blessed men and immortal saints around whose texts and territories identity, memory, and belonging took shape. Central to these developments was what this book will in shorthand form refer to as ‘sacred space’ and ‘Muslim space’. Conceived in broadly Durkheimian terms, the sacredness of the spaces in question here (whether architectural spaces or modified landscapes) came through the investment of meaning through the performance of ritual and the telling of narrative. Through these investments, space became sacred because it was the Gedächtnisraum of surrounding communities who through texts and rituals of remembrance connected it to their own histories and the proxy histories of their patron saints. It was in turn ‘Muslim space’ because these rituals and narratives of memories that forged identity drew on the resources of Sufi Islam, resources that included not only particular idioms of writing, ritual, and the architecture, but also the persons of the Sufis themselves, the blessed bodies that were the most crucial resource of all. For as mobile physical entities that through burial, enshrinement, and textual commemoration could be rendered permanent and static features of places of settlement and homemaking, these Sufi bodies created memory spaces that were both sacred and Muslim. Through the acts of Page 2 of 6

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Preface ritual performance and narrative remembrance that were focused on their tombs, the Sufis became the enduring spatial anchors for the historical memory of the different Muslim communities of settlers or converts who attached themselves to the spatial and temporal surety of their burial places. In such ways, this book argues that the Sufis were the key mediators between the new Muslim communities that emerged in early modern India and the rural landscapes and urban spaces of their settlement and homemaking. As used in Making Space (and discussed further in Chapter 1), the term ‘blessed man’ refers to a living Sufi set apart from ordinary men by his possession of (p.xiv) ‘blessing power’ (barakat) which he was able to deploy at the service of his followers. The term ‘saint’ is used to refer to a dead Sufi whose status has been sanctified through the cultural investment of shrine architecture, hagiographical commemoration, and ritual veneration. As a result, the saint was a retrospective production of memory and, indeed as we will see in later chapters, was the magnet or anchor of more collective forms of memory. What distinguished the saint most sharply from the blessed man was the construction of a shrine that through narratives and rituals rendered the body of the blessed man a permanent locus of collective memory. In answering the problem, we have defined of how the itinerant members of a mobile ‘world on the move’ were able to make homes in the distinct places collapsed in the idea of ‘India’, the following essays argue that the shrines of the immortalized Sufi saints were crucial to the making of Muslim space on Indian soil. For if we have defined Muslim space—space in which Muslims felt they belonged—in terms of a sociological model of sacred qua memory space, then shrines functioned precisely as the concrete distilment of such memory. As the physical locations of historical memory in Islamic India, shrines were lieux de mémoire in the sense conceived by Pierre Nora, as ‘any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community’.7 For historians, shrines are a valuable and neglected resource in their own right in being, alongside mosques and palaces, one of the few early modern Indian spaces to survive in number to the present day and arguably the only spaces to survive with their rituals, book collections, and even family lineages intact: they are ‘places in which memory is crystalized’.8 Sufi shrines offer historians unique spaces of continuity with the precolonial past, continuity which (as I explored in Indian Sufism since the Seventeenth Century) while inevitably seeing ruptures and reinventions was nonetheless meaningful.9 As we will see in the (p.xv) final chapter, even down to the present day, for the communities of memory who gather around them, shrines act as repositories of history passed on in the oral tales and written texts, commemorative rituals, and saintly dynasties, preserved around the graves of the blessed dead. For the dead gather stories, especially when they are buried in grand mausoleums that perpetually beg the question: Who is buried there? As spaces that in this way not Page 3 of 6

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Preface only preserved but also provoked memory, shrines have long served their communities as gates through time, a liminality summoned in their Indo-Persian designation as dargah which means ‘gateway’ as well as ‘court’. Shrines were therefore spaces where the past was not only recounted in narrative but also rendered visible in architecture and ritual. They presented their communities of memory with a tangible continuity with their past: the same gateways, prayer rooms, and books; preserved clothing, possessions, and etiquette; even the same embodied blessing in the saint’s living descendants, the sajjada nashins. This was no less the case in the early modern than in later periods, as Muslims of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries looked to their own past by endowing older medieval shrines with new hagiographies and buildings. Muslim communities built a vast number of such shrines across their landscapes of settlement and conversion in India in the medieval and especially the early modern era. Yet, they were not unique investors in this real estate of memory and the early modern period saw many different groups investing in and sometimes sharing such memory spaces. Whether Portuguese or Bohras, Marathas or Afghans, Sikhs or Afro-Indian Sidis, almost every wealthy community in India used the varied architecture of death as a focus for collective memory, a process as visible in the displayed bones of St Francis Xavier in Goa as in the ruined samadhi of Shivaji at Raigarh and the water-borne dome of Sher Shah Suri at Sasaram. In each case, the death spaces of notable persons helped define identity through time by linking community to territory and linking territory to texts of memory. By substantiating and spatializing ‘religion’ as a resource providing narratives, rituals, and spaces of belonging, we can conceive these peoples as being communities of memory as much as religious communities. As deliberate investors in their collective commemoration, we can trace in turn how these communities (p.xvi) built different forms of death space as both markers and makers of history. For as provokers of memory dead men do indeed tell tales, at least when transformed into architecture. Yet, in order to tell such tales, the spaces of the dead required narratives of remembrance and for India’s Muslims no form of narrative was more important than the hagiographies appropriately known as tazkirat or ‘that which is remembered’. Such texts were intimately related through a dynamic relationship to the territories of shrines, creating the textualization of space implicit in the word ‘shrine’ itself, derived as it is from the Latin scrinium (‘a box for papers’). For the new mobile or convert communities of Muslims who gathered around them, text and territory, tazkira and dargah, were in this way mutually supportive pillars in the upholding and even the construction of memory. As such, these textualized spaces and the blessed persons buried there present key sites for understanding the ambivalent interplay between mobility and settlement that is the focus of this book. Individually and as a collection, the chapters aim to integrate these driving themes of movement and settlement, text and territory, community and memory. By so doing, Making Space hopes to push Page 4 of 6

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Preface forward a methodological agenda for the study of early modern Indian history through an integrative spatialized model of conceiving ‘texts and territories’ in constant interfusion with one another and in turn with the peoples who made use of them. *** The original impetus to put together this book came from requests from students and scholars in India to make my articles available. This in turn seemed an opportunity to take stock of my early modern writings and to draw together and revise the articles around central themes and problems, driving concerns of which I was not wholly conscious when the articles were originally written in piecemeal form. While, with the exception of Chapter 2, earlier versions of all the chapters in this volume have previously appeared in journals, I have taken this opportunity to substantially revise and reconceive each essay, in a few cases to the point of re-writing. My hope is that in conceptual no less than thematic terms, the ensuing book reads as a tolerably coherent whole. For permission to republish the articles I am grateful to: Sage Publications for ‘Emerging (p.xvii) Approaches to the Sufi Traditions of South Asia: Between Texts, Territories and the Transcendent’, South Asia Research, vol. 24, no. 2, 2004; Cambridge University Press for ‘Tribe, Diaspora and Sainthood in Afghan History’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 67, no. 1, 2008; ‘The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya: Persianate Knowledge between Person and Paper’, Modern Asian Studies, 2009; and ‘Stories of Saints and Sultans: Re-membering History at the Sufi Shrines of Aurangabad’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 38, no. 2, 2004; Taylor and Francis for ‘Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space in South Asian Islam’, Contemporary South Asia, vol. 12, no. 4, 2003, and ‘Who’s the King of the Castle? Brahmins, Sufis and the Narrative Landscape of Daulatabad’, Contemporary South Asia, vol. 13, no. 3, 2004; ‘Auspicious Foundations: The Patronage of Sufi Institutions in the Late Mughal and Early Asaf Jah Deccan’, South Asian Studies, vol. 20, 2004. All of the illustrations (except Fig. 6.1) draw on my own photographs and other items from my collection. For permission to print Fig. 6.1, I am grateful to the Salar Jung Library, Hyderabad, and particularly to the museum director, A. Nagender Reddy. Thanks to Carlos Hernandez and Charles Li at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), for help with digitalizing the images. Notes:

(1) Wink (1997). Cf. Kasaba (2009). (2) Bayly (1988). For useful attempts to define early modernity and India’s relation to it, see Goldstone (1998), Richards (1997), and Subrahmanyam (1997).

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Preface (3) On different dimensions of these interactions, see Alam and Subrahmanyam (2007) and Levi (2007). On early modern India in its maritime contexts, see in particular Das Gupta (2001). (4) On the concept of Gedächtnisraum, see Kaschuba (2004), p. 19. (5) For insightful essays on contemporary global Muslim space-making, see Metcalf (1996). (6) Green (2012), chapter 3. (7) Nora and Kritzman (1996) p. xvii. (8) Nora, ‘General Introduction: Between Memory and History ’, in ibid. (1996) p. 1. See also Troll (1989). (9) Green (2006b).

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Between Texts and Territories

Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

Between Texts and Territories An Introduction Nile Green

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.003.0010

Abstract and Keywords This chapter provides both an overview of Indian Islamic history and an outline of a new methodology for studying it. Bringing texts and geography together, the approach is one of ‘spatializing texts’ and ‘textualizing space’. It argues for the importance in the making of the Muslim communities of South Asia of Sufis as not only living social actors, but also as dead makers of shrine-based memory spaces by developing the notion of the lieu de mémoire or ‘memory space’. Keywords:   Islam, Sufism, India, Pakistan, South Asia, migration, cultural geography, Persian, IndoPersian, memory space

Defining Sufis Definitions of Sufism have often skirted around the basic fact that medieval and early modern Sufi Islam was a religiosity of embodied blessed men who represented the blessing power that via genealogical memory believers traced through space and time back to the Prophet Muhammad in Mecca.1 Through their connections to textual narratives and architectural spaces, it is these persons and their relationships with different Muslim communities of memory in India that form the focus of this introductory essay. For what we are concerned with in this volume is not a Sufism of abstract theory and metaphysical refinement. It is an Islam of blessed men and remembered saints who in living deed and recollected narrative dwelt in the midst of communities whose supernatural patrons they were in an India whose towns were still under settlement by mobile individuals and factions linked to the Mughal Empire.2 In Page 1 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories order to understand the dual roles in which Sufis acted in the space-making processes discussed in this book, it will be helpful to outline a definition of Sufis in their roles as ‘blessed men’ and ‘saints’. As used in this volume, the term ‘blessed man’ refers to a living man set apart from other men by his possession of supernatural ‘blessing power’ or barakat, which was typically used in partisan fashion to aid those individuals or communities who (p.2) became his protégés.3 In India as in other early modern contexts, this form of blessing power lent its perceived bearers both social and political agency, rendering them ‘capable of accumulating great wealth (in some cases); of arbitrating in disputes between individuals, families, and the sultanate; or on rare occasions of raising armies’.4 This blessing power was a doctrinal, genealogical, and social construction.5 In doctrinal terms it was based on the widespread doctrines of wilayat and qurbat, special ‘friendship’ with and ‘proximity’ to God which since the tenth century had argued for a special class among men; in genealogical terms on the silsila and tariqa lineages of the Sufi brotherhoods and the physical bloodlines of blessed families (especially of the Arab sayyid lineage); and in social terms on the myriad deferential practices that set apart these families that ranged from spoken forms of respect to endogamous forms of marriage. For while bolstered by mystical doctrines, this blessing power was substantiated in the flesh and blood of men whose very physicality—whether as living touch, buried body, or vicarious relic—was barakat’s medium of transfer. As an Arabic Wanderwort borrowed into various Muslim languages, barakat was a transregional concept that was not only embodied in but moreover transported through the living bodies of migrant blessed men and reproduced through their offspring in the blessed men’s places of settlement. As a result, barakat was a trans-temporal and trans-spatial form of symbolic capital, ‘a quality fixed across time and space and related to prophetic lineage, learning and piety’.6 The functions and significance of these Sufi blessed men were therefore manifold, but central to their vast dispersal and influence were the ways in which they served to embody an Islamic moral and cosmic order amidst the local facts of life in their constituencies. Through the blessed men’s miracles, whether wrathful or benevolent, divine justice was seen to enter the (p.3) social world, while as living mediators and preceptors these men served to mortar the fissures in individual and group relations.7 By contrast, the term ‘saint’ is used in this book to refer to a dead blessed man whose status has been sanctified through processes of shrine building, hagiographical writing, and ritual veneration. The saint then is a product of commemoration; indeed he is memory substantiated through cultural action. Though almost all Muslim saints were therefore previously blessed men during their lifetimes, not all blessed men necessarily achieved the architectural, literary, and ritual recognition to be posthumously remembered as saints. Many of the functions of the living blessed man were transferred to the dead saint and both parties provided one another with mutual support through various Page 2 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories institutional, theological, and commemorative mechanisms associated with their hagiographical texts and shrine spaces. However, what was crucially different about the saint was his extended temporal horizons—a rendering permanent of the flesh through the construction of a mausoleum, itself kept alive through the stories and rituals that surrounded it, which in turn attracted the more material forms of investment required to maintain any institution. Transformed into an eternal saint in this way, as miraculous patron or even genealogical ancestor of his client community, through this spatial process of enshrinement the blessed man became a ritualized and textualized fastener of fragile collective memory to the enduring stability of the landscape. For as a saint interred in the sacred memory space of his shrine, the blessed man was able to preserve in turn the memory time of his client community as the descendants of his original followers passed on narratives that not only commemorated his life but also the lives of his followers, so connecting the rememembered lives of the community dead with the lived lives of their descendants of later generations. In this way narrative and space, text and territory, worked together as the saint—architectural embodiment of collective memory—served to bridge the past and present time of his followers, so creating the Muslim communities of memory explored in this book. For the purpose of this book, what is ultimately most important to recognize is that blessed men and saints were at once territorial (p.4) and textual constructions who were created by and in turn created texts and territories. Because as the status of blessed men and saints was reinforced by doctrinal texts and their miraculous powers celebrated in hagiographies, in selfperpetuating form they were in turn among the most important producers of such texts themselves. And as they created sacred space through their burial and enshrinement, they in turn gained power through controlling or visiting such shrine spaces. Each defining the other, text and territory formed a continuum through which the blessed men and the saints shaped the mental and physical arenas of human experience in the societies surrounding them. This Islam of saints and blessed men was, then, an Islam intimately concerned with life in the world. Indeed, in its spatial settings, this was Islam as a pool of religious resources, verbal and architectural: that were deployed to make sense of a life between worlds: between places of origin and places of settlement, between places of written memory and places of lived experience. As bountiful inspirers of books and buildings, Sufis were crucial to the processes of settlement, acculturation, and homemaking through their unique roles as social actors who were both mobile and static, mortal and immortal, enjoying careers through actions in their lifetimes and through texts after their deaths. These were double lives that were itinerant in their flesh and stationary in their burial through shrines that rendered permanent the memory of their often circuitous itineraries.8 Architecturally and textually transformed into stable anchors of memory, in their posthumous careers as saints these blessed men continued to Page 3 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories contribute to the lives of their followers in an early modern ‘world on the move’. While the following chapters explore different aspects of this nexus between bodies, texts, and places in the relationships of these Sufi patrons and their client communities, this chapter prepares a methodological framework by positioning the texts and territories that the Sufis inhabited in their double lives as blessed men and remembered saints, each shaping the contours of the other in a creative and cross-temporal dialectic. By spatializing texts and textualizing spaces (p.5) in this way, we will be better prepared to trace the intersections in later chapters between the static and the mobile, the saint and the settler, the place and the narrative, and in so doing make clearer sense of the centrality of Sufis to the making of Muslim space in early modern India.

From Texts to Territories As we have already noted, as blessed men Sufis were people who were made in part by texts that created and disseminated the powerful semantic labels that set them apart from other men. From the end of the ninth century, the earliest written texts on Sufism were composed in Arabic by Sufis writing in regions as widespread as Baghdad in the west and Tirmiz on the banks of the Oxus in the north-east. By the time of the migration of Sufis into India and the first flourishing of Sufi writing in the region, Persian was beginning to be adopted as a suitable medium for religious literature by Sufis in Central Asia as well as Iran.9 Although important contributions to the Arabic literature of Sufi Islam were certainly made in India through the centuries (particularly in Sindh and the Deccan), it was overwhelmingly in Persian that the greatest contribution of India’s Sufis was to be made.10 The scale of this contribution is perhaps seen most clearly in the fact that the first extant Sufi handbook ever to be written in Persian was composed in mid-eleventh century Lahore. This was the famous Kashf al-mahjub of ‘Ali ibn ‘Usman al-Hujwiri (d. c. 1072).11 If Kashf al-mahjub is one of the Sufi works best known to scholarship, it is still capable of revealing new insights into the process of the formation of the Sufi traditions of India, not least through a spatial hermeneutics. For, during the reign of the Ghaznavi sultans, its author Hujwiri migrated to Lahore from his home in the environs of Ghazna. He was to be one of the earliest (p.6) of the many Khurasani Sufis to migrate to India under the aegis of the Muslim-ruled sultanates that were to continue expanding from Hujwiri’s lifetime till the eighteenth century. Along with these political space-making states whose cultural work they sometimes abetted, the Sufis’ star continued to rise for many centuries over India. Hujwiri’s celebrated text tells us that his own itineracy was already a part of Sufi life in this early period and reveals that before settling in India Hujwiri had already travelled through a much wider region, not least on pilgrimages to the tombs of such earlier Sufis as Abu Yazid at Bistam and Abu Sa‘id at Mihna in Khurasan.12 The accounts of Hujwiri’s travels point to the pre-existing Sufi practice of shrine pilgrimage outside of India, reminding us that what is often seen as in some way a typically ‘Indian’ characteristic of Islam—the cult of Sufi shrines—was in fact a Page 4 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories key space-making institution introduced at an early period from a wider Islamic system of settlement and acculturation, especially in erstwhile frontier territories of Africa and South-east Asia as well as India.13 Hujwiri’s references to the shrines he visited in Khurasan at the time of the birth of Sufi writing on Indian soil already point to the interdependence of text and territory that later chapters will trace through writings and buildings of the early modern period. At the outset of our enquiries, these brief accounts of shrine pilgrimages from the very beginning of Persian Sufi writing in India therefore remind us of the interdependency that always existed between the texts written by blessed men and the spaces—the mausoleums, lodges, and landholdings—that maintained the double lives of these figures as blessed men in life and as saints in death. The construction of a shrine around Hujwiri’s own grave in Lahore was part of this long-term collusion between the making of texts and the making of spaces. Along with its narratives of the remembered saints of an older Muslim memory space in Khurasan, Iraq, and Arabia, it was the (p.7) (p.8) embodied moral and ethical teachings of Kashf al-mahjub that connected it to the greater vehicle of Muslim leadership and piety (see Fig. 1.1). These qualities echoed such other early Sufi writings as the early Suhrawardi prayer manuals from Multan, texts which reveal the connection between Sufi practice and normative Muslim worship among a highly literate Sufi lineage with close ties to the religious establishment of both Baghdad and Delhi, ties enabled by routes of trade and diplomacy between

Fig. 1.1 Texts of Territory: Genealogical Memory Space of a Deccani Sufi Courtesy of Nile Green

the two capitals.14 Such texts remind us of the danger of talking about Sufism in a different breath from Islamic law or the study of Hadith. For Hujwiri, as for many of his successors, Sufism was a path to perfecting one’s adherence to normative Islam rather than an alternative to it. Although less immediately appealing than the heady poetry or speculative philosophy of certain Sufis, his emphasis on morality and etiquette—akhlaq and adab—was something which would continue to be a major theme in Indian Sufi writings, pointing to the way in which texts served to extol virtues embodied and displayed in the living blessed man.15 The term ‘Sufi’ was used only sparingly in Hujwiri’s text and appeared alongside other labels of authority such as shaykh, ‘arif, wali, and darwish, suggesting that the notion of a discrete ‘Sufism’ at even a step’s removal from ‘Islam’ would have been a troubling and unfamiliar idea to the likes of Hujwiri.16 What we are looking at here is therefore not an intellectualized doctrinal abstraction so much as a set of embodied labels for authoritative persons

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Between Texts and Territories claiming to act under submission to God’s will. In other words, the blessed men were seen (and moreover textualized) as ideal types of ‘Muslims’, those who had ‘submitted to the will of God’ and so allowed His will and power to flow through them. As a result, these men were authoritative and powerful channels of divine agency. The visible morality of adab and akhlaq were in this way inseparable from (p.9) the claims to authority that would over time win the Sufis support from the elites of empire.

This kind of moralizing Sufi writing had its origins outside of India and other such early Sufi books written outside the region were imported and popularized in India as part of the material flows of literary traffic that accompanied the mobility of the blessed men themselves. Along with Hujwiri’s Kashf al-mahjub, this importing of Sufi texts was most famously the case with the ‘Awarif alma‘arif of ‘Umar Suhrawardi (d. 1234), a text which was originally introduced in India by its author’s Suhrawardi successors in Multan but which was later taken up by the Chishti Sufi Farid al-Din Ganj-e Shakar (d. 1265), whose grandfather had migrated to Punjab from Kabul.17 ‘Awarif al-ma‘arif is one of the key texts in Sufi history precisely because of the fact that it formed a set of rules for life in the Sufi lodge (variously termed as khanaqah or takiyya), once again reminding us of the concrete institutional spaces of this literature of embodied morals.18 ‘Umar Suhrawardi’s rule book later remained popular among the Chishtiyya and virtually every other Sufi lineage in India, both in its original Arabic and especially in the Persian rendition of Mu‘iz al-Din Kashani (d. 1334).19 In a process that can also be observed in the translations of symbolic vocabulary that, as we will see in Chapter 2, accompanied the importing into India of such rituals as the ‘saintly wedding’, the spatial movement of texts was accompanied by a linguistic movement, a ‘translation’ or ‘relocation’ in language. The text was itself transformed by its movement. While demonstrating the connections between writing and Sufi institutional spaces, such texts also remind us of the communal character of Sufi teaching that emphasized the relationship of the Sufis with the lives of their communities.20 Early texts of malfuzat or ‘recorded conversations’ from the fourteenth-century Delhi sultanate provided tales of exemplary moral behaviour (p.10) and impressive miraculous deeds that would later multiply in the Sufi hagiographical writings that also emerged in the same period. Even didactic and doctrinal manuals were by no means always concerned with abstract ideas and spiritual knowledge. For texts that moderns have classified as ‘mysticism’ are in many cases better understood as medicine, pointing again to the ways in which Sufi ritual exercises, specialist learning, and amulet-making were linked to the existential needs of their client communities.21 Other didactic works promoted more esoteric practices, whether meditational techniques, prayers for the summoning of visions, or else practices that were more clearly magical in character, as seen in the Jawahir-e khamsa of Muhammad Ghaws of Gwalior (d. 1562).22 While the latter text has still not received the careful study it deserves, two related early-eighteenth-century Chishti texts demonstrate the character of Sufi meditative practices conceived with more pious aims. In his Kashkul-e Page 6 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories kalimi, for example, Shah Kalimullah of Dehli (d. 1728) describes a grave-side meditation (zikr-e kashf-e qubur) that was capable of revealing to its practitioner the spiritual states of the dead saint beside whose tomb it was performed, thus tying the abstractions of metaphysic to the spaces of shrine visitation.23 Kalimullah also discusses the merits of Yoga practices amidst a wider description of the zikr chants of different groups of Sufis. The Nizam al-qulub of Kalimullah’s disciple, Nizam al-Din of Aurangabad (d. 1729), took up these themes in greater detail and described a whole series of meditative practices belonging to almost every known Sufi lineage and also assessed the benefits of techniques explicitly adapted from Yoga.24 Once again, here was a science not of the invisible soul but of the visible blessed body.25 However, Nizam al-Din was careful to warn in the first chapter of his work that these techniques should only be practised (p.11) under the guidance and with the explicit command of a living master. And here we see one of the crucial characteristics of Sufi instructive texts, for these were by no means self-help books in the modern sense and were more akin to teaching manuals than study guides, supporting the master’s authority at all points. This perspective questions modern understandings of the epistemological character of the book as opening up a field of learning to any literate person who happens to pick it up, a theme to which we will return in Chapter 6. For in Nizam al-Din’s warning we are reminded how the transmission of written knowledge interacted with a wider framework of Sufi knowledge transferred in institutional spatial settings through the master–disciple relationship. As other kinds of Sufi texts show, these forms of Sufi pedagogy that governed the use of texts at times also branched out into a wider institutionalization of book-use and education within such controlled spaces as Sufi lodges and madrasas, the latter often included within shrine complexes. It is no coincidence that the two texts discussing quite the same themes to similar effect were written by a master, Kalimullah, and his disciple, Nizam al-Din. This parallel intertextual/interpersonal relationship points to another key characteristic of the socially embedded contours of Sufi literature in terms of how the many different works that in sum comprised this literature related to one another. We require greater understanding of these processes of intertextuality, both from the perspective of the composition and the reception of Sufi works. At present we still have a very limited understanding of which Sufis read which books, which books influenced the writings of others, and what were the control structures (syllabi, language trainings, schools, library holdings) that shaped their reading practices. Studies of specific collections of books and the uses of books in particular institutional spaces will help us better understand this Sufi placement of texts, and thence the syllabi that despite the circulation of such ur-texts as Suhrawardi’s ‘Awarif al-ma‘arif were passed between specific locales through mobile lineages of teachers like Kalimullah in Delhi and Nizam al-Din in the Deccan.26

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Between Texts and Territories (p.12) The meditational handbooks of Kalimullah and Nizam al-Din point to what is probably the most obvious factor in this fragmented yet connected ecumene of texts. This was the influence of the Sufi lineage or tariqa networks on the transmission of textual knowledge. The influence might simply be one of master and disciple, the straightforward matter of a teacher shaping the tastes of his students. But there was often more to it than this and it is no coincidence that these two manuals discussing in detail and with considerable admiration the meditational techniques of non-Muslims should be composed by two Chishti Sufis who despite living in Delhi and Aurangabad shared letters from the two ends of the Mughal imperium. It is important in this context not to underestimate either the windows that written language opens onto other worlds or the windows that it closes. Clearly, the literacy of many Indian Sufis in Persian or less often in Arabic potentially connected them to a textual geography stretching as far west as Anatolia or even the Maghreb.27 Suhrawardī’s ‘Awarif al-ma‘arif was far from the only Sufi work that was imported into India and we now know in outline at least of the passage of Ibn ‘Arabi’s writings to India from Spain and Anatolia through the making of copies and commentaries on his works in the subcontinent.28 But these textual ties also possessed their ruptures and discontinuities, their own histories that remain difficult to discern. Until the Mughal conquests, the Deccan and Gujarat remained more closely tied to the arenas of Arabic learning just across the sea to the west than to Hindustan or northern India, with its closer ties of texts and persons to Khurasan and Central Asia. Arabic Sufi writing had long flourished in both Gujarat and the Deccan, while the ties forged between the Deccan sultanates and Iran also resulted in a particular literary input to the Indian south. The spread of Shi‘i learning, by way of the immigration of the Arabophone sayyids of Shustar and the Persophone Sufis of Kerman, was only one consequence of the maritime connections of the Deccan to the ports of eastern Arabia and southern Persia.29 In contrast to the overland routes (p.13) of the originally north Indian arena of Chishti and Naqshbandi Sufi migrants, the families and lineages of the Sufis that flourished in the pre-Mughal Deccan—the Qadiriyya at Bijapur, the Ni’matullahiyya at Bidar—were tied by both writing and genealogy to this maritime countergeography of Iraq and Iran.30 Geographies of knowledge were therefore not fixed but were social productions of mobile individuals and the networks they created. With the Deccan conquests of the Mughals, these particular maritime ties of texts and territories were broken and replaced by others pointing overland to the far north. Paramount were the cultural and linguistic ties fostered through the wider political and cultural geography of the Mughal–Timurid sphere that connected northern India with Central Asia. As we will see in Chapters 4 and 5, the patronage of Mughal notables re-introduced new members of Chishti lineages to the Deccan, as well as introduced Central Asian Naqshbandi Sufis to the Indian south for the first time. The Persian texts written by Chishti and Page 8 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories Naqshbandi masters in the Deccan during the period of the Mughal conquests reveal that the books being read in their teaching circles were chiefly those that commemorated the pious deeds and miraculous accomplishments of the earlier Chishti Sufis of Delhi and the earlier Naqshbandi masters of Herat and Bukhara.31 Whether the Rashahat of Kashifi, the Nafahat al-uns of Jami or the anonymous Manaqib-e Chishtiyya, the books that these northern migrants described as being read in their Deccan lodges and which they adapted as their own prose models, were texts composed in distant cities that were the cultural centres of the Deccan’s new imperial settlers. Texts were therefore themselves transmitters of remembered geographies into new spaces of settlement. Our understanding of this multivalent Persian ‘booksphere’ is helped by the fact that Sufi writers were often in the habit of mentioning the titles of other books in their own writings. Poetic classics like the Masnawi of Rumi and the ghazals of Hafiz seem to have been read by Persophone Sufis of virtually every lineage. (p. 14) As in the case we have just seen of Jami being read in the Deccan, other writers or their commentators also enjoyed geographically widespread reception, though the scale of readership of technical metaphysical works by even such grandees as Ibn ‘Arabi may have been previously overestimated. However, the same cannot be said for commemorative or hagiographical writings known as tazkirat (‘remembrances’) or manaqib (‘virtues, feats’).32 This most prevalent of all Sufi genres seems also to have been the one whose readership was most shaped according to the places of the shrine, teaching circle, and lineage to which the hagiography’s textualized blessed man belonged. Certainly, there were a few major exceptions to this, not least in the case of the earliest classic hagiographies (such as ‘Attar’s Tazkirat al-awliya), ‘classic’ because they were read and listened to by all manner of Muslims in India. Nonetheless, the hagiography devoted to the shaykhs of a given lineage seems to have been read by similarly proscribed readerships, with textual contents mirroring the social and spatial relationships of the reader. In a technical ontological and cosmological sense, the earlier Sufi masters whose lives were recounted in such texts were regarded as saints, as awliya allah or ‘friends of God’. As such, the writing of their lives was one of the most widespread of all literary acts of Muslim memory-making in India as elsewhere. As the most voluminous corpus of all Sufi literature, the hagiography is as a result the genre that is most intrinsically tied to the spaces of Indo-Muslim history, for while hagiographies were notionally about saintly persons they were ipso facto about saintly spaces, about deceased blessed men transmogrified into the architecture of sainthood. These were, then, texts of the embodied memory of pilgrimage and the recited memory of story-telling. They were texts that formulated visions of geography through the interweaving of biographical narratives with the architectural registers of human presence at the shrines of the saints.

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Between Texts and Territories Such hagiographies are also important for their social reach, for the stories of the saints seeped into the minds of a much (p.15) broader audience than other genres of text. It is audience rather than readership that is the key here, since along with the poem it is the hagiography that has long been the Sufi genre with the closest links to the sphere of oral memory, a theme taken up in the final chapter of this volume. While stories of the saints have long passed from the written to the oral registers, we also know that the reverse passage happened as certain Sufis composed hagiographies through visiting shrines to collect stories that were being told of the saints interred there. Muhammad Murad’s eighteenth-century Naqshbandi hagiography Hasanat al-abrar is only one example of the creation of a commemorative text through a pilgrim’s movement between architectural spaces of memory.33 Tales of the saints, then, were one of the crucial points of interface between the possessors of written knowledge and the non-literate members of early modern Indian society. Yet, the hagiography was also an important ‘way in’ to Sufi textuality for another social group: the governing elites. Of course, without the patronage of rulers and aristocrats, neither Sufi literature nor especially Sufi architecture would have become anything like as abundant and prominent as they did in India. Just as hagiographical narratives linked texts to lower class purveyors of spoken tales, when it came to putting pen to paper, in terms of prose literature it was usually hagiographical works that were the products of princely pens. Between them, members of the Mughal royal house managed to write praises of just about every Sufi lineage present in their dominions, a collective decision which showed as much political acumen as hope for celestial reward.34 The most famous of such works were the pair of hagiographies written by Dara Shikuh (d. 1659), heir-apparent of Shah Jahan (r. 1627–58). In these works, Safinat alawliya and Sakinat al-awliya, Dara Shikuh expressed his devotion to the Qadiri lineage in which he had been instructed and provided a detailed biography of his Sufi teacher Miyan Mir and many other saints. Dara Shikuh’s sister, (p.16) Jahanara (d. 1681), was later to write a hagiography of the Chishti saints of Delhi.35 In the earlier Baburnama, we hear how for his part their ancestor Babur expressed his devotion to the Sufis by versifying the Walidiyya of the great Naqshbandi master ‘Ubaydullah Ahrar (d. 1490), a penance which he successfully prescribed himself as a cure for an inflammation of the bowels.36 In all their different forms, the hagiographies written in commemoration of India’s Sufis reveal one of the central characteristics of Islamic textuality in India and elsewhere. This was a central focus on the remembered past, on former human experience as a key to unwrapping God’s (and humankind’s) purposes in the world. While they have brought endless perplexity to researchers seeking to reassemble the positive facts of Sufi history, what hagiographies do show us are Muslim views of India’s history seen from the ‘inside’. Written in a pre-national age, these views onto history gaze far beyond the modern-day frontiers of India and Pakistan to forge textual routes through geographies that connected the Page 10 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories Indian dwelling places of early modern Muslims with places of memory, prestige, and power that lay far to the north and west. The question of where’s history such hagiographies were writing is therefore as pertinent as whose history. For although written in India, hagiographies were rare that did not include references to persons whose lives were spent in entirely different regions, whether in Balkh, Bukhara, Nishapur, Baghdad or, of course, Mecca. Such early ‘non-Indian’ Sufis as Hallaj, Shibli, Ibrahim ibn Adham, or ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani have been constantly remembered in hagiographical works written down to the present day in India and Pakistan, while every Sufi lineage in the region ultimately traced its roots and routes beyond the mountains and seas of the north and west. For the purposes of this book at least, hagiographical texts are therefore of the greatest value in revealing how Indian Muslims created and connected their own histories to those of deliberately chosen sectors of the ‘Muslim world’ that constituted their particular Gedächtnisraum, using stories of mobile Sufis, settler communities, and the spatially connective apparatus of the silsila genealogy to tie together texts, (p.17) territories, and the communities of saints and disciples who dwelt in them. As these texts shaped their readerships in turn, they created Muslim communities of memory.

From Territories to Texts Indo-Islamic history has been deeply imprinted with both the act and the imaginary of migration. This can be seen whether with corporate groups of people like the members of the Afghan tribal lineages discussed in Chapter 3 or with individual itinerants like the Sufi settlers of Aurangabad discussed in Chapters 4 and 8. While it seems that acculturation and ‘conversion’ played at least as important a role as migration in the formation of India’s Muslim communities, our concern here is primarily with the migrational side of the balance sheet, though remembered geographies created by Sufi shrines and narratives were certainly also absorbed into the historical identities created by convert communities. More particularly, we are concerned with the ways in which both acts and narratives of migration served to join together and claim different places in what emerged as a series of distinct formulations of Muslim geography in India. As a result, both the factual action and the imaginary narrative of movement fall within our purview in the following chapters. The patterns of transfer and interaction that developed between the ritual, textual, and institutional forms which these migrants brought with them and the preexisting cultural forms of the different regions into which they moved forms one of the central dynamics of Indo-Muslim history, even when we are talking (as we often are) about migrations within India such as those between the Deccan and Hindustan discussed in later chapters. As we see in Chapters 5 and 7 especially, nowhere was this dynamic rendered more visible and permanent than in the creation of the new sacred geographies—geographies of memory, belonging, and power—that emerged around the shrines built in their hundreds to actual or imagined Sufi migrants. As a Khurasani migrant to Lahore who was the first to Page 11 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories pen descriptions of his pilgrimages to the shrines of the saints before his own gravesite became the focus of a new sacred geography in Punjab, Hujwiri is once again an emblematic figure as a Sufi whose texts were kept (p.18) alive through the rituals of commemoration held on his death anniversary at his shrine each year.37 Not only the architecture of memory but also the texts of tradition served to connect Muslim India to the wider realms of Islam through reading the geography of India into the Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad. In the eighteenth-century Deccan, Ghulam ‘Ali Azad Bilgrami (d. 1786) composed a treatise in Arabic, Subhat al-marjan, in which he envisaged India as the original holy land of Islam through the Prophet Adam’s fall to earth in Sri Lanka after his expulsion from Eden. Four centuries earlier the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta (d. 1368) had visited Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka and described what was already an active Muslim pilgrimage cult.38 For in India as throughout the Muslim world, coterminous with the establishment of Muslim communities was the evolution of a sacred geography associated with the deeds of the morally pious and supernaturally powerful, with scriptural prophets and hagiographical saints, with courtly sultans and tribal khans.39 And in making this Muslim geography, pen and paper were as important as brick and mortar as through the interdependence of narratives and buildings the literature and architecture of memory conspired to create new homelands for Muslims in all corners of India. This anthropocentric focus of spatial marking and memory was related to wider Muslim settlement patterns which saw new territories claimed through either acts of burial or imaginary findings of burial. These entwined geographies of settlement and internment were formulated with reference to the entombed presence of remembered community members graded from the scriptural prophets (anbiya) through the multifarious ranks of the saints (awliya), with the latter category open to indefinite numbers of blessed men and thereby of the spaces they created through their burial and enshrinement. But bodies are impermanent and narratives insubstantial and so while both bodies and texts were important to the claiming of (p.19) new homelands, any such territory required the architecture of shrines as visible, fixed, and enduring proof of their association with a blessed person. In the face of potential competitors and antagonists this was, of course, essential to mark the claims of a community’s presence in a region through time, as seen in the architecturally anchored community histories told by modern-day Muslims in Chapter 8. Even setting aside rival claimants to territories, such spatial anchors were necessary to provide a focus for rituals of interaction and remembrance with the saintly dead such as the ‘urs ritual that is the focus of Chapter 2. While shrines were the most important tools in this process, the marking of memory onto the landscape was not only performed by the architectural forms of mausolea but also by the topography of hills or springs to create the kind of ‘narrative landscape’ discussed in Chapter 7.40 The long-term impact of the Sufis on India came Page 12 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories precisely through their being posthumously rendered as permanent architecturalized features of the territories in which Muslims dwelt. They marked, claimed, and transformed India’s landscapes and townscapes into homelands that were made by fastening memory onto solid ground. Although at times the primary category of sacred space attached to the prophets of scriptural text could be stretched remarkable distances (as shown by Bilgrami’s proofs of Adam living in Sri Lanka), more often it was around the blessed bodies of the Sufis that the more widespread making of Muslim space was achieved in India. The importing of blessed men thus played an essential role in the creation of Muslim communities both in areas entirely new to Islam (such as the forests of Bengal) and in new urban environments in regions associated with other Muslim communities (such as the towns of the Deccan). The acts of burial and commemoration in hagiographical and architectural form were central to the settlement of Muslim communities in the mobile imperium of Mughal India. The potential portability of blessed persons and their relics (asar, tabarrukat) help explain why so many of the shrines of India were dedicated to figures who had moved into the place of their (p.20) eventual burial from elsewhere, sometimes from outside India altogether and sometimes from Hindustan to the Deccan as we see in Chapter 4. In this way, as both living blessed men and dead saints, Sufis served as the symbolic founder-figures of new urban or tribal communities, becoming attached to narrative traditions of community genesis that at times required them to be imagined as the earliest residents in an area even when factually they were not. Here again we see one of the key points of interface between the spheres of texts and territories, in that the hagiographical literature of the Sufi saints may be read through spatial lenses as a geographical literature of shrines.41 The saint was inseparable from his space, the text from its territory. Sufis were by no means the only category of remembered men in this process of creating Muslim geographies, for the presence of sayyids and ‘ulama in a town was also a matter of pride and protection expressed likewise in architecture and writing (see Fig. 1.2). Such texts as the Ma’asir al-karam of Azad Bilgrami recounted from the Deccan memories of the graves and lives of the Sufis and scholars of its author’s distant home town in the north while at the same time including in it the biographies of the two Sufis of Aurangabad in whose shrine its author then lived.42 In commemorative as in practical terms, the shrine was a home away from home. The Sufis and ‘ulama closely overlapped in pre-colonial India and ever since the period of the effective establishment of Islam in India during the eleventh century, the resorting to Sufi tombs for aid or inspiration was already an established practice, as we have seen Hujwiri describe in the Kashf al-mahjub. A few centuries after Hujwiri’s death around 1072, shrine cults rose to such a degree of importance that local elites and royal dynasties began to patronize burial sites with lavish appendages by way of gates, courtyards, mosques, and hostels. Reflecting patterns across the wider Persianate arena by Page 13 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories the early fourteenth century, in India likewise large mausoleums came to be constructed over the tombs of Sufis to define an emerging sacred geography that expanded in step with the patronage of the regional sultanates of the period from Gujarat and the (p.21) Deccan to Bengal and Kashmir. The most visible ways in which this dialogue of kingship and sainthood transformed the landscape of India was through the stylistic overlapping of the architecture of sultans and Sufis and the shared ritual actions of the adab etiquette that brought these spaces to life. The architectural splendour of many Indian shrines is testament to the fact that the power of the Sufis was more than merely religious or symbolic. Styles of shrine architecture seem always to have mirrored the fashions of the court. The tomb of Baha al-Din Zakariya (d. 1267) at Multan is perhaps the earliest grand example. Later styles of shrine architecture encompassed the brooding basalt solemnity of the shrine of Muhammad alHussayni Gesu Daraz (d. 1422) at Gulbarga and the delicate marble and sandstone tents comprising the resting place of Muhammad Ghaws (d. 1562) at Gwalior.43 Built under Bahmani and Mughal patronage respectively, these shrines continued the pattern of architectural overlap between the parallel dynasties of sultans and saints. And not surprisingly, given the benefits that Muslim rulers believed would accrue from pilgrimage to such spaces, prayers were often said by rulers at Sufi shrines prior to declarations of independence or new conquests. In 1396, Muzaffar Khan, the Tughluq governor of Gujarat, proclaimed his independence straight after praying at the shrine of Mu‘in al-Din Chishti at Ajmer, while Babur came to give prayers of thanks at the shrine of Bakhtiyar Kaki upon his conquest of Delhi in 1526.44 The shrines patronized as a result of such exchanges were palaces for the dead that also in each case provided good homes and incomes for the living in the form of the extended families of blessed descendants or sajjada nashins (‘those who sit on the prayer rug’) who lived on the shrines’ incomes from land grants and pilgrim revenues. While such revenues are often seen in moral terms as having been a source for the ‘corruption’ of Sufism, like the ritual and literary activities they supported at the shrines, in prosaic fact such incomes formed the crucial stipends of memory that kept the dead saints alive from generation to generation. (p.22)

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Between Texts and Territories As with the burial spaces of kings, the maintenance of such grand Sufi mausolea required considerable material outlay. Just as the markets and residences around the Taj Mahal were endowed for the perpetual upkeep of the tomb of Shah Jahan’s empress, when a shrine was constructed large landholdings were often granted to Sufis or their descendants, the sajjada nashins. Like their Central Asian counterparts in particular, this meant that many shrines (most famously that of Baba Farid in Punjab) were involved in agricultural production,

Fig. 1.2 Territories of Text: The Space of Writing Courtesy of Nile Green

trade, and even cottage industries.45 Like any social venture on such a scale, it is therefore important to try to relate the early modern history of Sufi Islam to the modes of production that were a central element in the prominent and continued role that Sufism continued to play in (p.23) Indian history until the land reform acts of modern times. While there is as yet little work on Indian shrines to rival studies of the agricultural and other economic activities of Ottoman shrines, in Chapter 5 we will glimpse something of the range of services that shrines provided in the Mughal settlements of the Deccan, from housing travellers and stabling expensive horses to milling grain and providing water channels.46 The textual tradition of the Sufis was in this way a hierarchical discourse that was bolstered through the institutional backing provided by concrete economic outposts in town and country. Built into the social no less than the architectural fabric of Indo-Muslim life, the Sufis were also bolstered through their powerful clout at court, fostered partly through the marriage of princes with the daughters of saintly lineages.47 Through this mingling of royal and saintly bodies, we once again return to our defining notion of Sufism as more an embodied than a mystically abstracted Islam. The Mughal emperor Humayun’s wife Hamida, for example, came from the family of the great Khurasani saint Ahmad-e Jam (d. 1141), while members of the Bahmani royal house in the Deccan made strategic marriages with the Ni‘matullahi Sufi family from southern Iran. Alongside this ‘establishment’ class of Sufis, there of course always existed a greater number who wandered around in the ragged garments that were the uniform of the faqir, the spiritually and materially impoverished. Page 15 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories Yet, especially when tied to the state, hereditary wealth on the scale of the great shrine families of sajjada nashins meant that in early modern Indian societies Sufism was a conservative force as often as it was a disruptive one.48 In the bluntest terms, this wealth was itself territorial as such Sufi power drew on the lands granted to the shrines they controlled: saintly power was itself a territorial entity. This establishment character was most vividly expressed in spatial terms through the close proximity in which royal palaces and saintly shrines were often found. In the towns of the Deccan, (p.24) palaces and shrines were often sited closely together, as at Firuzabad and Aurangabad.49 Near Mandvi in Gujarat, the shrine of Tamachi Pir was even located in the palace gardens of the rulers of Kutch.50 The Mughals were little different from these other dynasties and Catherine Asher has drawn attention to the fact that the shrine of Nizam alDin Awliya (d. 1325) was closely aligned to both the early residence of the Mughal rulers, the Din-panah, and the great mausoleum built for Humayun.51 Fatehpur Sikri, the city founded by the Emperor Akbar, was in turn explicitly focused around the tomb of Salim Chishti (d. 1572), with whom Akbar had a close relationship.52 Later, both Jahangir and Shah Jahan were to build a lakeside palace near the shrine of Mu‘in al-Din Chishti at Ajmer, while Aurangzeb and his son A‘zam Shah were both actually buried at the shrine of Zayn al-Din Shirazi (d. 1369) at Daulatabad in the Deccan. Such architectural alignments continued to be important for the Mughals to the very end and in the early nineteenth century, during the reign of Akbar Shah II, the royal residence in Delhi was shifted to the quarter surrounding the shrine of Qutb al-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki (d. 1235) in Mehrauli.53 The last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, built a palace there known as Zafar Mahal and his court diary recorded his keen attention to the rituals of the city’s shrines. In August 1845, for example, the last emperor sent a gift of two hundred rupees to his own Sufi mentor Kale Miyan (d. 1845 or 1857) towards the expenses of the ‘urs of his saintly ancestor, Fakhr al-Din (d. 1785).54 In this way, these shared protocols of royal and saintly ritual ordered the spaces that the twin pillars of saint and emperor claimed to govern between them: the realms of the seen and the unseen. Death is always a potent discursive force in the societies of the living and in almost all human societies relations with the dead (p.25) have shaped aspects of social life.55 In Indo-Muslim contexts, one of the most important functions of the spatial process of burial and enshrinement was the way in which it allowed continued access to (and indeed communication with) the powerful dead.56 As early modern Muslims described them, tombs were the houses of the dead, places where they could be visited and contacted like the living. In this way, burial provided one of the most important ways in which the relationship of Sufis with the rest of society was charted. Examples of Indo-Muslim rulers being buried within the shrines of Sufi saints are legion. Of course, there was Page 16 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories frequently a good deal of negotiation and competition between saints and sultans and there were ultimately no Sufi shrines built to rival the great imperial mausoleums of Humayun, Akbar, and Shah Jahan. But from the reign of Aurangzeb onwards, like medieval Indo-Islamic sultans before them, many of the Mughal rulers were buried beside saints: Aurangzeb beside Zayn al-Din Shirazi in Khuldabad, Muhammad Shah beside Nizam al-Din Awliya in Delhi and several other late Mughal emperors beside Qutb al-Din in Merhrauli. The practice continued among those shadow emperors, the Nizams of the Deccan. That this tendency by no means marked the impecunious twilight of royal dynasties is seen by the fact that at the apogee of their power the sultans of Gujarat had been buried at the shrine of Ahmad Khattu (d. 1446) in Ahmedabad. This tendency was another of the features linking Indian Islam with Muslim practices elsewhere and in the Timuri arena not least it directly mirrored such shared Sufi and royal burial spaces as Gazurgah outside Herat and Shah-e Zinda on the outskirts of Samarqand.57 Sufis and sultans shared the same spaces of power, power rendered accessible to their descendants through the commemorative rituals they performed there, the most important of which was the royal and saintly ‘urs discussed in Chapter 2. As had been the case in Iran and Central Asia beforehand, from their beginnings the funerary spaces and architecture of India’s (p.26) royal and saintly dynasties overlapped. We have already noted how Sufi and royal buildings often shared the same architectural forms and many of the same rituals that brought the buildings to life. The ‘urs death anniversary was the most widespread of all ritual performances of embodied memory associated with Sufi shrines. It was also performed at royal tombs and accounts survive of the ‘urs of the Bahmani sultan Ahmad Shah Wali, Mumtaz Mahal, and Aurangzeb, for example. More generally, the etiquette of pilgrims to the shrines of the saints described in pilgrimage manuals often closely reflected the adab expected of a visitor to the royal court.58 This did not deter royal visitors from making pilgrimages to major shrines and the shrine of Mu‘in al-Din Chishti alone was visited by Muhammad bin Tughluq, Mahmud Khalji of Mandu, Sher Shah Suri, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb.59 Indeed, borrowing earlier Iranian usages, the shrine of the Sufi saint was itself termed as a royal court (dargah), while the saint himself was titled as a king (shah) and was surrounded by a retinue of servants (khuddam) who served him at a tomb that was decked out with all of the insignia of kingship, including the crown (taj), the throne (gaddi), and the peacock feather fan (morchhal).60 Through ritual and dress, royal and saintly spaces of power came to reflect one another, each drawing on the semiotic fluency of the other. This traffic of symbols was two-way and court rituals for their part borrowed from the imagery of the Sufis. From at least the reign of Akbar, the Mughal emperors termed themselves as Sufi masters (murshids) with their courtiers in turn designated as the emperor’s disciples (murids).61 Such was the symbolic power of the Sufis that in some cases, as with the Bahmani rulers at Page 17 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories Bidar in the Deccan, the royal investiture ceremony involved the crowning of the sultan by a Sufi blessed (p.27) man, in the earliest instance the Iranian migrant, Shah Khalilullah (d. 1456) of Kerman.62 To reprise the theme of movement in relation to space, the presence of such immigrant Sufis as Khalilullah played a crucial role in shaping geographies of memory and identity for Indian Muslims (see Fig 1.3). As we have seen, these were geographies which were created mainly through the construction of innumerable shrines for the Sufis who served as mobile transmitters of historical identity, as breathing vessels of belonging that were planted in the earth to lay down roots for their settler and convert client communities. Through the many Sufi migrants who moved into India and its different regions, an interrelated and (p.28) overlapping Muslim geography developed that joined India to connective geographies of

Fig. 1.3 Movement Fixed in Space: Shrine of Migrant Saint Shah Khalilullah, Bidar Courtesy of Nile Green

departure and settlement in the wider Muslim memory space. The causes that at different periods led Sufis to leave their homelands meant that the creation of these geographies of memory and identity was often bound up with larger political developments. For over the centuries, the immigration of Sufis and the introduction of the great Sufi lineages into India was stimulated by such factors as the medieval trade links between Multan and Iraq and the promotion in Punjab of a Suhrawardi lineage transplanted from ‘Abbasid Baghdad; the Mongol devastation of the great Sufi cradle of Khurasan; the mass persecution of Iranian Sufis under the Safavids; and the ties of the Mughals to their Central Asian homelands and the Naqshbandi Sufis who followed them into India. Geographies of memory were contingent historical productions. Like other notables in early modern Muslim societies, the Sufis carried with them a genealogy that was a central part of their identity, of their and others’ sense of who they were. In hagiographical texts, such genealogies were the sine Page 18 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories qua non of biographical description and they were often displayed at shrines in the visual form of the shajara (‘tree’) document. In instances of ritual remembrance, saintly genealogies were sung as a form of hymn, as in the Naqshbandi khatm-e khwajagan that Central Asian migrants carried to the Deccan and recited in memory of the saints buried in their distant homelands. Such genealogies were twofold, one part relating to the saint’s family ancestry and the other to his initiatic ancestry. In a great many cases the two parts overlapped, since by the early modern period Sufi masters invariably initiated their own sons and allowed them to carry on what were often family concerns. Due to the inter-marriages we have already pointed to, royal and Sufi genealogies also sometimes overlapped and the Mughal strongman and founder of Hyderabad State, Nizam al-Mulk Asaf Jah (d. 1748), was proud of the genealogy that connected him with the great Shihab al-Din Suhrawardī (d. 1144). Through the Islamic ‘relation-name’ (nisba), geography was as implicit in the names of Sufis as in the names of other prominent sharif Muslims, showing their own or their family’s region of origin. (p.29) Through the relation-names of saints and the family trees of their brotherhood lineages, such Sufi genealogies also therefore invoked geographies that echoed or produced the genealogies of their followers. This was also the case with the shrines in which they were fixed to the earth, since through a saint’s own initiatic and family lineages his shrine became attached to other shrines elsewhere, so carving genealogy into the landscape. Reflecting the central place of kinship structures in wider Indo-Muslim society, shrines did not exist in isolation but were parts of wider networks of shrines. Some of these networks were simply local, for example the minor shrines of the deputies (khulafa) of a saint located in different quarters of the same city and its hinterland. Other networks were regional, with related shrines spreading through the towns and villages of a given area. And the largest networks (into which all of the lesser networks ultimately fed) were trans-regional, connecting the Naqshbandi shrines of the Punjab and the Deccan with the hinterland of Bukhara and connecting the Chishti shrines of the Coromandel Coast with Delhi, Ajmer, and in theory the eponymous village of Chisht in the mountains east of Herat. Imbuing the shrines with meaning, the memory of these genealogical roots and routes through space was in turn maintained by hagiographical writings and spoken tales. And so once again text and territory served together to unite the inhabitants of the place and the page, the living and the dead, the local and the distant of community journeys through time. In some cases, the populations of whole villages or tribal clans could claim descent from a single ancestor saint.63 Certain communities of memory—particularly mobile groups such as the Afro-Indian Siddis or members of the Afghan warrior and trade clans —counted saints within their own ancestral genealogies, such that the veneration of the saint was inseparable from the commemoration of the community, a theme that is taken up in Chapter 3.64 Whether in notions of Page 19 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories physical ancestry or in public naming, mobility was in such (p.30) ways bound up with the most intimate forms of identity. In its different configurations it is this relationship between mobile persons, static places, and the textual narratives that connected them that the following chapters unravel. What we are concerned with in this volume is therefore the Indo-Muslim dimension of a more general spatialized process of collective historical selfconsciousness. To draw out the roles of Sufis in this process as both living blessed men and architecturally-endowed saints, the following essays focus on different aspects of the rituals, texts, and buildings associated with different Muslim communities of memory in India. While most of the existing scholarship on Indian Sufism has focused on the medieval period and north India, this volume explores the entire span of the early modern period (including its recollection today) and the Deccan no less than north India or ‘Hindustan’.65 The chapters are connected through their focus on a common set of themes and actors. The first major theme is that of space, both in the sense of the natural geographical environments and the man-made architectural zones in which history unfolded. This theme is explored in various ways, both textual and concrete, bringing the tropes of text and territory into common focus. With regard to texts, the theme is pursued through discussions in Chapter 3 of Afghan commemorations of their tribal frontier homelands in the Persian texts that Afghans sponsored in India and in Chapter 7 through textual competition for spatial control of the great Deogiri/Daulatabad fort in conflicting Persian and Marathi versions of its history. Chapter 5 takes up the theme with regard to the more concrete spaces of the built environment by tracing the Mughal and Asaf Jah transformation of the south Indian landscape through patronage of the shrine architecture of memory and thence legitimacy. Linking spaces again to narratives, the theme of spatialized memory is reprised in Chapters 7 and 8 through conceptualizing legends of saintly miracles as stories that were anchored in the architectural landscape of Deogiri/Daulatabad and Aurangabad. There, architecture served as the hardware of memory connecting both landscape and city to the remembered past. (p.31) Linked in with these investigations of space is the related theme of migration as several of the chapters place human actors into these spatial environments. Building on recent post-national approaches to the history of early modern India, several chapters interpret Indo-Persian Sufi writings as diasporic texts which trace the migration around India of not only the Sufis themselves, but also of the distinct communities of memory that followed them. In Chapter 2, the theme of migration is pursued with regard to the movement of one of India’s most famous rituals, that of the ‘urs festival or ‘spiritual wedding’ of the Sufi saints, which is traced from its earliest documentation in Persian writings from Anatolia and Iran to its introduction in Delhi in the medieval period as migrants from those areas sought refuge from the Mongol invasions. Entering the early modern period the ritual is subsequently traced through its Page 20 of 24

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Between Texts and Territories dissemination all around India by the migration of Sufis and their client communities. In Chapter 3, migration is seen to lie at the heart of a diasporic identity that emerged from Persian history-writing among the Afghan tribal settlements of north India and the Deccan. In Chapter 4, the theme of migration recurs through a study of the mobility of the Sufi ‘blessed men’ who settled in Mughal Aurangabad, migrants whose precise journeys were the product of invented as much as transmitted history. This points to the importance of migration as an imaginary as much as a physical act. The third connective theme is that of textuality, more specifically textuality in relation to space. Several chapters in this vein explore how different communities used Sufi textual resources of memory to construct and conserve their historical identity. Having addressed in this introductory chapter the methodological question of how to think of Sufi texts as constituted by and constitutive of the places in which they emerged, in Chapters 3 and 6 the different ways in which texts were employed and deployed form the main theme through discussion of the writings associated with Afghan and Central Asian migrants. Chapter 6 looks into the question of how we should conceive the ‘uses of books’ in the shrine spaces of early modern India by creating a historical ethnography of the ways books were read in (p.32) the late Mughal Deccan. The chapter develops a model for conceiving Indian reading cultures in the preprinting era in which authoritative blessed men had an important part to play. The final chapter turns to oral texts passed down in the shrines of Aurangabad to test the limits of historical memory as preserved by these lieux de mémoire. Early modern memory thus lingers to this day in the spaces of the saints. Notes:

(1) Notable exceptions include Frembgen (2000) and Werbner and Basu, ‘The Embodiment of Charisma’, in Werbner and Basu (1998). (2) On comparable processes in Iran, see Babayan (2002). (3) Safi (2000). (4) Bazzaz (2010), p. 11. (5) The fullest accounts of the theory and application of barakat remain Von Denffer (1976) and especially Westermarck (1916). For an anthropological reading, see Gilsenan (1990). (6) Bazzaz (2010), p. 27. (7) Green (2006c). (8) Digby (2004).

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Between Texts and Territories (9) For example, Baldick, ‘Medieval Sūfī Literature in Persian Prose’, in Morrison (1981). (10) Kokan, ‘[Language and Literature, (i)] Arabic’, in Sherwani and Joshi (1974) and Marek, ‘Persian Literature in India’, in Rypka (1968). (11) Abū al Hasan ‘Ali (1979). (12) Abū al-Hasan ‘Ali (1979) (Persian text; and Nicholson [trans. 1936]), pp. 68 and 235. (13) On Sufi settlement strategies in other regions, see Green (2012), Chapter 3. (14) Qamar-ul Huda (2003b) pp. 137–72. On the Suhrawardī role in the late ’Abbasid religious establishment, see Ohlander (2008). (15) Böwering, ‘The Adab Literature of Classical Sufism: Ansarī’s Code of Conduct’, in Metcalf (1984) and Matringe (2001). (16) Abū al-Hasan‘Ali (1979). On the problem of the label ‘Sufism’, see Green, ‘Sufism’, in Phalkey et al. (2012). (17) Huda (2003b). (18) Abū Hafs Suhrawardī (1978). (19) Mu‘iz al-dīn Kāshānī, Misbah al-Hidāya wa Miftah al-Kifāya (nd). (20) Islam (2002). (21) Speziale (2010). (22) Muhammad Ghaws Gwālīārī, Jawāhir-e Khamsa, translated into Urdu by Naqshbandī (nd). (23) Jahanabadi (1910), pp. 46–7. (24) Nizām al-din Awliyā Awrangābādī (1891). By comparison, see also Chittick, ‘Travelling the Sufi Path: A Chishtī Handbook from Bijapur’, in Lewisohn and Morgan (1999). (25) On a bodily reading of other Sufi doctrines, see Kugle (2007). (26) Despite the important book collections of many shrines, existing studies refer mostly to royal rather than Sufi libraries. See, for example, Aziz (1967) and Nadvi (1945–6). (27) Robinson (1997) .

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Between Texts and Territories (28) Chittick (1992). (29) Bredi (1988) and Khalidi (1992). (30) Aubin (1991) and Eaton (1978). (31) Green (2004a). (32) Hermansen and Lawrence, ‘Indo-Persian Tazkiras as Memorative Communications’, in Gilmartin and Lawrence (2000) and Mojadeddi (2001). (33) Akimushkin (2001). (34) Lawrence, ‘Veiled Opposition to Sufis in Muslim South Asia: Dynastic Manipulation of Mystical Brotherhoods by the Great Mughal’, in Jong and Radtke (1999). (35) Qamar Jahan Begam (1991). (36) Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur (1996), p. 410. (37) Cf. Huda (2000). (38) The text is partially translated in Ernst, ‘India as a Sacred Islamic Land’, in Lopez (1995). Also Battuta (1985; trans. Gibb), pp. 256–7. (39) The most important early and recent studies of a Muslim sacred geography both relate to Greater Syria. See Canaan (1927) and Meri (2002). (40) For accounts of two such local religious geographies in South Asia, see Abid Ali Khan (1979) and Sarangal (1995). (41) DeWeese (2000) and Lahiri (1996). (42) Ghulām ‘Ali Āzād Bilgrāmī (1910). (43) Nath (1978). (44) Eaton, ‘The Articulation of Islamic Space in the Medieval Deccan’, in Bierman (2000), p. 253. (45) Gilmartin, ‘Shrines, Succession and Sources of Moral Authority’, in Metcalf (1984) and Phillott (1908). (46) Faroqhi (1986) and (1988). (47) Husain, ‘The Family of Shaikh Salim Chishti during the Reign of Jehangir’, in K.A. Nizami (1972).

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Between Texts and Territories (48) R. Bilgrami (1978), Digby, ‘Tabarrukat and Succession among the Great Chishti Shaykhs’, in Frykenberg (1986) and Eaton (1978). (49) On Firuzabad and Aurangabad respectively, see Michell and Eaton (1992) and Green (2006b). (50) I am grateful to Dr Edward Simpson for this information. (51) Asher (1992). (52) Petruccioli, ‘The Geometry of Power: The City’s Planning’, in Brand and Lowry (1987). (53) Asher (1992), pp. 292–6. (54) Nizāmī (1964), pp. 29–30. (55) Reynolds and Waugh (1977) and Smith and Haddad (1981). (56) Cf. Taylor (1999) and Troll (1989). (57) Golombek (1969) and Marefat (1991). (58) Such ritual texts have been analysed in Ernst and Lawrence (2002), pp. 90– 8. (59) Currie (1989). (60) On the latter, see Green (2006a). (61) Alam and Subrahmanyam (2009), pp. 476, 487, and Hardy, ‘Abul Fazl’s Portrait of the Perfect Padshah: A Political Philosophy for Mughal India—Or a Personal Puff for a Pal?’, in Troll (1985). (62) Sherwani (1985), p. 158. (63) With respect to Punjab, see Eaton, ‘The Political and Religious Authority of the Shrine of Bābā Farīd’, in Metcalf (1984). (64) On the Siddis, see Basu (1994). (65) For the major exceptions, see Eaton (1978) and Ernst (1992b).

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual

Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

The Migration of a Muslim Ritual Nile Green

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.003.0014

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the migration of the Islamic ritual of the ‘saintly wedding’ or ‘urs from medieval Iran into India. Arriving in India from Iran in the middle ages, ‘urs rituals are still performed by tens of millions of Muslims and Hindus in South Asia to this day and this chapter provides the first attempt to reconstruct the history of this important ritual. Looking at the cultural effects of Muslim migration and settlement, it shows how imported rituals combined with the creation of saintly mausoleum shrines in the creation of a Muslim geography in India. The rituals are traced in texts from medieval Iran, Anatolia (Turkey) and Central Asia, as well as South Asia to show how Indian cultural history was closely connected with a wider Islamic culture area. As a ritual means of ‘making space’, the ‘urs or ‘saintly wedding’ is seen to have been a key tool in the settlement of Muslims into new Indian homelands, eventually winning the patronage of Mughal emperors. Keywords:   Islam, Sufism, Iran, India, South Asia, Central Asia, migration, urs ritual, shrine, saintly wedding, hagiography

The Wedding of the Saints As a form of embodied memory substantiating the distant spaces of historical memory in the spatial present of a mausoleum, during the medieval and early modern centuries the ritual death anniversary of the Sufi saints spread to hundreds of Muslim shrines in all corners of India.1 The ‘urs, or ‘wedding’ as the death anniversary was termed, became the key ritual that commemorated the moment at which a community’s blessed patron died and was interred in a shrine.2 As much as it was a temporal ritual of commemoration and recollection, Page 1 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual of remembering the deeds of the blessed man and his original client community, the ‘urs was also a spatial ritual of enshrinement and emplacement, of making Muslim space around the grave of a blessed man. It was, then, a ritual securing of space across time. Conducted in the mausoleums that transformed flesh into stone, the ‘urs was a sacralization of locality, of the lasting place granted to the saint’s followers in the shrine’s environs by the act of first placing and then ritually re-placing his body in the ground. Yet even as it served as a ritual of marking space and permanence, the ‘urs was itself an itinerant performance that was introduced in India by the mobile Sufis of the medieval era and spread across the (p.34) subcontinent by the travelling elites of early modernity. Relayed between movements and settlements, the ‘urs was a ritual in migration that was brought to India as part of the larger ritual and textual repertoire that tied the Muslims of India to a larger Persianate memory space in Central Asia, Iran and, ultimately, Anatolia. The connection of the ‘urs to this wider geography of shrine rituals shows the error of classifying it as a peculiarity from the Indian ‘fringes’ of Islam. However popular its performance, over the following pages we will see how the connections of the ‘urs with literary tradition and the imperial elites of the Mughal era show the inappropriateness of regarding it as a folk ritual from the ‘periphery’ of the Islamic world, even though modern shifts in the social composition of people attending ‘urs festivals have obscured the ritual’s pre-colonial high status. As with the historical passage of many other customs and rituals, today’s folk are the heirs of yesterday’s elite. As this chapter suggests through its attempt to excavate the mobile history of this Muslim ritual, the ‘urs connected India to a high culture of ritualized shrine memory spaces across the expansive geography of Indian Muslim origins, travels, and settlements. From Greek philosophical poetry to the early Christian writings of the Syriac fathers and the Tantric traditions of India, the association of spiritual experience and death with the wedding night and with erotic imagery more generally has a long pedigree in the history of religions.3 However, we find the clearest continuity between the symbolic vocabulary of the ‘urs with ritual celebrations in Muslim contexts, where the death anniversary of a Muslim saint was seen as his symbolic ‘wedding’ with God. This chapter attempts an historical reconstruction of the journeys of the Indo-Muslim saintly wedding by tracing its connections and parallels with Muslim regions beyond India. Against a widespread tendency to classify the ‘urs within the closed national geography of (p.35) popular religious practice, the first aim here is to disentangle a more complex set of interactions between the regional and the local, between distant places and local shrines, that were mediated by a ritual that was itself an expression of both intense localism and connective inter-regionalism, of spaces of memory and spaces of performance. The second aim is to explore how such ritual performances served to connect their performers with both spaces of memory and texts of theology by tracing the contiguity of the ‘urs with written Page 2 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual formulations of Sufi doctrine. This in turn attunes us to the ritual’s resonance in the various social strata from which it drew support in the medieval and early modern eras, so dislodging it from its familiar conceptualization as ‘popular Islam’. Indeed, we will see that in pre-colonial India, the ‘urs is better seen as an expression of hierarchy and power than of a narrowly ‘popular’ devotionalism. By contextualizing the ‘urs among its multiple participants and geographies and by pursuing its parallels among an inter-regional cycle of texts, we will be better able to appreciate its tenacity at hundreds of shrines throughout South Asia to this day.

Approaching the ‘Urs: Reconfiguring ‘Indian’ Islam Celebrated at the shrine or dargah of a Sufi saint, the festivities that surrounded the ‘urs often included market days, fairgrounds, feasts, and entertainers, as well as the core rituals around the saintly grave. The term ‘urs is itself of Arabic origin, designating a marriage or marriage feast, though before the transmission of the term to India it had already come to be associated more specifically with a wedding taking place at the house of the groom.4 The ritual forms of the saintly ‘urs in India very much drew upon this earlier Islamic matrimonial tradition, particularly as subsequently elaborated in Iran. In addition to musical and other festive entertainments adopted from ordinary weddings, the (p.36) core rituals of the spiritual wedding were no less a transposition of the processions, the ceremonial beautification of the bride and groom, and the decoration of the wedding chamber familiar through most of the Islamic world.5 Despite obvious regional variations, Indo-Muslim wedding customs drew deeply on this wider ritual repertoire.6 The use of music and the custom of decorating the bride and groom with fragrant cosmetics (whether henna, turmeric, or sandalwood) that feature at the centre of both the human and saintly wedding in India were already possibly a feature of weddings in the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad. Classical sources on the life of the Prophet, including Ibn Hanbal (d. 855) and alBukhari (d. 870), confirm the importance at the earliest Islamic weddings of women singing with certain musical instruments (daf, tabl), the adornment of the bride and the perfuming of the groom with a substance leaving a yellow stain. By the same token, recent scholarship on the earliest period of Islamic history has shown the importance of burial ceremonies in the formation of the first Islamic community and the use of death rituals in the symbolic transfer of authority.7 The traffic of symbols and practices from which the ‘urs was constructed reached far beyond the frontiers of India. While secular nationalists in India have often seen the musical and festive celebrations of the ‘urs as a symbol of national unity, alternative perceptions of its origins in either Hindu or Muslim tradition have in modern times brought about attacks on the ‘urs from both Muslim reformists and the Hindu right.8 Against the background of the larger itinerary traced in this chapter, we must therefore be careful how we conceive the ‘Indian’ character of the ‘urs. For when read as a ‘Hindu’ borrowing, it is precisely this aspect of the saintly Page 3 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual wedding that has fuelled the widespread and (p.37) influential Muslim critique of its performance over the past two centuries. In large part, it is this critique that has been responsible for the retreat of the ‘urs from wider public life to its final bastion beside the tombs of the Sufi saints. The nineteenth-century Muslim reformist attack on the ‘urs must be seen partly as a restatement of the earlier objection to Sufi connections with popular festivities made by Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1200) and Ibn Taymiyya (d.1328) in medieval Baghdad and Cairo.9 Despite its medieval antecedents, the critique of the ‘urs emerged in eighteenth-century north India in the writings of Shah Waliullah of Delhi (d. 1762).10 From there the critique grew steadily through the nineteenth century under Rashid Ahmad Gangohi (d. 1905) at Deoband and in the twentieth century such influential reformists as Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi (d. 1943) and Abu’l ‘Ala’ Mawdudi (d. 1979) were prominent critics of the festive and ‘Hindu’ dimensions of the ‘urs.11 What we will see in the following pages is the misapprehension involved in this theologized and sectarian vision of the ritual’s history. In some cases, reforms and reformulations of ‘urs rituals have been quite drastic, as in the case of the ‘urs of La‘l Shahbaz Qalandar (d. 1252) at Sehwan in Sindh. In the mid-nineteenth century, the British traveller Richard Burton described the ‘urs of La‘l Shahbaz as involving the actual marriage of a living local girl to the saint each year, a marriage accompanied by all of the singing, dancing, and other customs associated with an ordinary wedding in Sindh.12 (Burton also reported a more ‘bibliocentric’ version of this ritual, in which the daughters of noble families were sometimes married to the holy text of the Quran.) Similar symbolic marriages of living female devotees to dead saints were associated with the ‘urs of Salar Mas‘ud Ghazi in Bahraich in Awadh and Qutb al-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki in Mehrauli on the outskirts of (p.38) Delhi.13 Such symbolic marriages were by no means unique to Sufi shrines, for in nineteenthcentury Lucknow the first queen of Awadh, Badshah Begam, designated eleven sayyid girls as wives of the Shi‘a Imams.14 Subsequently forbidden from marrying again, the girls had to live and pray at the imambara shrines dedicated to the Imams. Without in any way wishing to romanticize such customs, whether at La‘l Shahbaz or scores of other shrines across South Asia, the variations of the ‘urs’s festival that have developed over centuries have been subjected to reforms that have reduced them to shadows of their former selves.15 But at the same time as the attack on the ‘urs gathered momentum, the counter-reformist Barelwi school established by Ahmad Riza Khan (d. 1921) has over the past century articulated a Muslim theology of devotion with greater sympathy towards such shrine customs as the ‘urs.16 Yet even such sympathetic responses to the Islam of the saints have resulted in a mission to homogenize ‘urs’s rituals according to national theological standards.17 Paradoxically, such attempts to preserve the ‘urs have led to changes in its performance to ensure coherence with the Barelwi theological vision. In the cases of both the reformist attack and the counter-reformist defence of the ‘urs, its origins have been framed in Page 4 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual essentially the same national terms, seeing the ritual as either a problematically Indian ‘Hindu’ innovation or as a praiseworthy innovation that emerged as part of a specifically ‘Indian’ Muslim religious culture. The influence of such theological and national readings of the ‘urs history make it all the more important to recover its relationship to wider ritual patterns and exchanges, whether within India or beyond it.

(p.39) Before the Indian ‘Urs: Trans-regional Precedents At the most basic level the ‘urs celebrations form part of a wider tradition of pilgrimage to the shrines of Sufi and other Muslim saints that developed in Iran and Iraq during the tenth and eleventh centuries before spreading to India through the migration of such Sufis as Hujwiri (d. c. 1072). From an early date, such pilgrimages played an important role in Sufi Muslim piety and soon became more widespread as places of pilgrimage were established in every region in which Muslims emerged.18 If the founding of such pilgrimage geographies formed the general context, then the more specific contexts of the ‘urs’ origins lie in the rich ceremonial life that developed among the Sufis of medieval Khurasan, that is, eastern Iran and Central Asia. The symbolic imagery on which the ‘urs was based, of the Sufi meeting God in a state of bridehood, reached back to some of the earliest Sufi writings from Khurasan, such as the Arabic dream diary of al-Hakim al-Tirmizi (d. 905–10).19 Moving from dream symbols to ritual actions, the exact time and place of the origin of the actual ritual of the ‘urs is uncertain, but it may already have been a feature of Sufi life in Iran and Khurasan by the eleventh century. An account of the origins of the ‘urs of Abu Ishaq al-Kazaruni (d. 1035) survives in an early fourteenth-century Persian redaction of an earlier Arabic hagiography of Kazaruni written by Khatib Abu Bakr (d. 1108). In this extant text, entitled Firdaws al-Murshidiyya fi Asrar alSamadiyya (Paradise of Leadership in the Secrets of Eternity), we read that Kazaruni’s ‘urs was not performed until his follower Abu al-Hasan had a dream in which the angel Gabriel (Jibra’il) appeared to him in the company of thousands of angels wearing Sufi-style hats (kolah).20 Gabriel admonished Abu al-Hasan for not performing the ceremony, announcing that he and his heavenly companions had come down to earth especially for the ‘urs of Kazaruni. On waking, (p.40) Abu al-Hasan made a vow to celebrate Kazaruni’s ‘urs a hundred times. The story is important because it echoes the Muslim traditions describing Gabriel instructing the Prophet Muhammad in the first performance of what would become normative ritual prayer, so attributing the ‘urs to the same authoritative source of God’s angelic messenger. The aetiology of the ‘urs as being in a message delivered by Gabriel specifically reflects the account in the earliest extant biographical Sira of Muhammad in which an angelic encounter was also presented as introducing such foundational Islamic rituals as the azan call to prayer.21

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual If the biography of Kazaruni allows us to trace the ‘urs to southern Iran, we also possess descriptions of the ‘urs performed in the circle of another major Sufi of the period, Abu Sa‘id ibn Abi’l Khayr (d. 1049) of Mayhana in Khurasan. Here again it should be added that the account given of these rituals by Abu Sa‘id’s hagiographer, Muhammad ibn al-Munawwar, dates from the late twelfth century, and so as with Kazaruni it is unclear whether the ritual was practised directly after his death in the mid-eleventh century or from the period of his textual and spatial commemoration around his shrine a century later. Even so, Abu Sa‘id’s hagiographer attributed the ‘urs to Abu Sa‘id himself as he described how before his death the master had instructed his followers to celebrate his death symbolically by gathering around a shroud (chadar); crucially, the term ‘urs was used to describe the ensuing rituals.22 These included Abu Sa‘id’s disciples performing sama‘, that is listening to music to reach ecstasy beside his grave, and burning incense (sipand) there to ward off non-Muslim jinn.23 This short but coherent twelfth-century account of a purportedly eleventh century ‘urs in Khurasan was written a few decades prior to the Mongol invasions that would send Sufi refugees westwards to Anatolia and southwards to India. Tantalizing as the glimpses of this early ceremonial culture are, they provide a crucial piece of evidence in identifying the time and place in which the ‘urs took on the forms that would be carried to India. (p.41) Nonetheless, even in this early period, there were those who regarded such rituals as ‘innovations’ that led Muslims astray from the Prophet’s example. Criticisms were levelled at the practice of celebrating the ‘urs of the dead by Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1200) in his Talbis Iblis (Devil’s Deception), for example.24 Ibn alJawzi’s critique alerts us to the ritual’s presence in Baghdad as well as Khurasan, while the great thirteenth-century Baghdadi historian Ibn al-Fuwati (d. 1323) similarly described celebrating death with the clapping and footstamping associated with sama‘ performances though without explicit reference to the ‘urs.25 By the thirteenth century, there were also ready defenders of the ‘urs and the celebrated Iranian Sufi Najm al-Din Razi (d. 1256) provided an apologetic account of the ritual that justified its practices according to the normative sunna of Muhammad. In his Mirsad al-‘Ibad (Path of God’s Bondmen), Najm al-Din wrote: When someone dies [literally, when the animal soul or nafs dies], the musical assembly (sama‘) of an honest devotee becomes licit (halal) on several conditions. First, when someone dies, his ‘urs should be performed with a musical assembly. It is for this reason that if a Sufi dies, a musical assembly is performed for his ‘urs. Second, it is for refreshing the heart, because the Sufi is marrying a hidden mystery (ma‘ani-ye ghayb), and is making his wedding vows with the divine attributes. And on the proclamation of a wedding, a musical assembly is covered in accordance

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual with the Prophetic tradition (sunnat): [Arabic] Announce the ritual of the wedding by drumming.26 While it appears from these early accounts that the ‘urs was not always associated with either a fixed date or a solely annual performance, there were nonetheless already in existence many of the key practices and terms that would become associated with the ‘urs in India. In the decades after the Mongol incursions across Khurasan and Iran, accounts of the ‘urs also began to appear among Khurasani migrants who sought refuge in Anatolia. There survive a number of descriptions of ‘urs festivities in Anatolia associated with the (p.42) followers of Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273), for example, whose family had fled Wakhsh and Balkh in advance of the Mongols during his childhood. In Rumi’s hagiography, the Manaqib al-‘Arifin (Feats of the Gnostics) of Shams al-Din Aflaki (d. 1360), we read how Rumi’s already grand ‘urs in the city of Konya involved the illumination of the mausoleum with many lanterns, great feasts for the poor and the sama‘ performance of Persian ghazal love poetry set to music.27 Many of the core features of the Indian ‘urs were already, as it were, in place, albeit at so far a distance from India itself. Referring back to the Khurasan of Rumi’s origin, Aflaki also described an ‘urs that took place in the Central Asian city of Tirmiz in 1231 and was attended by Rumi’s father, Baha’ al-Din Walad, prior to his westward migration to the Anatolian Saljuq capital of Konya.28 Aflaki’s anecdote clarifies the context in which customs such as the ‘urs festival were being introduced into new regions during this period, as Sufis and other refugees from the eastern Islamic world sought sanctuary from the Mongol onslaught in the Anatolian and Indian domains of the Rum Saljuqs and Delhi Sultans. As we will see below, the spread of the ‘urs to Anatolia at the hands of such Khurasani refugees as Rumi’s family seems to have taken place at around the same time and partly through the same means as the ‘urs was introduced to north India. If the specific name and basic symbolic elements of the ‘urs appear to have developed most fully in Khurasan, they were nonetheless part of a more widespread repertoire of Muslim funerary commemorations. Such celebrations of the death of religious figures took on a variety of forms as they spread into (p.43) other regions with the development of new Muslim communities, creating siblings of the ‘urs in many distant regions. An example can be seen in the sessions of tomb-side zikr chanting known as hawliyya that commemorated the death anniversaries of Sufis in Sudan.29 As with the ‘urs, these rituals of saintly commemoration formed ways in which the symbolism of death and the spaces of burial could be adapted for the needs of the living.30 In contrast to the ‘urs’ characteristic celebration of the death anniversary, in the Mediterranean Muslim sphere it was more common to celebrate the anniversary of the saint’s ‘birth’ or mawlid rather than his death.31 The choice of name drew on the legitimacy lent to such festivals by the ritual celebration of the Prophet Page 7 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual Muhammad’s birthday or mawlid which had been commonplace since the twelfth century, when the mawlid festival developed in Fatimid Egypt. A famous account written by Ibn Khallikan (d. 1282) of the 1207 celebration of the Prophet’s mawlid in Iraq describes the processions, drummers, and feasts for the poor and the Sufi musical concerts that were similarly central to the Sufi ‘urs of the period.32 Reflecting the emergence of the ‘birthday’ mawlid of the Prophet Muhammad amid the festivities associated with the Muslim cult of saints around the Mediterranean, in India the celebration of the Prophet’s mawlid (known as milad-e sharif or bara wafat) closely mirrored the ‘urs rituals of the saints.33 Given the tradition that the day of the Prophet’s birth and death were both the twelfth day of Rabi‘ I, in India the mawlid was often termed as the ‘urs of Muhammad. Here we are in the realm of elite as much as popular religiosity, for it was none other than the Emperor Akbar who was among those known to have convened an ‘urs gathering (majlis-e ‘urs) each year on the Prophet’s birth/death anniversary, (p.44) during which he entertained his guests with great feasts befitting the symbolic occasion of a wedding.34 In a further reflection of this transfer of wedding symbolism towards the Prophet, in medieval Sindhi devotional poetry Muhammad was presented as the bridegroom of God.35 Despite the use of the term mawlid or ‘birthday’, since birthdays went traditionally unrecorded the mawlid festivals associated with saintly shrines around the Mediterranean sometimes celebrated the death rather than birth anniversary of the saint. The mawlid of the most important female saint in Egypt, Sayyida Zaynab, provides another parallel to the ‘urs, since its central night is referred to as the farah al-sit (wedding of the lady), though it is uncertain how far back this practice dates.36 In another Egyptian example of this bridal symbolism, sugar dolls known as ‘brides’ or ‘ara’is were made for saintly mawlids in Egypt and sold as a central part of the celebrations.37 (The custom was reflected elsewhere and in Baluchestan female dolls ‘with much symbolic anatomical detail’ were placed at the shrine of Malik Siyah during the time of the spring pilgrimage.38) The nuptial associations of Egyptian saints were maintained throughout the year, since marriages were regularly contracted and solemnized at their shrines, while the annual ceremony of the ‘Bride of the Nile’ (‘arusat al-nil) also echoed the place of marriage symbolism in Egypt’s ritual life. Such ethnographic evidence is of course difficult to securely back-date and it is therefore to earlier textual symbols that we must look for the surer antecedents of the Indian ‘urs. Such texts—of both Sufi theory and poetry—were especially important in the development of the symbolic vocabulary through which death was treated in the erotic terms that underlay the celebration of death as a wedding. Embedded in the Indo-Muslim rituals of the ‘urs was a symbolism that drew on a trans-regional web of texts (p.45) in Arabic and Persian associating erotic with mystical passion.39 The wide distribution of the textual symbolism which the Indian ‘urs shared can be seen in the writings of Muhyi al-Din Ibn Page 8 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual ‘Arabi (d. 1240), who hailed from Murcia in the far Spanish west but whose writings (and disciples’ writings) were widely distributed in India.40 In one of the most poignant of all textual echoes of the ‘urs symbolism, in the final section of his Fusus al-Hikam (Bezels of Wisdom) Ibn ‘Arabi discusses the meaning of the hadith in which the Prophet Muhammad claimed, ‘There are three things made beloved to me in this world: women, perfume and prayer.’41 In his commentary, Ibn ‘Arabi subjects the Prophet’s references to earthly sensuality to a mystical reading that emphasized the same fusion of spiritual and sexual love found in the symbolism of the ‘urs. Ibn ‘Arabi also provides evidence of the presence of the symbolism of the Sufi as the bride of God in Spain, describing in his account of the Sufis of Andalusia how Abu al-Hasan al-Shakkaz prophezied his own death in terms of a marriage to God as the bride and mysteriously died when someone tried to arrange his wedding to a human bride instead.42 Even though Ibn ‘Arabi was attacked for the erotic–spiritual poetry of his Tarjuman al-‘ashwaq (Interpreter of Desires), the allusive guise of poetry remained of great use to Sufi writers in allowing the expression of passions that challenged social and theological norms. Of all Muslim textual forms, it was in poetry that themes of sexuality found fullest licence and the recognition of the dual ability of poems to sway the soul towards either sensuality or divine rapture was already clearly formulated by the eleventh century, not least in the writings of another Khurasani migrant, al-Ghazali (d. 1111).43 From the medieval period, in performative terms the classic spatial context of love poetry became (p.46) the Sufi musical concerts or mahfil-e sama‘ performed in the shrines of the saints, both on the occasion of the ‘urs and at more regular weekly gatherings. These performances would accompany the ‘urs on its journey to India. But as the moralizing critics of sama‘ pointed out, such performances evoked earthly emotions as frequently as godly longings. One of the most vivid examples of this in Persian literature is the account of the Khurasani Sufi, ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami (d. 1492), who described Awhad al-Din Kirmani tearing the frocks of young boys during sama‘ to dance with them breast to breast.44 Written in the Timuri cultural centre of Herat on whose literary and architectural forms Mughal India was later to draw deeply, the hagiographical Nafahat al-Uns (Sprinkings of Intimacy) in which Jami recounted this episode would later become one of the most influential Naqshbandi Sufi texts imported to Mughal India, pointing to the ways in which rituals and texts were carried together through the same networks of dispersion. While the dangers of such sama‘ performances were already recognized by medieval moralists, the Sufi practice of listening to musical poetry would nonetheless become as central to the performance of the ‘urs in India as it had been in its earlier settings in Khurasan. In this way, the migration of the ‘urs was concomitant with the spread of a wider repertoire of cultural practices that included the texts, poetry, and the sounds of music.

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual In addition to the mahfil-e sama‘, other aspects of the ‘urs ritual also drew on this symbolic vocabulary that passed between text and action. Another example is seen in the sandalmali (‘sandalwood rubbing’) ceremony that formed the ritual climax of the ‘urs and which mirrored the former Iranian and Indian custom of the rubbing of sweet-smelling sandalwood into the skin of a groom on his wedding night as preparation for his meeting with the bride.45 Here the ‘urs’ sandalmali ritual drew on the widespread symbolism of the Sufi as the bride of God that was found particularly in Persian but also in Arabic texts. The medieval Iranian Sufi, (p.47) Ruzbihan Baqli (d. 1209), for example, made use of bridal imagery in the visionary diary in which he described his many mystical encounters with God. In these writings, Ruzbihan described being drawn into ‘the bridal canopies of intimacy’ in which God revealed himself while Ruzbihan lay before him ‘like a bride before God’; in another encounter, Ruzbihan described himself ‘wearing the clothes of brides, with tresses on my head like the tresses of women, with unveiled head and breast’.46 However, it was in the Masnawi-ye Ma‘nawi of the Khurasani migrant Jalal al-Din Rumi that the imagery of the Sufi as bride and of the mystical encounter as a wedding night found its most memorable expression: Hal chun jalwa ast ze an ziba ‘arus wa in maqam an khalwat amad ba ‘arus Jalwa binad shah u ghayr-e shah niz waqt-e khalwat nist juz shah ‘aziz Jalwa karda ‘amm u khasan-ra ‘arus Khalwat andar shah bashad ba ‘arus47 The mystical experience is like the unveiling of a beautiful bride. The mystical state is like the king going into seclusion with her. Her unveiling is seen by the king and his courtiers; Her seclusion by none but the king. Before the lords and commoners the bride unveiled herself But in the marriage chamber she’s alone with her king.

Given the fact that the Masnawi of Rumi was one of the most widely distributed Persian texts in Muslim India, this passage (and others like it) is especially important in tracing the textual routes by which the symbolism of the ‘urs migrated to India. Such poetic blendings of the sexual and spiritual were further reflected in Sufi prose works, especially in the Persianate eastern Islamic world. A final example comes from the early modern period of Mughal migration into India and was written by a Sufi with close connections with such Mughal elites as Sa‘id Khan.48 This was (p.48) the Asrar al-Nikah (Mysteries of Marriage) of the Central Asian Naqshbandi, Ahmad Kasani (d. 1543). This text too presented a mystical reading of the meaning of marriage between humans as both spiritual encounter and act of worship.49

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual A Ritual Migrates: The ‘Urs Reaches India Within the north Indian cultural sphere, the ‘urs began to be mentioned in the textual record during the Delhi sultanate. As we have already suggested, the ritual’s migration and dissemination in India seems likely to have come in the wake of the Mongol invasions of Khurasan which, along with the wider movement of Sufis into the new patronage centres of India, saw numerous Persianate customs introduced to India. Located on a major trade-route connecting north India to Iran and Baghdad, it was at the shrine of Baba Farid al-Din Ganj-e Shakar (d. 1265) at Ajodhan in Punjab that one medieval source, Jawahir al-Faridi (Incomparable Jewels), claimed the ‘urs’s rituals were formalized in India, with this development taking place as early as the thirteenth century.50 If this information is correct, it would place the establishment of the ‘urs in India at around the same time that it appeared in Anatolia in the Khurasani migrant circles of Rumi. Given that Baba Farid’s Chishti lineage originated a few generations earlier in Khurasan, the Chishti role in the ritual’s migration to India also seems to have been an important dimension in its initial transmission, as it would certainly become in its subsequent dissemination throughout the subcontinent. From the same Chishti circles comes an early description by the poet Amir Khusraw (d. 1325) of an ‘urs of Baba Farid held in 1315 at his shrine at Ajodhan. In a pointer to the commemorative dimensions of the ritual, the event included the recounting of Baba Farid’s miraculous deeds along with the entertainment of guests by a party of performing dervishes.51 This formal ritual programme included such practices as musical audition (mahfil-e sama‘) and (p.49) the serving of a feast (langar) for the guests that we have seen earlier in Khurasan and that would continue at ‘urs celebrations in South Asia to the present day. The appearance of the ritual in Punjab appears to confirm the general picture of its introduction into India from the north-west during a period in which the Chishti Sufi lineage that Farid himself represented was spreading into north India from its cradle in the Khurasani mountain town of Chisht, with Baba Farid’s own grandfather having migrated from Kabul. Compiled between 1348 and 1350, another medieval Persian source from the eastern parts of northern India, the Khwan-e Pur Ni‘mat (Table Spread with Good Things), attributed the introduction of the ‘urs in Delhi to one Shaykh Rukn al-Din. A collection of the malfuzat or ‘recorded conversations’ of Sharaf alDin Maneri (d. 1381), the text recounted how Rukn al-Din invited Baba Farid’s disciple Nizam al-Din Awliya (d. 1325) to various ‘urs ceremonies when the latter migrated to Delhi in the mid-1260s.52 Appropriately, in 1314, the ‘urs formed the topic for one of the questions asked of Nizam al-Din himself and written down in his own famous malfuzat collection, the Fawa’id al-Fu‘ad.53 Several of Nizam alDin’s followers were later described as attending ‘urs celebrations in Delhi by Jamali Dihlawi (d. 1536) in his Sayr al-‘Arifin.54 Jamali reiterated the importance of the musical gathering (mahfil-e sama‘) among the Sufis of north India in numerous instances, and also described one such performance to celebrate the Page 11 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual death of the Sufi Ziya al-Din Rumi, when all of the people of the city attended and roses and rosewater (gul wa gulab) were scattered everywhere.55 Between Punjab, Delhi, and the Doab, the ‘urs had expanded across northern India by 1400 in line with the creation of the Muslim geography of shrine mausoleums whose saintly inhabitants the ritual sought to commemorate for the Muslims who inhabited the surrounding territories. The erotic imagery of flowers and scents that the symbolic vocabulary of the ‘urs shared with the trans-regional Persianate (p.50) literary sphere was also reflected in other literary creations associated with the Sufis in India. This overlapping of the poetic and ritual symbolism of Sufi Islam with other life-cycle rituals was seen in a sixteenth century poem composed in Hindwi, the celebrated Madhumalati of the north Indian Sufi Manjhan (fl.1545), written at the court of the Indo-Afghan sultans. In this important marker of the transference of the bridal spiritual symbolism from the Persian to the vernacular register in India, Manjhan describes the wedding chamber in which two of his poem’s allegorical characters are about to be united: Sandalwood and saffron were crushed together, mixed with perfume and the chamber anointed. Inside and out and all around, lengths of red silk were draped. Then the wedding bed was brought in.56

In Manjhan’s words we read an imaginary description of a wedding chamber that closely echoed the interiors of the mausoleums of the Sufi saints during their ‘urs rituals in which a central role was played by the laying of coloured cloths—the chadars of Ibn al-Munawwar’s twelfth-century Khurasani account— over the grave and its anointing with perfumed ‘attar. As Manjhan’s poem continues, in its charged descriptions of the removal of the bride’s veil before the final moment of physical union, we hear echoes of the erotic symbolism preserved in the ‘urs sandalmali ritual in which a mix of sandalwood paste and perfume was rubbed into the grave cenotaph that symbolized the wedding bed where the saint met his divine lover. Passing similarly into the emerging Islamicate vernaculars of southern India, this symbolism also entered the Dakani Urdu literature that flourished under the independent sultanates of the early modern Deccan. There the importance of scent may be seen in semiphilosophical writings as well as romantic masnawi poems in which Dakani poets employed olfactory imagery as symbols of the sensuality of their subject matter.57 ‘Atr-e Nawras Shahi, a seventeenth (p.51) century Dakani manual on perfume, described for example the best kinds of scents for perfuming the bedroom or khwabgah.58 Such references to expensive commodities like ‘attar point to the high status arenas which the ‘urs was to increasingly enter during the early modern period to which we now properly turn.

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual Early Modern Elaborations: The ‘Urs under the Mughals The increasingly elevated social location and prestige of the symbolism and rituals of the ‘urs is important, since it points to the way in which the ritual and cultural milieux to which the ‘urs belonged by the early modern period was that of the imperial Mughal elite rather than the realm of ‘popular religiosity’ in which it has often been located (see Fig. 2.1). In Mughal India, the ‘urs formed part of pilgrimages to the tombs of saints that from the sixteenth century became increasingly associated with mighty men of state. Both Akbar (r. 1556– 1605) and Jahangir (r. 1605–27) attended the ‘urs of Mu‘in al-Din Chishti at Ajmer, with Akbar donating the famous massive cauldron or deg in which food continues to be cooked for pilgrims to this day.59 References to the ‘urs rituals in the court literature of the Mughals show how by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the ‘urs had become a familiar part of elite festive as much as religious culture. In the account of Jahangir’s cultivated parties preserved in the Majalis-e Jahangiri (Soirées of the World Encompasser), we hear stories being told in the emperor’s presence of how the Delhi Sultan ‘Ala’ al-Din Khilji (r. 1296–1316) sent his boon companion (nadim) to select a verse from those being sung at an ‘urs which Nizam al-Din Awliya was at that moment celebrating for his deceased Sufi master, Baba Farid. When the companion returned to the sultan with this literary souvenir, its beauty was such that ‘Ala’ al-Din fell into a state of ecstasy (tawajud).60 Elsewhere in the Majalis-e Jahangiri, (p.52) we find two other accounts of ‘urs ceremonies, in which the ‘amirs and wazirs’ of the imperial court were in attendance. In the first of these, in July 1611, a farman of five to six lakh rupees was granted to build three gateways covered with high arches around the tomb, while on the second ‘urs described two months later, five thousand rupees were sent to the tomb for distribution among the widowed and the deserving.61 Here, however, the ‘urs in question appears to have been that of the deceased emperor Akbar rather than that of a saint.62 For by the Mughal period, the rituals of the ‘urs had come to be applied to the architectural spaces of royal as well as saintly commemoration. While this chapter focuses mainly on the ‘urs of the saints, it is nonetheless important to recognize the ritual’s proliferation beside the burial places of other Muslim elites in India. Such non-Sufi ‘urs celebrations included those of various Muslim rulers (including Aurangzeb and Tipu Sultan as well as Akbar), imperial consorts (such as Mumtaz Mahal) and famous poets (such as Bidel, who in any case had Sufi connections).63 Sometimes these Sufi and royal ‘urs co-mingled, and a short Persian account survives of the ‘urs of Emperor Aurangzeb at his grave in the shrine of Zayn al-Din Shirazi in Khuldabad being attended to by a group of Naqshbandi and Chishti Sufis.64 Connecting space with memory as a medium of authority, the celebration of such royal ‘urs rituals played an important role in the symbolic transfer of authority between past and present rulers. In the Deccan, the Nizams of Hyderabad (who in theory ruled on behalf of the Mughal emperors) attended the ‘urs (p.53) of Aurangzeb in the shrine Page 13 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual town of Khuldabad in their territory every year.65 Even so, these other types of ‘urs celebration should not distract us from the fact that the vast majority of India’s spiritual wedding festivals were held in honour of the many hundreds of Sufi saints whose graves made a sacred Muslim geography on Indian soil. The expansion of the ‘urs was a ritualized reflection of this making of a Muslim geography, since the basic requirement for the ceremony was a burial site (better still a fully-fledged shrine) at which the core rituals of the rubbing of sandalwood paste and the musical sama‘ concert could take place. It logically followed that as this geography expanded as more and more shrines were established in new territories, there was more opportunity—more spaces—for ‘urs rituals to be celebrated. (p.54) Texts were again never far away from these spaces and their rituals. By the Mughal period, new examples of the older Persianate genre of the compendium of Sufi hagiographies were being compiled in India that were specifically dedicated to Sufis buried in particular Indian regions or towns. In this way, the textual commemoration of a community’s remembered dead was now framed in explicitly geographical terms. In one such hagiographical compendium completed in 1614 at the height of Mughal power, Muhammad Sadiq Kashmiri recounted the biographies of no fewer than 125 Sufis who lay buried in the

Fig. 2.1. Lineages Linked through Burial: Tombs of Nizam al-Din Awliya and Princess Jahanara

imperial city of Delhi.66 Space was explicitly configured with Courtesy of Nile Green ritual through such texts, for it was characteristic of such compendia that the biography of a given Sufi would end with details of both his death date and burial place, such that the text became the enabling mechanism for ritual by providing the temporal and spatial data needed for an ‘urs to be celebrated. Following this mechanism, Muhammad Sadiq’s Kalimat al-Sadiqin gave exact death dates wherever they were known, as well as the locations of burial (including when they were not in a specially designated shrine) and in some Page 14 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual cases poetic chronograms which numerologically transformed the death date into Persian verse. The latter practice points again to the close links between death as event and as text through the poetic transformation of the blessed man’s demise into a lasting cultural artefact. While Muhammad Sadiq did not refer to an ‘urs in connection with each of the many Sufis he described, he did make explicit references to the annual ‘urs festivals of several of these Delhi saints, such as Shaykh Turk Biyabani, Shaykh ‘Usman Sayyah, and Shaykh Rukn al-Din Firdaws.67 In such cases, the author also gave directions for reaching the burial site (‘on the road to the shrine of the Prophet’s Footprint, outside the fortress at Firuzabad’) and noted other days on which the shrine was likely to be busy. The commemorative importance given to the act of dying that ultimately underlay the ‘urs was also seen in the emphasis given in such hagiographies to Sufis having had a ‘good death’, as in the story of the charity and self-control displayed in the last days of (p.55) the great Nizam al-Din Awliya.68 From the reign of Shah Jahan, another typical example of such texts was the Siyar al-aqtab (Deeds of the Cosmic Axes) completed in 1647 by Allah Diya ibn ‘Abd al-Rahim Chishti in which the author recounted the biographies of around thirty earlier masters in his own Sufi lineage. In places, ‘Abd al-Rahim Chishti gave advice concerning which of the shrines of these Sufis attracted regular pilgrim traffic, as in the case of Shams al-Din Turk, whose tomb he described as a ‘pilgrimage place for the elite and the common’ (ziyaratgah-e khawass wa ‘awwam).69 While ‘Abd al-Rahim Chishti did not refer to ‘urs ceremonies as such, in similar compendia his supplying of burial locations and death dates was geared towards making the ritual’s performance possible. Even so, given the medieval opposition to shrine ceremonies that we have seen earlier in Egypt and Iraq, there is reason to suspect that not all Indian Sufis of Muhammad Sadiq and ‘Abd al-Rahim Chishti’s period were equally enthusiastic about the ‘urs. It is worth comparing their biographical compendia to that of ‘Abd al-Haqq Muhadis (‘Hadith Master’, d. 1642) of Delhi, entitled Akhbar alAkhyar (Reports on the Pious).70 ‘Abd al-Haqq was no less concerned than his two contemporaries we have discussed above with recording the death dates and burial locations of the Indian Sufis of previous generations (whenever he knew them). In certain cases—particularly in cases of saints buried in the familiar setting of his home city—he gave specific details as to the location of their graves. That of Shaykh Adhan, for example, was just to the west of the great pool (hawz-e shamsi) built by Shams al-Din Iltutmish in Delhi.71 Yet, perhaps through his heightened awareness of Hadith, and the latter’s lack of any explicit mention of ‘urs in the Prophet’s lifetime, ‘Abd al-Haqq was reluctant to directly write of ‘urs ceremonies, leaving his references to death dates as unadorned and (p.56) matter-of-fact statements. While ‘Abd al-Haqq did in places refer to the performance of the sama‘ musical concert, in his Akhbar alAkhyar as a whole he lent emphasis to the Sufis’ moral or scholarly achievements rather than the elaborate ritual practices and festive shrine Page 15 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual culture to which they had become attached by the early modern period. It is striking that even his account of such figures as Mu‘in al-Din Chishti—whose ‘urs had in ‘Abd al-Haqq’s own lifetime been attended by Emperor Akbar—lacked any reference to the ‘urs festival, as did his account of Qutb al-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki of Delhi, whose major ‘urs the author would surely have known of as a resident of the same city.72 The same avoidance of mentioning the ritual is found in scores of other biographical notices of his. Judging by the overall tenor of the Akhbar al-Akhyar, ‘Abd al-Haqq seems to have disapproved of the culture of shrines more generally. Indeed, one of the key stories in his account of Mu‘in alDin Chishti describes how the saint’s original grave had been made of humble brick (khisht) that was only later covered with a stone sepulchre (sanduqi az sang), which explained why the sepulchre appeared so high; moreover, he adds, it was the sultans of Mandu who built the great door to the khanaqah at the shrine.73 In other words, the grand appearance of the shrine at Ajmer had more to do with the pride of kings than the original will of the true Sufi. In one of the very few references to the ‘urs in the entire Akhbar al-Akhyar, the ritual was mentioned only in passing in an anecdote concerning Shaykh ‘Ali bin Husam alDin to demonstrate the shaykh’s piety by describing how he was so generous as to pay for the food at the ‘weddings of the masters’ (‘aras-e piran) and ensure that all of the poor were given their fair share.74 Here it is worth reiterating that like the nineteenth-century critics of the ‘urs who would later consider it an innovation from the Prophet’s sunna, ‘Abd al-Haqq was as much a scholar of Hadith as a Sufi. In a period in which the ritual had become a grand festival patronized by emperors and courtiers, by the mid-1600s (p.57) there were therefore already those who had reservations about the ‘urs’ role in Indian Muslim life. Even so, any such reservations must be seen as a response to the very success which the ‘urs had achieved by the Mughal period. The ways in which the ‘urs was able to appeal to all levels of society by the early modern era is best seen through the genre of the pilgrimage guide. This genre was in itself known throughout the Muslim world and examples have been studied relating to shrine visitation in a variety of regions.75 Several such manuals were produced during the eighteenth century in Aurangabad during its period as erstwhile capital of the Mughal Empire and founding capital of Hyderabad State. One such guide was written by Muhammad Najib, a follower of the celebrated Sufi of Mughal Aurangabad, Nizam al-Din (d. 1729). This guide, Makhzan al-‘Aras (Treasury of Spiritual Weddings), included within it an earlier almanac detailing the death dates of hundreds of different Sufis to enable pilgrims to attend their ‘urs celebrations.76 Several such obituary calendars, often also including biographies of the saints, were produced in India during the eighteenth century, including the ‘Aras-e Buzurgan (Spiritual Weddings of the Great Saints) by Shaykh Ba ‘Alawi (fl. 1747) and the Zikr-e jami‘-e awliya-e Dihli (Collective Recollections of the Saints of Delhi) by Habib Allah Akbarabadi (d. after 1735).77 With their Page 16 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual calendrical format, such texts formed textual media between the invisible passing of time and the visible commemorative spaces at which the passage of community history was marked and punctuated through the regular performance of the ‘urs. Focusing mainly on the Ba ‘Alawi saints who spread from Yemen to Gujarat and thence into other regions of India, the ‘Aras-e Buzurgan again points to the joint mobility of the blessed men and their rituals, albeit through an oceanic geography we have not otherwise seen connected with the ‘urs.78 The Indian Ocean itinerary of the text’s ancestral saints was (p.58) also echoed in the fact that the ‘Aras-e Buzurgan was originally written in Arabic, before being translated into Persian. What is particularly interesting about the ‘Aras-e Buzurgan is that it included not only the spiritual weddings of the saints, but also that of the Prophet Muhammad, so connecting Sufi rituals with the legitimacy and legacy of the Prophet, reflecting the zenith of prestige that we have seen the ‘urs reach by the eighteenth century Another guidebook from Aurangabad was written by an otherwise unknown pilgrim called Sabzawari. Dating from the 1770s, it was concerned with the Mughal-patronized shrines of Aurangabad and the nearby holy town of Khuldabad.79 This guidebook, entitled simply Sawanih (Occurrences), contains an interesting account of the shrine of the North Indian Sufi migrant, Shah Nur Hammami (d. 1692). The latter’s ‘urs was described by Sabzawari as the most popular event in the city’s ritual calendar: ‘on the day of his ‘urs, so many lamps and lanterns are lit that their reflection in the pool’s water astonishes the onlookers … the whole city is present, from the learned to the merchants of the bazaar and the craftsmen.’80 Sabzawari’s pilgrim guidebook also provides other tantalizing glimpses of the ‘urs celebrations of the region around the erstwhile Mughal capital of Aurangabad during the eighteenth century, particularly the shrines of Khuldabad where Aurangzeb lay buried. At the ‘urs of Muntajib al-Din (d. c. 1309), Sabzawari describes how people fell into ecstasy (hal) each night at the musical concerts (mahfil-e sama‘) held at the shrine, which throughout the night was filled with the noise of music and clapping. At the same time, ritual attendants stood guarding the saint’s tomb, while others sat reciting the Quran in the shrine mosque. Entertaining distractions were provided by the bazaar of tents set up outside the shrine selling halwa, perfumes, flowers, and fruit.81 Sabzawari’s account of the ‘urs of the nearby shrine of Zayn al-Din Shirazi (d. 1369), where Aurangzeb was buried, is replete with even more ethnographic detail, (p.59) such as the presence of Yogis who, in an ascetic modification of the ‘urs’ abundance of lighting, sat burning their noses with the flames of candles. Alongside the Yogis, Sabzawari also noted the presence of various troupes of entertainers, including painters, wrestlers, storytellers, and mawlud-singers (hymn singers). Such entertainers recreated the atmosphere of a grand wedding, reflecting Iranian no less than Indian Muslim weddings of the period: in the seventeenth century, Sir John Chardin had described the presence of wrestlers among the entertainers at weddings in Shiraz, practices which still Page 17 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual survived in Iran in the early twentieth century.82 Such festivities would fuel the claims of scandalous immorality made by later critics of the ‘urs, particularly when Sabzawari candidly described the abundance of dancers and ‘beautiful boys dressed in colourful clothes standing all in a line’.83 From Delhi, during the same period as the writing of Sabzawari’s guidebook, there survives in the famous Muraqqa‘-e Dihli (Delhi Scrapbook) a whole series of descriptions of the central place of ‘urs festivities in the vibrant cultural life of the city. In this text, dancing girls (kanchani, nachni) are shown to have been as common a fixture at the shrines of the saints as wandering dervishes.84 Such women also sang songs in praise of the saints and the Prophet, in addition to a repertoire of ghazal love songs.85 Such sensuality did not mean that India’s Muslims had lost sight of the spiritual dimensions of these erotic symbols by the early eighteenth century. The sensual imagery of the Sufi as the bride of God found re-expression in the poetic manual ‘Arus-e ‘Irfan (Bride of Gnosis) by Mahmud Bahri (d. 1718), which described the mystical journey towards knowledge by means of an extended set of metaphors based around the erotic imagery of the bride or ‘arus.86 (p.60) Even so, there were moral critics of such mixing of the sensual and spiritual among the Sufis themselves by this period. In the same city of Aurangabad in which Sabzawari penned his encomium to the saintly weddings, the migrant Central Asian Naqshbandi Sufi, Shah Musafir (d. 1714), had to repeatedly chide his moghol followers about bringing dancing boys to perform in the lodge that was later (p.61) transformed into his shrine.87 His lodge was not a lone case and both dancing girls and boys were associated with a variety of Muslim and Hindu religious institutions in the surrounding region (see Fig. 2.2).88 In some cases, these female tawa’if (courtesan dancers; literally tribeswomen) received written contracts to perform each year at an ‘urs, as in the case of a dancer called Nayna who was contracted to dance annually at the ‘urs of Babu Jamal in Kolhapur 89

in the western Deccan.

Fig. 2.2. The Architecture of Ritual: Mughal Era Naqqarakhana, Khuldabad Courtesy of Nile Green

Back in

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual Khuldabad, the construction of the large gateway to the shrine of Zayn al-Din Shirazi was patronized in the 1760s by a famous dancing girl of Aurangabad.90 Like the ‘urs itself, such ritual traditions have survived to this day in these shrine spaces of memory. Indian dancers and musicians still seek the professional blessing of Akbar’s great court musician Tansen (d. 1589) by visiting his tomb beside the mausoleum of Muhammad Ghaws (d. 1562) in Gwalior.

As Mughal power receded with the rise of the eighteenth-century successor states, many Mughal traditions survived in Hyderabad. There tawa’if dancing girls became important patrons of the shrine festivals in their own right, including the ‘urs. In the 1844 account of Hyderabad’s customs in Ghulam Husayn Khan’s Gulzar-e Asafiyya (Rose Garden of the Asaf Jahs), we read that the ‘urs was celebrated at the hilltop shrine of Mawla ‘Ali, built in honour of the hand print left on a rock there after the Imam ‘Ali appeared in a dream to a Qutb Shah prince from nearby Golkonda.91 In the Mughal cultural afterworld that survived under the Nizams of Hyderabad, the ‘urs of Mawla ’Ali was presented in the Gulzar-e Asafiyya as replete with the great processions, musical retinues, and arrangements of festive lighting that since the Mughals’ heyday had become the basic requirements of any great saintly wedding. The descriptions of early nineteenth-century ‘urs ceremonies in north India and the Deccan (p.62) made by the south Indian Muslim Ja‘far Sharif show how the ‘urs continued to function as a festivity of carnivalesque celebration and pleasure-seeking as India entered its colonial period.92 By the early 1800s, the ‘urs’s associations with the meetings of lovers and even prostitutes were also alluded to by the Urdu literateur Afsus (d. 1809) with reference to the shrine of Shah Arzan near Patna.93 It was this association of the ‘urs with tawa’ if and men of easy virtue that, amid the loss of Muslim power in the nineteenth century, was to fuel its condemnation by a new generation of religious reformers. When in the mid-1800s the north Indian Chishti Sufi Hafiz ‘Ali Shah of Khayrabad (d. 1850) walked into the shrine of Yusuf al-Din Qadiri (d. 1709) in Hyderabad and saw a group of tawa’ifs singing and dancing to the rapture of the gathered Muslims, he marched into their midst to denounce his fellow Muslims with the words, ‘This hair is not that of your [Islamic] beards but the string of the brahmin’s cord.’94 Even if we have traced its origins in Khurasan and other Muslim regions, through such polemical denunciations the reclassifying of the ‘urs as a ‘Hindu’ accretion had already begun. Nonetheless, the ‘urs would survive such attacks and from Hafiz ‘Ali’s own home region and lifetime there survives a more elegant interweaving of the entertainment and edification of the ‘urs in the Masnawi-ye Taraqqi of Aman ‘Ali Taraqqi (d. 1839), a long poetic hagiography commemorating the saints of Phulwari Sharif: Lighting arrangements on a large scale, is done at the grave of the King of Saints. People keeping trays on their heads,

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual go in groups to the illuminating grave, Accompanied by singers’ enchanting voices, Who go on singing with enormous delight … People take seats all around there, and the select sit near the saint … Adepts receive secrets in lyrical forms. Since midnight it continues till noon, melting many hearts in a fire of love.95

(p.63) In spite of the theological debate over the ‘unIslamic’ and ‘Hindu’ character of shrine veneration among Indian Muslim reformers of the modern period, over the previous pages we have seen how from a historical perspective such practices were an extremely widespread feature of medieval and early modern Muslim practice in India as elsewhere. For the itineraries of the ‘urs ritual traced in this chapter reached far beyond India to trans-regional Persianate religious forms that found expression in both texts and places of wide distribution. While in the centuries after its medieval introduction to India, the ‘urs experienced an especial flowering in the Mughal era, the ritual remained part of a larger cultural repertoire that connected India to Muslim memory spaces that reached beyond the Oxus in the north and as far as Anatolia in the west. As an expression of embodied memory that summoned into the performative present the distant places of a saint’s remembered life, ‘urs rituals preserved the memory of these remote but connected spaces of a community’s history. Just as in West Africa rituals of spirit-summoning and divination transmitted memories of the dispersive geographies of the slave trade, so did the ‘urs rituals performed in towns and villages across India sound echoes of Muslim histories of relocation and resettlement.96 While the migration of the ‘urs did not rely on the enforced movement of slaves, in outline at least its ritual bridging of movement, home, and memory can be seen reflected in the spread of African possession rituals such as those associated with the Muslim Gnawa in Morocco and the zar practitioners in Arabia.97 In counterpart to the movement of Central Asian and Iranian rituals that we have traced, such migrations of African rituals can likewise be traced to India among the commemorative ceremonies of the Sidi descendants of African slaves, who preserved memories of their own passage to India in ceremonies modelled on the ritual respectability of the Sufis and based around the tombs of (p.64) such symbolic ancestors as Baba Gor in Gujarat.98 Emerging from a parallel history of migrations from the Persianate north, in the ‘urs we see an overland equivalent to the maritime import of Siddi rituals from Africa. Like many other aspects of ‘Indian’ Islam, the ceremonies of the ‘urs preserve the traces of a pre-national history of mobile peoples and the textual and ritual resources that helped them make new homes while still remembering old ones.

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual Notes:

(1) For discussion of embodied memory with regard to African histories of migration, see Apter and Derby (2010). (2) For descriptive accounts of modern ‘urs rituals, see Census of India (1966), Huda (2003a), Hussaini (1985), Moini, ‘Rituals and Customary Practices at the Dargah of Ajmer’, in Troll (1989) and Sikand (2000). An early European description of the ‘urs of various Sufi and non-Sufi saints is found in de Tassy (1997). (3) On the ‘bridegroom death’ of the epigramist Meleager, see Mackail (1890), while on Ephrem the Syrian’s ‘bridal-chamber of the heart’, see Brock (1992), pp. 115–30. A ritualized spiritual marriage carried out in a symbolic wedding chamber was also a feature of gnostic religious life. See Rudolph (1983), pp. 245–7. On Tantrism, see Dimock (1966). (4) Heffening, ‘‘Urs’, in The Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI2 hereafter; 2nd edition). The latter entry deals only with ordinary wedding customs: there is no entry on the saintly ‘urs in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. (5) Betteridge, ‘Arūsī’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica and Heffening (nd). (6) Gaeffke, ‘Muslim Marriage Rites in the 17th and in the 19th Century’, in Eck and Mallison (1991). (7) Wheeler (2006) and Zaman (2001). (8) Gaborieau, ‘A Nineteenth-Century Indian “Wahabi” Tract against the Cult of Muslim Saints: Al-Balagh al-Mubin’, in Troll (1989) and Sikand (2000). (9) Memon (1976). On the reception of these ideas in India, including by Shāh Walīullāh, see Nizami (1995b). (10) Baljon, ‘Shah Waliullah and the Dargah’, in Troll (1989). (11) Metcalf (1990) and Maududi (1999). On the place of the ‘urs among the wider cultural critique of the Deoband movement, see Ingram (2009) and Metcalf (2002), pp. 148–97. (12) Burton (1973), p. 211. (13) Schwerin, ‘Saint Worship and Indian Islam: the Legend of the Martyr Salar Masud Ghazi’, in Ahmad (1984) and Skyhawk, ‘A Note on Death and the Holy Man in South Asia’, in Schömbucher and Zoller (1999), pp. 192 and 199. (14) Cole, ‘Shi‘ite Noblewomen and Religious Innovation in Awadh’, in Graff (1997), p. 85–6.

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual (15) Boivin (2003). (16) Sanyal (1996), especially pp. 113–20 on an ‘urs affiliated to this movement. (17) On comparable homogenizing reformist tendencies among shrine rituals in modern Egypt, see Abu-Zahra (1997), p. 65. (18) On such shrines and their customs beyond South Asia, see Lang (1992), Meri (2002), and Taylor (1999). (19) Radtke and O’Kane (1996), p. 19. (20) Mahmūd ibn ‘Usman (1948), p. 41. (21) Guillaume (1967), p. 236. (22) Muhmmad ibn Munawwar (1982), p. 368. (23) Ibid. (24) Meier (1976), p. 261. (25) Talkhīs Majma’ al-adāb, cited in Kiyānī (2001), p. 439. Author’s translation. (26) Ibid. Author’s translation. (27) Aflākī (1976), vol. I, pp. 57, 67, vol. II, pp. 595, 596, 731, 891 (trans. O’ Kane [2002], pp. 260–6). The importance of the feasting element of the ‘urs during this early period has been emphasized in Meier (1976). (28) Aflākī (1976)(trans. [2002], p. 42). The degree to which the ‘urs survived near to its early Khurasani geography in Afghanistan remains uncertain. In the first half of the twentieth century, ‘urs festivities, complete with songs and processions, were described as being popular in western Afghanistan in S.I.A. Shah (1928), pp. 98–9. However, a later source reported that in the 1970s Sufi shrines in the Kabul region held no special festivities associated with the saints’ death anniversaries. See Einzmann (1977), pp. 42, 88–90. (29) Karrar (1992), p. 161. (30) Shoshan (1993) and Taylor (1999). (31) Berger (1970) and Biegman (1990). Like the ‘urs, prophetic mawlid festivals may also have been occasions on which models of sexuality and gender found expression. Tapper and Tapper (1987). (32) A full translation of Ibn Khallikān’s description is found in Von Grunebaum (1958), pp. 73–6.

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual (33) On the history of the Prophet’s mawlid, see Kaptein (1993) and Knappert, ‘Mawlid’ in EI2. (34) Tabaqāt-e Akbarī, cited in Yasin (1958), p. 60. (35) Asani, ‘The Bridegroom Prophet in Medieval Sindhi Poetry’, in Mallison and Entwistle (1994). (36) Abu-Zahra (1997), pp. 94–5, 142. (37) Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich (1960) vol. I, 55, 83, 114. On the mawlid of the Prophet in Algeria, a special sweet basket-shaped pastry called fanīd was sent from grooms to their prospective brides. (38) Savage-Landor (1902), pp. 287–9. (39) Bellamy, ‘Sex and Society in Islamic Popular Literature’, in al-Sayyid-Marsot (1979) and Kugle, ‘Haqiqat al-fuqara: Poetic Biography of “Madho Lal” Hussayn’, in Vanita and Kidwai (2000). (40) Chittick (1992). (41) Ibn ‘Arabī (1988), pp. 269–84. (42) Ibn ‘Arabi (1971), pp. 96–8. (43) Avery (2004) and MacDonald (1901–2). (44) ‘Abd al-Rahman Jāmī (1955), p. 590. (45) In this respect, at the ‘urs it is the saint himself who is symbolically represented as the groom whose final encounter with God, as the divine bride, is being re-enacted on the anniversary night of his death. (46) Baqli (1997), pp. 59, 88. (47) Mawlānā Jalāl al-dīn Muhammad Balkhī [Rūmī] (1958), lines 1435–7, p. 58. Author’s translation. (48) Fletcher, ‘Ahmad Kāsānī’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica. (49) Murata, ‘The Mysteries of Marriage’, in Lewisohn (1992). For wider surveys of these themes, see Schimmel (1996) and Hoffman-Ladd (1992). (50) Eaton (2003), p. 166. (51) Amīr Khusraw (1957), pp. 63–4, cited in Chaghatai (1968), p.131. (52) S. Maneri (1986), pp. 143–4. Page 23 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual (53) Awliya (1992). (54) Jamālī (1893), p. 83. (55) Ibid., pp. 73–4, 76. (56) Manjhan (2000), p. 207. (57) N. Ahmad (1956) and Husain (2000). On earlier Arabic studies of scents, see Levey (1967). (58) Husain (2000), pp. 131, 135. (59) On Akbar’s attendance in 1579, see Nizam Bakhshi (1975), pp. 78–9. For Jahangir’s own account of the Ajmer ‘urs of 1615, see Jahangir (1909–14), vol I, p. 297. (60) ‘Abd al-Sattār ibn Qāsim Lāhawrī (2006), p. 134. (61) Ibid., pp. 248 and 261. (62) Akbar’s death day was 13 Jumādā II, with the two majlis in question dated 12 Jumādā I (with editorial note that the original ms recorded Jumādā II) and 6 Jumādā II. The first of these incidents describes the ‘urs as being that of the’arsh-āstānī, the posthumous eponym for Akbar. (63) For translated accounts of several of the ‘urs of Mumtāz Mahal in Agra, see Begley and Desai (1989), pp. 47–124. On the ‘urs held in eighteenth-century Delhi in honour of famous saints such as Qutb al-Din, Torkmal Biyabani and other figures, see Dargāh Qulī Khān (1993), pp. 53, 55–6, 58–9. (64) Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābādī (1939), p. 72. (65) Ernst (1992b), p. 224. (66) Muhammad Sādiq Dihlawi Kashmīrī Hamadānī (1988). (67) Ibid., pp. 24, 91, 101. (68) Ibid., pp. 44–5. (69) Shaykh Allāh Diga Gn Shaykh ‘Abd al-Rahīm Chishtī (2006), p. 199. (70) ‘Abd al-Haqq al-Dihlawī (1977?). (71) Ibid., p. 225. (72) Ibid., pp. 22–6. (73) Ibid., p. 23. Page 24 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual (74) Ibid., pp. 261–2. (75) Smith and Ernst (1993), Sirriya (1978), and Taylor (1999). (76) Ernst (1993) and Ernst and Lawrence (2002), pp. 90–8. (77) Storey (1927–71), vol I, pt 2, pp. 1017–18, 1054. (78) Nassau Lees and Ahmad (1855). Thanks to the Royal Asiatic Society for providing access to this rare edition. (79) Khāksār Sabzawārī, Sawānih (Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta, Curzon Collection, ms 85). I am grateful to Carl Ernst for providing me with a photocopy of this manuscript. (80) Ibid., f. 371. (81) Ibid., f. 91. (82) Heffening, ‘urs, EI2 and Savage-Landor (1902), vol. I, pp. 192–203. (83) Sabzawārī, f. 18l. An eighteenth-century Mughal painting of a grand Muslim wedding showing many similarities to Sabzawārī’s account of the ‘urs is found in Goetz (1930). (84) Dargāh Qulī Khān (1989). (85) Neville (1996), p. 39. (86) Bahrī, ‘‘Arūs-e ‘irfān’, Salar Jang Library (Hyderabad), ms Tas. 114. This text comprises Bahrī’s Persian rendering of the earlier Dakani version entitled Man Lagan. (87) For Shāh Musāfir’s complaint, see Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābādī (1939), pp. 88–9. (88) On dancers’ associations with other religious institutions in the Deccan, see Kadam, ‘The Dancing Girls of Maharashtra’, in Feldhaus (1998). (89) Kadam (1998), p. 66. The author also records the presence of troops of such dancing girls in nineteenth-century Aurangabad. (90) R.A. Ansari (1983), p. 663. (91) Khwāja Ghulām Husayn Khān (1999), pp. 549–59. (92) Jaffur Shurreef (1991), pp. 160–3, 175–6. (93) Shīr ‘Alī [Afsūs] (1871). On Egypt, see Abu-Zahra (1997), p. 115. Page 25 of 26

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The Migration of a Muslim Ritual (94) Manāqib-e Hāfiziyya, p. 131, cited in Nizami (1985), p. 672. (95) Quoted in Qadri (1998), pp. 95–6. (96) Shaw (2002). (97) Lewis, ‘Zar in Context: The Past, the Present and the Future of an African Healing Cult’, in Lewis, Al-Safi and Hurreiz (1991) and Pâques (1991). (98) Basu, ‘Drumming and Praying: Sidi at the Interface between Spirit Possession and Islam’, in Kresse and Simpson (2007).

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History

Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History Nile Green

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.003.0017

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the migration of large numbers of Afghans into India/ Pakistan during the medieval and early modern periods. By drawing on a large number of Persian histories of the Afghans written in India, it argues that it was in the cosmopolitan cultural mix of the Indian diaspora that an ‘Afghan’ identity was first created by drawing on and adapting models of history and identity from high prestige Muslim groups in India. With the Afghans’ absorption into the Mughal empire earlier patterns of accommodation to the Indian environment were overturned through the writing of history, whereby the Afghan past and present were carefully mapped through the organising principle of genealogy. While the Afghan religious world was being re-shaped by the impact of empire, in response tales of expressly Afghan saints served to tribalise the ties of Islam. With the decline of Mughal power, the collective ‘Afghan’ identity of the diaspora was transmitted to the new Afghan state, where the relationship of this tribal template of Afghan authenticity to the non-Pashtun peoples of Afghanistan remains the defining controversy of national identity. Early modern migration is thus seen to have longstanding effects in the present day. Keywords:   Afghanistan, Afghans, Pashtuns, India, Pakistan, South Asia, migration, Indo-Persian, tribe, Mughal, sainthood

Relocating Afghan History This chapter turns towards the Afghan tribal communities that moved widely across early modern India as one of the various coalitions, factions, and ethnicities that came into being in this period. This notion of ‘coming into being’ Page 1 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History refers to the process of increasing collective self-consciousness, boundary formation, and historical reflection by which new communities were defined among the pluralistic and cosmopolitan spaces of India. As a case study of the intersection of mobile peoples, memory spaces, and texts, the chapter explores the roles in this process of itinerant ethnogenesis of Sufi blessed men and remembered saints who alternatively undermined or sustained the creation of an Afghan collective identity. If the early modern Afghan diaspora in India has often been treated as separate from the greater narrative of Afghan history,1 until at least the eighteenth century it was among the Afghan courts and prosperous tribal settlements of India that the fulcrum of Afghan history was to be found as Afghans migrated from the northwest towards the greater opportunities of Hindustan and the Deccan.2 The diasporic communities they founded in India are central to any study of the inter-regional (p.66) and inter-ethnic interactions shaping Indian and Afghan history, for it was among this diaspora that there emerged the earliest historical works expressly devoted to a people calling themselves ‘Afghans’. In this period, the term ‘Afghan’ effectively denoted (and, as we will see, served to consolidate) membership in the mobile Pashtun tribal clans and their subsequently disparate genealogical lineages.3 Marginalizing to the periphery of either Afghan or Indian history, the writings produced by and for these Afghans in India between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries risks turning history on its head. For it was in the Indian spaces of this diaspora that many features of the Afghans’ sense of their historical identity crystallized. Read in relation to their places of writing and reception, we will see the ways in which such texts of memory and identity served to define limits between self and others that were stamped on the living present by the heavy imprint of the past. Taking shape in writings that were to influence successive generations of Afghans, these definitions wrought weighty and durable casts of identity. In written terms at least, the historical consciousness of the Afghans took shape amid the experience of migration to India and the encounter there with forms of social, religious, and political organization that differed from their own, including larger-scale formations—cosmopolitan and imperial—that shook the social foundations of these diffuse bands of tribesmen. Though such pressures could be contained during the period of Afghan political supremacy in northern India under the Afghan Lodi and Sur rulers of the fifteenth and sixteenth (p.67) centuries, the Afghans’ defeat and gradual incorporation into the Mughal state after 1555 brought a new urgency to questions of Afghan self-definition.4 Stretching from independent Afghan rule to defeat, incorporation, and the postimperial realignment of an Afghan ‘people’ and its others, the period surrounding the Afghans’ encounter with the Mughal empire may for these reasons be seen as the formative period of Afghan history, both as process and conscience. In all its wealth and complexity, it was early modern India that was the setting for this process of ethnogenesis, of the gradual differentiation and Page 2 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History discovery of a collective Afghan self from amid a plethora of other forms of identity. In examining these processes, this chapter hopes to demonstrate the historical contingency of the Afghans’ self-identification with the tribal system as it emerged in the particular circumstances of their diaspora in India.5 Given the commentary that has accompanied the semantic expansion of the term ‘diaspora’ to include much that might instead sensibly be described as processes of migration, it is with (p.68) some deliberation that this term is used here.6 Certainly, the Indo-Afghans do not mirror such ‘classic’ diasporas as the Jews of the Roman empire or the African slaves of the Atlantic world. Yet in different forms, such criteria as coercion, boundary maintenance, and ‘diasporic consciousness’ were important features of the movement of Afghan hill-dwellers to the plains of India. Fearsome inter-Afghan competition for grazing land among rival clans formed an important backdrop to resettlement, only after which is there evidence of the emergence of a consciousness of commonality and community with other tribesmen as fellow ‘Afghans’. Ecological factors also contributed to the affiliation of Afghans with the overland horse trade and itinerant soldiering. Although we cannot point towards an agency of one-sided ‘oppression’ behind the Afghans’ migration, their movements were nonetheless inextricably bound to the violence of competition for pasture, trade, and military employment. If the following pages refrain from employing the expression ‘diaspora consciousness’, then this chapter hopes to make clear the importance of something like such a mentality to the formation in India of an Afghan historical identity. As we will see in the following pages, the early histories of the Afghans represented an attempt to articulate an identity among categories drawn from the encounter between the Afghans’ own forms of social organization and the cosmopolitan environment of India. The emergence of an emphasis on tribal affiliation over and against other forms of social alignment and organization formed the most enduring and effective of boundary markers, structured as it appeared to be in the irrefutable fact of birth. In reality, of course, the tribal system was more fluid and absorbent, a fact that Afghan genealogists would often wrestle with in the texts they produced over the centuries to try to trace identity against the effects of migration. The specific temporalities underlying the formation of this tribal attitude are explored in the later sections of this chapter, founded as they were in the changing political conditions that underwrote the repeated shifting of boundary marking between the Afghans and the pluralistic spaces they inhabited in India. Though the following (p.69) pages do not attempt to over-interpret the data to reflect that other taxonomic hallmark of a diaspora—‘homeland orientation’—it is fair to say that the Afghans in India did maintain (even create) a sense of their original ‘homeland’ (watan). Its value, though, was regularly recalculated against an index of the Afghans’ changing fortunes in the geographies of their diaspora.

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History Although movement from the early Pashtun habitats in the Sulayman mountains to the west of Punjab into the fertile plains below is probably as old as Indian history itself, the establishment of Afghan political power in north India during the fifteenth century reflected a protracted period of migration in which Pashtun tribal groups were able to establish sustainable settlements throughout northern India, and later in the Deccan.7 Partly as a result of the patronage of migrant warriors and partly as a result of migration strategies that are as yet unclear, under the aegis of the Afghan Lodi (1451–1526) and Sur (1540–55) rulers, there emerged a large number of Afghan settlements across northern India (in Punjab in particular) with economic ties to the land.8 Though in many cases migration was a result of the prospect of military service, as we have noted, the search for agricultural or pastoral land was of similar importance. These factors notwithstanding, it was the hugely profitable ‘arms trade’ in horses that played the pivotal role in Afghan migration and subsequent state formation.9 For like other migrant groups in India, large sections of the early Afghan communities in India constituted a trading diaspora whose activities brought them into close contact with other trading groups who had little familiarity with either the religious idioms of Islam (and particularly Sufi Islam) or the social model of the tribe.10 (p.70) As a consequence of the success of these diasporic ventures, there emerged across northern India a class of Afghan notables characterized by headmanship of a fractured series of clans for whom economic distractions were often more powerful than the ideological drive towards collective identity.11 At the same time, by dint of its very success, this elite class interacted with a cosmopolitan Persianate culture in India centred on the older model of the court, or darbar, and its plurality of participants.12 With the Indian conquests of the ethnically Mughal (moghol, ‘Mongolian’) followers of Babur and Humayun, these cosmopolitan diversions of Afghan culture were brought to an abrupt end by the business of politics. Despite a short-lived revival of Afghan power under the Sur dynasty, in 1555 the Afghans were finally displaced by the Mughals as the dominant ethnic group in north India. The Mughals subsequently developed an ethnically and religiously plural imperial state structure, in relation to which the Afghan tribal elite was forced to redefine itself through accommodation or rebellion. Begrudgingly at first, increasing numbers of Afghan headsmen became servants of the new dispensation. However, their success was to vary considerably under different Mughal rulers as the Afghans vied for influence with the Persian (Irani), Central Asian (Turani), and Rajput factions of the imperial body politic.13

The Cosmopolitanism Contradictions of Islam in India An inescapable feature of premodern Muslim societies was the presence of the Sufi ‘blessed men’ whose embodiment of affection and knowledge had the potential to bring them the following (p.71) of any number of individuals from their surrounding societies, which ranged from sophisticated urban settings to Page 4 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History the closed worlds of the mountain or lowland village.14 The capacity of these blessed men to create networks of affiliation transcending, and in some cases contesting, the bonds and barriers of kin-based formulations of community served as one of the principal means by which migrant groups such as Afghans and Moghols were able to connect and embed themselves into the social and religious geography of their Indian environment, abundant as it was in the lineages and shrines of the Sufis. Their structures of affiliation in some cases transcending ties of kinship and ethnicity, Sufi lineage networks formed an effective means of social mediation and identity reconfiguration. Sufi affiliations thus represented an important register of the formation of social relations with the human world beyond kin. As both living blessed men and narratively remembered saints, the Sufis can be clearly seen at work during the period of Afghan pre-eminence in north India during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. And as we will see in detail later in this chapter, they played a crucial role in the construction of a diasporic Afghan identity in the seventeenth century as well. The impression that emerges from the Persian histories of the fifteenthand sixteenth-century Lodi and Sur period is one of the extensive integration of the Afghans into the Indian social and religious world. Although all written after the events they describe, such histories as the Waqi‘at of Rizq Allah Mushtāqī (d. 1581) and the Tarikh-e shahi of Ahmad Yadgar (fl. 1572–6) present the Afghans as having ties to numerous Sufis, living and dead, who were similarly revered by the non-Afghan groups around them in India. Surviving documentation from wajh-e ma‘ash and wajh-e amlak land grants presents the Afghan notables as keen patrons of non-Afghan Sufis and their shrines during the Afghan political heyday of Lodi and Sur rule.15 In many cases, this amounted to the patronage of a pre-existing sacred geography, particularly shrines of members (p.72) of the Chishti Sufi lineage, which had earlier been associated with the Afghans’ ruling predecessors in Delhi. The founder of the Afghan Lodi dynasty, Buhlul Lodi, was possibly buried at the tomb of the medieval Chishti saint, Nasir al-Din Chiragh-e Dihli (d. 1356).16 Inevitably, most of the evidence concerns the Afghan elite, but we can probably assume that with the vast plethora of saints and preceptors who were conceptually, if not necessarily practically, affiliated with the Sufi lineages in north India, there was even greater accommodation to the Indian socio-religious environment further down the Afghan social scale. Such supraethnic affiliations with non-Afghan saints show how the idioms and networks of the Sufis were able to transcend differences between Muslim groups and in doing so create new kinds of social and intellectual ties. Because such extended ties were also politically expedient, north India’s invaders were repeatedly keen to show their devotion to the tombs of the saints. When the Afghan Lodis were defeated by Babur in 1526, his first act on entering Delhi was to circumambulate (tawaf) the tomb of the Chishti saint Nizam al-Din Awliya (d. 1325) before going on to visit the shrine of Qutb al-Din Bakhtiyar (d. 1235) that had earlier been favoured by the Afghans.17 For the same reason, during the quarter-century Afghan interregnum after the ousting of Humayun in 1554, Shah Sher Suri made Page 5 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History a pilgrimage to the shrine of Mu‘in al-Din Chishti at Ajmer. As we saw in the previous chapters, his Mughal successors later followed this example assiduously. It would be an interpretive exaggeration to see the numerous land grants bestowed on non-Afghan Sufis by the Afghan rulers and their notables solely in the way of political expediency. The universalizing idiom of the Sufis was clearly attractive in its own right, not least to the learned and cultivated likes of Masnad-e ‘Ali Khawwas Khan (d. 1551), the chief courtier of the Afghan ruler Sikandar Lodi (r. 1489–1517). Sikandar himself was also a patron of numerous Sufis, including the immigrant Syrian Qadiri Sufi, Muhammad Ghaws, who settled in Uchch before dying there (p.73) in 1517. (Appropriately, in the centuries after his assassination, Khawwas Khan’s tomb in Delhi came to be regarded as a saintly shrine in its own right.) Among the numerous non-Afghan Sufis associated with the courts of the Lodis and Surs, perhaps the most important was ‘Abd al-Quddus Gangohi (d. 1537). ‘Abd al-Quddus drew numerous disciples from the Afghans of the Sur court, and it seems likely that although some of these associations were primarily of a devotional nature, others were of a more political kind.18 An important power broker in the Jawnpur region, ‘Abd al-Quddus addressed several letters to well-placed Afghan notables of the Sarwani clan, as well as a letter to the Afghan sultan, Sikandar Lodi.19 Though of a moralizing nature, and written by a Sufi who was frequently critical of those in state service, the correspondence nonetheless reflects the two-way traffic of patronage and piety. For in 1491, ‘Abd al-Quddus received a land grant from the Afghan notable ‘Umar Khan Sarwani, and similar grants were later accepted by members of his family.20 We also know of other Afghan notables becoming disciples of non-Afghan saints. Such was the case with the Afghan soldier and follower of ‘Abd al-Quddus, Dattu Sarwani (fl. 1546–7), who left an autobiographical record of his associations with a range of Sufis in north India.21 Shaykh ‘Ali Batni Mizyani, the paternal grandfather of the Afghan historian Shaykh Kabir Hayza, was another Afghan warrior in Sur service who exchanged the field of battle for the life of the dervish wayfarer by handing his sword over to Sher Shah.22 (p.74) This Shaykh ‘Ali Batni was a devotee of Shaykh Ma‘ruf, a Sufi in the lineage of Raji Hamid Shah Manikpuri, while the historian’s maternal grandfather, Khalilullah Batni, was a follower of Mir Sayyid Manjhan Rajgiri, the author of the hybrid Sufi poem in the Hindwi language, ‘Madhumalati’, that brought a Sanskritic cycle of tales of romance into an interpretive framework of Sufi theology.23 The Afghans were no strangers to the vernacular realms of Indian Islam. The Sufi blessed men pictured as affiliated with the Afghans in the Waqi‘at of Mushtaqi and other historians of the Lodis and Surs belonged to a much wider Indian world than that delimited by tribal formations of kinship, so presenting the Afghans as multiply connected to the cultural and ethnic mosaic of north India.24 Mushtaqi recorded an aetiological legend of the kind associated with Page 6 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History many other Indo-Muslim rulers in which the emergence of Afghan rule under the Lodis was linked with the power of the Chishti saints. He described the sultan Buhlul Lodi (r. 1451–89) as visiting the grave of Qutb al-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki (d. 1235) in Delhi and spending an entire night on the eve of battle standing bareheaded in prayer beside the saint’s grave. When morning came, a mysterious figure appeared from the world of the unseen (mardi az ghayb, presumably the saint himself), handed Buhlul a wooden stick (chubi), and commanded him to set off. After the ensuing battle, Buhlul returned for more help in his campaign to gain control over northern India, and the saint reassured him that he would look after his prayers (du‘a-ye tu bar mast).25 The story is striking in placing the earliest Afghan ruler in India in a relationship with a saintly figure whose cult and charisma was by no means limited to the Afghans, but extended to each of north India’s successive rulers. An interesting parallel can be found in the Humayun-nama of the first Mughal emperor Babur’s (p.75) daughter, Gulbadan Begam (d. 1603), which recounted a dream that the second emperor Humayun experienced after an unsettling encounter with an envoy sent by his Afghan rival, Sher Shah. In the dream, a green-clad (sabz pushida) saint appeared to encourage Humayun in his travails and to intimate victory by handing Humayun his staff (‘asa).26 The saint then predicted the birth of a son and heir, who should be named Akbar, who would, of course, become the most celebrated of all Mughal emperors, quite literally al-akbar, ‘the greatest’. Despite the similarity to Buhlul’s nocturnal encounter, what is striking about this dream is its intimation of the ties between sainthood and kinship that Mushtaqi’s account lacks. For when Humayun politely asked the saint who he was, the mysterious figure revealed himself as none other than Humayun’s own Sufi ancestor, Shaykh Ahmad (d. 1141) of Jam, the caravan town to the west of the old Timuri capital of Herat. The renowned Khurasani ‘Terrible Elephant’ (zhinda pil), Ahmad-e Jam, was an ancestor of Humayun on the side of his mother, Maham. In the dream, the saint also informed the emperor that his heir, Akbar, would pointedly instead be of the saint’s lineage (az nasl-e man khwahad shod), presumably of his paternal Timuri line.27 And so the saints claimed emperors as their own. Whether in life or in death, the operations of such blessed men were of a partisan nature, and Mushtaqi also recalled the non-Afghan Sufi Shaykh Sama‘ al-Din (d. 1495) blessing Buhlul’s son and heir, the Afghan ruler Sikandar Lodi. Here again, a saint was seen to obliquely predict a youthful ruler’s rise to power, doing so in accordance with a commonplace topos that would have been instantly recognizable to all those familiar with the ways of the saints, whether Afghan or not. Mushtaqi’s account is worth citing in full: When Buhlul died, all of the notables of Delhi wanted Miyan Nizam [that is, Sikandar] to become king, so he set off from Delhi and went to say farewell to Shaykh Sama’ al-Din. Miyan Nizam carried with him a commentary on the Quran and took it with him to the shaykh. But (p.76) he did not reveal his political claims (dawa‘) to the shaykh, and simply made his salaams, sat Page 7 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History politely and asked the shaykh to teach him. The shaykh then read the blessed fatiha and began teaching … When he finished, he said, ‘Know that God will bring good fortune (nikbakht) in both worlds (sara’i).’ Miyan Nizam asked the shaykh to repeat these words, and he said them again three times. Then Miyan Nizam hugged the book to his side and asked to be dismissed.28 Clearly, saintly affiliations were capable of reifying or transcending pre-existing social networks. For seen in this story is the sultan’s close connection with a saint from beyond the bounds of kinship. A similar story was told in the Tarikh-e shahi of Ahmad Yadgar, in which we read of Sikandar Lodi enthusiastically meeting the famous north Indian Sufi Jamali Dihlawi (d. 1536) upon the latter’s return from his travels and of the Afghan ruler sending him an obsequiously devotional poem.29 Such relationships of emotional and soteriological fealty could also be tied in with kinship and, as such, could be passed on through the generations, tying in perpetuity the big men of the Afghan tribes to the service of the softly spoken sons of the saints. We have already seen how Jamali’s own master and father-in-law, Shaykh Sama’ al-Din, was closely connected with Sikandar’s father and predecessor as ruler of Hindustan, Buhlul Lodi.30 According to Jamali himself, Buhlul had visited Sama‘ al-Din at his lodge, had placed his head at the Sufi’s feet and sat formally before him (sar dar qadam-e hazrat-e ishan nahad va mutaqabil nashast).31 These narratives envisioned the Afghan rulers through the same historical imagination that shaped the annals of Indo-Muslim rulers belonging to other ‘ethnic’ groups. Persian-writing historians such as Yadgar and Mushtaqi by no means presented the Afghans as a unique tribal community separated from the wider Indo-Muslim society by allegiances to their own exclusive saints, but as active (p.77) and enthusiastic participants in the cosmopolitan Indian spaces of the shrine and court, spaces which both appropriately shared the same nomenclature of dargah. Like Sikandar, we are also told by Mushtaqi that the sultan’s brother Miyan Zabar al-Din counted many Sufis among his retinue, as well as the praise-singers and musicians (qawwalan wa sazandagan) necessary for any goodly gathering of Sufi enthusiasts. Wrapped in the urbane customs of Delhi, on Thursday nights Zabar al-Din regularly hosted musical gatherings (mahfils) at the shrine of the primordial saint of Muslim Delhi, Nizam al-Din Awliya.32 These ties of the Afghan sultans to saints outside the networks of kinship were mediated by access to a Persian literary sphere that the Afghan elite shared with other inhabitants of Hindustan. The court of Sikandar Lodi was a major centre of literary production in Persian, encompassing works of poetry, musical theory, and medicine, as well as writings of a religious character.33 Many among the latter were of an expressly Sufi kind, with the most notable among the literary-inclined Sufis attached to the court of Sikandar Lodi being the aforementioned Jamali Dihlawi.34 Like Amir Khusraw two centuries before him, Jamali straddled the roles of dervish and court poet, and among such Page 8 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History writings as his hagiographical Siyar al-‘arifin, he also composed a series of qasida poems in praise of the successive rulers of north India.35 Like ‘Abd alQuddus, Jamali was circumspect (if also rather more deferential) in this literary cultivation of friends in high places: he addressed no fewer than seven qasidas to Sikandar, before subsequent Mughal conquests demanded that he compose a further dozen in deference to Babur and Humayun. This flattery paid off, and Jamali’s son Shaykh Gada’i was later granted the office of sadr by Akbar. As we have seen, Sikandar, in turn, expressed his devotion to Jamali through the linguistic and literary medium of Persian. (p.78) In such ways, Persian literary culture formed a common discursive ground that Sufi acolytes and enthusiasts could share a cosmopolitan sphere promoting an ethic of fraternity and worldly transcendence that should be carefully distinguished from the embodied politics of the living blessed man and his partisan miracles. It is notable in this respect that the Lodi period was one of the great ages of Persian dictionary compilation, testament to the expansion of Persian among new groups of non-native speakers. Several years after Sikandar’s meetings with Jamali, a notable of the Sur clan, ‘Abd al-Rahim ibn Ahmad Suri (fl. 1519), abandoned the world to become a Sufi master in his own right and gathered a considerable circle of followers. Showing the symbiotic relationship of the Sufi idiom to its Persian medium, the result of ‘Abd al-Rahim’s spiritual endeavours was the compilation for his followers of a lexicon of Persian mystical terminology titled Kashf al-lughat (The Unveiling of Language). The Kashf al-lughat also reflects the literary efforts of the later Afghan saintly memorialist and follower of the Chishti Sufis, ‘Abd Allah Khweshgi (d. 1694), who after a sojourn in the Deccan in Mughal service, returned to his home town of Qasur and spent his last years writing the Asrar-e masnawi (Secrets of the Masnawi) to explain the meanings of the Persian poetry of Rumi to the Afghan chiefs of the Khweshgi clan. Whether through dictionaries or other works, with the flourishing of literary Persian under the Lodis of the sixteenth century, the devotional ties of Afghan tribesmen to non-tribal Sufis were in many ways dependent on the mediation of the Persian written word. Amid this diasporic arena of mobile peoples, shared written languages and the shared moral and intellectual worlds to which they gave access were important ways of forging ties beyond those of kinship. Boundary markers of either a religious or an ethnic kind do not seem to have been prominent in these courtly spaces, in which linguistic and literary exchange both mapped and forged the cosmopolitan social networks of those gathered at court. As one of India’s richest ages of literary cosmopolitanism, the period of Afghan rule was not uniquely associated with Persian, and the Lodi court also patronized works in Sanskrit. Around the turn of the sixteenth century, members of the ruling Lodi clan commissioned (p.79) such Sanskrit texts as the Sulaimanccarita on the lives of the Judeo-Muslim prophets Solomon/ Sulayman and David/Da’ud, which with its courtly audience highlighted the story Page 9 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History of David’s seduction.36 Of similar broad appeal to men of taste and leisure was another of the Sanskrit works which was to appear under Lodi patronage, Kalyana Malla’s well-known Anangaranga (Theatre of Love), which would later attract the attention of that Victorian cosmopolitan and erstwhile Sufi, Sir Richard Burton. During the revival of Afghan rule under the Surs, the court contained not only Sanskrit writers but also a number of important Hindwi poets, witnessing important literary test cases in the rise of the new vernacular. One such poet was Shah Muhammad Farmuli, who upon being asked why he would not write in Persian replied that because his beloved was Indian (Hindi) and could not understand Persian (Parsi), it was only proper that he should express his love for her in Hindi.37 It was at the court of the Afghan ruler Islam Shah Sur (r. 1545– 54) a few years later that Mir Sayyid Manjhan composed in Hindwi his hybrid Sufi romance Madhumalati, with its heady concoction of Sufi symbols and Indic narrative.38 Manjhan’s Awadhi dialect became closely connected with the Sur court, with Madhumalati only one of several Hindwi works patronized by its notables; it has recently been suggested that the Mughals’ subsequent patronage of Brajbhasha literature reflected a deliberate rejection of the Awadhi style that they regarded as too closely associated with the Afghans.39 The Sufi and historian of the Indo-Afghans, Rizq Allah Mushtaqi, was himself a gifted poet in Hindwi and used numerous Hindwi terms in his Persian Waqi‘at. An account in the early seventeenth-century Tarikh-e Khan Jahani (The Khan Jahan’s History) of the Afghan saint Shaykh ‘Isa Maswani located this Sufi linguistic cosmopolitanism still closer to the Afghans. According to the text, Shaykh ‘Isa composed poems on the subject of divine unity (tawhid-e haqq-e ta‘ala) in Persian, Pashto, and Hindwi; short extracts from his writings in each of (p.80) these languages were included in the text.40 Another Afghan Sufi, Shaykh Bustan Baraich, was noted in the text as a poet in Pashto, besides his skills in Arabic.41 But despite the early blossoming of Hindwi, apart from a few isolated examples, a formal literature in Pashto had yet to emerge. When it did, it would appear way to the north amid the conflict with the Mughals for control of the Afghan ‘homelands’ east of Kabul rather than in the courtly settings of the diaspora.42 What is clear is the Afghan Lodi and Sur rulers’ affiliation with the cosmopolitan languages of the Indian court—Persian, Sanskrit, and incrementally Hindwi—rather than the Pashto dialects of their forefathers, which had in all probability already been abandoned by many of the Afghans born and raised in India. In the same way that after Babur’s arrival in India, the Mughals gradually neglected Chaghatai (Turki) in favour of Persian, the rootless and cosmopolitan character of Persian lent the language great importance to its Afghan patrons. Persian defied all rights of tenure; it subsisted in a circulating realm of books and conversations that enabled exchange and the new connections that brought; it had no owners. Like the Sufi conceptual world it helped sustain, Persian Page 10 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History transcended narrower formations of kin and linguistic community.43 Like the ties of Afghan disciples to non-Afghan Sufis in India, the Persian world of writing formed an important means of connecting Afghans to other social groups. In this way, the diasporic character of the Afghan communities in Hindustan and the Deccan was intimately connected to the decision of their elites to patronize Persian rather than Pashto as a signal of engagement with the wider world of India and its microcosm at court. The cosmopolitanism of Persian would sustain it among the Pashtuns for centuries after the fall of Afghan rule in India. Even with the consolidation of Pashto literature during the great age of Pashto letters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many Pashto writers remained bilingual figures closely affiliated (p.81) with the Persian tradition. Just as in the twentieth century, many ethnically Pashtun writers based in and around Kabul wrote in Persian rather than Pashto, so in the diaspora in India, the use of Persian was similarly recognized as granting access to a wider written world. There were nonetheless limits to the linguistic and religious mediation between the Afghans and their diasporic environment in India. The formal boundaries of Islam still needed to be affirmed, and the Persian histories tell us that certain popular festivals connected to the shrines of the saints—practices that joined Muslims and ‘Hindus’ into common religious practice—were regarded with official suspicion. If we can believe the moralizing tendencies of the religious scholar Mushtaqi, Sikandar Lodi prohibited fertility rituals at the shrine of the ‘martyred bridegroom’ Salar Mas‘ud Ghazi involving the parading of a spear (niza) amid a great procession.44 While it is unclear whether Afghans themselves were involved in the shrine cult of Salar Mas‘ud, we have seen that Afghans in the diaspora did affiliate themselves with Sufis belonging to India’s different communities. At the level of the court at least, these ties were cemented by the affiliation of Afghan tribal notables with the textual sphere of Persian, as the connection of the Afghans to other groups in India was at its strongest when the transcendental ties of the Sufis were mediated through what was in some senses a Persian public arena. A fitting example of this is seen in the Afsana-ye shahan (Stories of Emperors) of Shaykh Kabir, who, like other writers of Persian with pretensions to style and learning, decorated his text with numerous verses culled from such classical poets as Hafiz, Nizami, and Rumi, whose writings were among the most widely distributed Persian texts in India. In the complex social spheres that emerged in India between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, the clan became no longer the sole frame of reference for the Afghans. Though alternative bonds of loyalty and self-definition were offered by the pluralistic spaces of the court and the city more generally, devotion to non-Afghan saints and blessed men engendered patterns of affiliation beyond the tribe or clan, with shrine devotion in particular rooting Afghans (p.82) to their local geographies of settlement in India. Of course, saintly ties were not the only means of transgressing kinship, but they were the means that most preoccupied our learned informants. Other allegiances, including those between Page 11 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History friends and lovers, were similarly capable of crossing social boundaries. It is perhaps in this sense that we should understand the series of stories found in the Afghan histories of Mushtaqi and Yadgar devoted to transgressive love or marriage between members of different ethnic groups.45 Although these love stories all ended badly, their sheer narrative power no less than their evident popularity attests to their resonance for their audience. This was a period in which the emergence of cosmopolitanism—however vicarious its access through shared media of writing and speech—could test the limits of social cohesion among Afghans no less than other north Indian groups occupying the same geographical spaces.

Tribalizing Sainthood, Tribalizing History A prominent characteristic of the Persian histories patronized by the Afghans of the Mughal and post-Mughal periods was an obsession with the question of Afghan ethnogenesis.46 The earliest major example of this was the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, which subsequently proved to be the most influential of all accounts of the Afghans’ historical identity.47 In the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, we possess an important and subsequently extremely influential self-history or ethno-history of the Afghans whose composition was patronized by the pre-eminent Indo-Afghan notable, Khan Jahan Lodi (d. 1631). Its principal author, Ni‘mat Allah, was a professional news writer (waqi‘a-nawis) in Mughal service who seems to have been from an urban Irani (rather than an Afghan Pashtun) family of Herat with long-standing connections to the Mughals, although the work may have been cowritten by Haybat Khan Kakar, an Afghan attendant of (p.83) the Khan Jahan from the Afghan settlement of Samana in Punjab.48 Like other historical works of its period, the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani was also a collaborative work in other ways, having been based on information collected by a series of assistants and informants. Though its sections on dynastic history drew largely on earlier written works, the chief source for its accounts of the tribal past seems to have been oral traditions current among the Afghan diaspora at the turn of the seventeenth century. While reflecting more widespread oral ethno-histories, the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani nonetheless connected, codified, and perfected these traditions through the act of writing. As the common ancestor of a lineage of later historical texts written on and by the Afghans, the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani provides important insight into the social and mental world in which the historical identity of the Afghans was first articulated into a systematic whole, projecting the specific temporality of the text’s formation at the Mughal court onto both the past and future of Afghan history. It is in the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, for example, that we read the first full account of the Afghans’ ethnogenesis as descendants of the Jewish patriarch Ya‘qub (that is, Jacob), who migrated eastwards to Afghanistan, and of the subsequent conversion to Islam of Qays ‘Abd al-Rashid Pathan, the primogenitor of the Afghan tribes and clans. Qays was said to have been converted to Islam by the Prophet himself and to have fought alongside him during the conquest of Mecca Page 12 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History before travelling to the territories of modern Afghanistan and dying at the age of eighty-seven in the year 659.49 It is important to note that this was by no means a novel or invented history at the time of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani’s writing. Around the same time as the composition of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, a concise version of the Afghan ethnogenesis appeared in the Afsana-ye shahan of Shaykh Kabir (fl. 1626), and the story of Qays (p.84) had also been briefly sketched a few decades earlier in the A’in-e Akbari of the distinguished Mughal courtier, Abu’l Fazl (d. 1602).50 The story was also recounted under Mughal patronage by the Iranian historian Muhammad Sharif Wuqu‘i (d. 1595). The narratives in the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani therefore had precedents not only in the oral historical tradition of the Pashtuns themselves but also, in some cases, in the Persian historiographical tradition patronized by the Mughals. It was thus in the shadows of the grandiose historiographical projects of the Mughals that the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani made the first attempt to provide a systematic account of the Afghan past. As throughout the early modern history of the Afghans, the presence of the Mughals was in this way printed on the very existence of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani and its tutelary exposition of the Afghan way of life. For all its rhetoric of presenting the ancient and authentic history of the Afghan tribes, the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani was in this way a quintessentially diasporic text, formulating the historical memory of the Afghans’ sancestors and homelands in a genre, style, and language that belonged more truly to the cosmopolitan courtly spaces of Mughal India. Nonetheless, the text achieved its aims through what it presented as a distinctly Afghan way by recounting the genealogical history of each of the multitude of Afghan tribes and clans. For in the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, the tribe (tayifa) was presented as the acme of Afghan identity. Here was an attempt to stamp order onto the mobile Afghan world by weaving a weft of uneven patterns of social organization into a faultless kilim of historical narrative—a series of heroic yarns whose underlying warp was a perfected model of tribal genealogy.51 No longer the fragmented, discrete, and often antagonistic social units of the homeland, here in the diaspora these distinct groups were re-imagined as (p.85) parts of a coherent whole through the organizing principle of genealogy. Of course, the formulation of history in other regions of the Muslim world was also charted through such maps of the genealogical past in which living social formations were traced back into connection with the prophets, heroes, and sometimes villains of the Quran.52 Though this pattern was widespread in Islamic historiography in general, it took on a particular importance in tribal milieux. An interesting point of comparison with the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani and the later genealogical histories that it inspired is the Kitab al-ansab of the Saharan scholar Walid wuld Khaluna al-Daymani (d. 1797), dedicated to the ancestry (nasab) of the Znaga-speaking families of the Trarza region of Western Page 13 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History Saharan Africa. The text’s demonstrative ancestry similarly underwrote claims to political status. Like the authors of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, Walid wuld Khaluna also composed an account of the miracles of the saints of the Tashumsha tribal confederation.53 Once again, as we saw in Chapter 1, through the mediation of texts, genealogy was fused with geography to create spaces of belonging in a process that could work in parallel form with either Sufi or tribal genealogies. While the general context that surrounded the composition of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani is clearly to be located in Jahangir’s Mughal court, with all its rival incentives towards the demonstration of status, whether of nam or nang (fame or honour), in his Mir‘at-e aftab-numa (The Sun-Showing Mirror), the later Mughal prosopographer Shah Nawaz Khan (d. 1758) spoke of a more private cause behind the Khan Jahan’s project. According to this account, the Afghan notable Khan Jahan was incensed by an Iranian envoy claiming in Jahangir’s presence that the Afghans were descended from the jinn; so Khan Jahan Lodi patronized his eponymous history to prove otherwise.54 Such forms of Iranian hauteur were far from uncommon with regard to the mountain dwellers of the Indo-Iranian hinterlands. The Kurds, for their part, were also long regarded by urban Iranians as the descendants of genies.55 (p.86) In order to extrapolate the wider processes at work here, it is perhaps worth comparing the Khan Jahan’s genealogical response to the Afghans’ ethnic denigration with another early modern diasporic history, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. In his narrative, Equiano (d. 1797), a former slave and promoter of the ‘repatriation’ of slaves to Sierra Leone’s Freetown, responded to the scripturalist genealogy that Europeans used to justify the exploitation of Africans by identifying them with the cursed descendants of Ham, the biblical son of Noah who migrated to Africa.56 Equiano’s counterclaim was to argue that it was instead the patriarch Abraham who was the primogenitor of the Africans.57 Like the Afghans in India, the Africans of the Atlantic world were here reconfigured by writing into a vast biblical community of kinsmen. In both polemical encounters, we see the hegemonic requirement to define the self through what were (originally) the categories of the other. The very term Afghan—with its possible etymology in the Persian term for a raucous or lamenting cry (fughan)—hints at this appropriation of the language of insult. And like Equiano’s Christian Africans, for all their asserted independence, the Khan Jahan’s Afghans cannot be fully separated from the scriptural models of genealogy that defined the parameters of their interlocutors’ Islamic memory space—nor by this point in their history would they have wished to be. As Neil McHugh has written with regard to ethnic formation in the early modern Nilotic Sudan, ‘identification with an Arab lineage was not a choice—it was the only choice’.58

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History In the competitive encounter between the different mobile ethnic groups who converged at the Mughal court, such histories and counter-histories were inextricably bound to an early modern politics of appraisal of the self and denigration of the other.59 For what we see at court are forms of ethnic factionalism and their literary (p.87) iteration. As well as a self-aggrandizing response to such rivalries, genealogy also formed a means of understanding the contexts of ethnic plurality from which such rivalries arose. In the early modernity of Asia as of Europe, the wider world was sifted and assimilated through the filter of genealogies woven from the firm facts of scripture, whether Quranic or Biblical. In its hard form as revelation, it was written text that held the clarity and authority to render the world knowable. In the previous sections, we examined the capacity of Sufi affiliations to transcend the boundaries of kinship, along with the role of Persian as the linguistic and discursive amplifier of these supraethnic loyalties. This was by no means the only social capacity towards which the Sufi idiom and its social mechanisms could be directed. For as well as transcending kinship in the creation of alternative and sometimes self-consciously ‘Islamic’ models of community, with their powerful social and semantic resonance, the Sufi saints could also be attached to the same ethnic and kin-based formations that in other circumstances their affliations served to transcend or contest. For with all their consequence and fame, saints and the legends associated with them also acted as exclusivist badges of urban, regional, or ethnic pride in a manner not altogether dissimilar to the patron saints of medieval Europe.60 Sufi blessed men were also therefore allied to formations of collective identity, forming means of articulating difference between the distinct peoples and social groups identifying themselves as Muslims in the mobile and pluralistic spaces of early modern India. The Sufis central place in these cultural matrices is seen in the ubiquity of narratives of sainthood in a whole range of literary genres in Persian, from historiographical and geographical works to belle-letters, poetic anthologies, and, of course, hagiographies and treatises of Sufi doctrine proper. In both his physical and narrative presence, the living body of the blessed man or the shrine of the entombed saint served to visibly manifest these identity formations of belonging and memory. Working at a time when Afghan political fortunes had already been eclipsed by the rising star of the Mughals, the authors of the (p.88) Tarikh-e Khan Jahani in the 1610s sought to present a reading of history in which the past was at every point to be seen through the prism of tribal genealogy. Pouring glory upon the founders of the primary Afghan tribes formed a key part of the text’s strategy of upholding the solidarity fostered by a tribal ethos in a period in which Afghan group identity had come under the combined threat of affiliation to the multiethnic Mughal state and the general experience of diaspora life. The remembered saints of the Afghans formed an important part of the text’s overall purpose, with their deeds taking up the entirety of the text’s extended final Page 15 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History section (khatima). In this section, the saints were all classified according to their affiliation with the Sarbani, Batni, or Ghurghusht tribes (tayifa), with tribal genealogy given exclusive precedence over the religiously based metagenealogy of the Sufi lineage. Scholars of premodern Muslim societies are accustomed to thinking of Sufi lineages (turuq) in terms of the spiritualized transcendental genealogies (silsila) described earlier, which tied initiates and devotees to a religious community with bonds of loyalty beyond those defined by kinship.61 Such Sufi genealogies linked the initiate or devotee (murid, mukhlis) into a relationship with both dead saints and their living representatives and did so in such a way as to demand unflinching loyalty to the living Sufi master. Not surprisingly, Sufi lineages for this reason sometimes laid the foundation for successful political movements and social factions, most famously among the Safawi Sufi royal dynasty and its tribal followers in early modern Iran.62 But in contrast to such religious visions of the collective social identity of a Sufi ‘tribe’ or ‘people’ (tayifa), as the followers of the Sufis were also often termed, the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani presented the Afghan saints solely in terms of their affiliation to a Pashtun tribe (also tayifa). Perhaps this should no longer surprise us, given the (p.89) perspective emerging from the study of other mobile Muslim groups of the period. It has recently been argued that the title of the semi-legendary founder of the great Anatolian Bektashi order, Haji Bektash, reflected less an organized Sufi ‘order’ of the kind that was named after him than his membership in the Bektash Turkic clan.63 Historians of Central Asia have also recently paid a great deal of attention to the relationship between tribes and saints.64 In any case, in India we see a vision of the Afghan past that, from its spatial vantage point under Mughal rule in the Deccan, fiercely contradicts what we have seen of the earlier pre-Mughal picture of Afghan affiliation to a series of non-Afghan Sufis. Affiliations and identities were changing. What we see in the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani is a coalescing of Sufi and tribal terminology, exploiting the semantic range of the term tayifa to blur the boundaries between religion and kinship as defined by a blessed man’s tribal and Sufi lineage. According to this model, allegiance to a saint could offer no meta-genealogical ties capable of challenging the ties of a saintly devotee to his tribe or clan. For the many Afghan saints of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani were not identified with such famous Sufi tayifas as the Chishtiyya, Naqshbandiyya, or the Qadiriyya. Instead, the saints’ lineage was identical to their Afghan tribe or clan. The saints were thus classified primarily as belonging to the tribal tayifas of the Sarbani, Batni, and Ghurghusht and, within them, to given clans. Even such well-known saints as Qutb al-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki of Delhi (d. 1235)—usually regarded as one of the founding saints of the Chishti Sufi lineage—were presented as members of tribal tayifas, in this case the Sarbani tribe (thus: Bakhtiyar Kaki az jumla-ye in tayifa budand).65 This is not to suggest that the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani contains no stories of Afghans associating themselves with Page 16 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History non-Afghan blessed men, for Sikandar Lodi was at one point described as visiting the well-known Sufi, Yahya (p.90) Maneri (d. 1380).66 But such dispersed episodes did not affect the tribal presentation of the saints of the Afghans in the text’s long concluding khatima devoted to the saints and the other episodes seem in any case to have been taken wholesale from earlier histories. The Tarikh-e Khan Jahani’s expressly tribal presentation of the Afghan saints may have been connected to the conflict between the different models of identity and loyalty offered by tribal and Sufi models of genealogy. This was earlier illustrated by the history of the Sufi Rawshaniyya movement among the Afghans of the sixteenth century.67 Like more recent charismatic and millennial movements among the Afghans, the Rawshaniyya tried to subsume tribal identities and the allegiances that came with them into alternative social bonds based on transcendental ties to a Sufi-like religious leader. Seen as presenting a threat to tribal solidarity, the Rawshanis were swiftly and effectively persecuted by the Yusufzay tribesmen. When this movement, which Mughal imperial accounts described as the ‘heretical and deviatory sect’ (mazhab-e zadaqa wa ilhad), resurfaced under the founder’s son Jalala in 1581, it was again put down by Mughal soldiers loyal to Akbar.68 It is difficult to say to what extent the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani’s tribalized Sufi genealogies were a reaction to the rise and fall of the Rawshaniyya. At least as important was the wider political context that the patron and readership of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani shared with the Afghan followers of the Rawshaniyya, in which tribal loyalties were being tested by the emergence of the supra-ethnic Mughal imperium. Despite the close connection of the Afghan Khan Jahan to the emperor Jahangir, the history that he patronized contained accounts of the tribal genealogies of numerous Sufis that served to consolidate loyalty to the tribe rather than contest it. For this was not a rebellious text but a faction-forming one. It was concerned with fostering tribal solidarity within the particular context of Afghan competition for influence within the wider Mughal imperium. Its effect, however, was to project this tribal vision of social connectivity into every corner of the Afghan past. Its narratives achieved this by bringing Islamic (that is, Sufi) (p.91) affiliation within the folds of the Afghan tribe or clan by ensuring that each tribe (tayifa) dealt with in the text possessed its own band of saints. Tribal and religious identity were here presented as one, such that honoring the saint was identical with honoring the tribe. With the saint placed in the service of the tribe, what we see in the Tarikhe Khan Jahani is the role of sainthood in a conceptual (and indeed textual) tribalization of Islam triggered by the competitively cosmopolitan space of the Mughal court. In common with its presentation of the saints as the founders of Afghan tribes, the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani also described saints whose descendants were the subject of continued devotion by their fellow tribesmen.69 One example is Abu Ishaq Dawi, whose case is particularly interesting in view of the modern Page 17 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History anthropological literature on Pashtun Islam. For although Abu Ishaq’s ancestors were Arab sayyids (that is, descendants of Muhammad) rather than Afghans, both he and his heirs were said to be considered Afghans, as the saint’s maternal line came via the Afghan clan of the Dawi.70 The question of the status of such Sufis as sayyids has long been problematic for the Pashtun tribal system, showing the inconsistencies that social expediency brought to the abstract model of the tribe. We can read in the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani the story of Sayyid Muhammad, who travelled from Turkestan to settle among the Karani, Kakar, and Shirani clans (tuman). The headsmen of these clans later gave the sayyid a wife from each of their tribal sections, and from his union with these women, four distinct new clans emerged.71 The difficulties of where to fit the sayyids within the tribal structure were often glossed over in the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, with sayyid groups said to be acceptable by (p.92) passing themselves off as Pashtuns. It was against this background that the text recounted the story of the marriage of a young sayyid called Ishaq to a woman of the Shirani clan and the attempts of their offspring to be accepted by the rest of the clan.72 Such was the prestige lent to tribal affiliation that the status of particular saints as sayyids could be effectively disregarded in favour of a tribal lineage. Given the fact that claims to the bloodline of Muhammad were often an indispensable part of Muslim sainthood, this omission is all the more striking as a sign of the prestige of affiliation to an Afghan clan. A written exercise in ordering a social geography that abandoned the transregional models of transcendental genealogy offered by Sufi theorists and their own genre of history (the tazkirat or tabaqat), the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani instead championed the narrower genealogical ties of the Afghan tribes. In contrast to the way the term tayifa was usually used in connection with the Sufis, the text gave no sense of the loyalties acquired through the voluntary pledge of allegiance (bay‘at) to a blessed man who embodied a Sufi lineage. In the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, the term tayifa was instead used only to signify the tribe into which the saints and their followers were born, or in a few cases adopted. There was no place in this idealized tribal system for the voluntary Sufi pledge of allegiance. For a tribesman’s religious loyalties were presented as predetermined by his membership to an Afghan tribe or clan.

The Tribal Saint as the Anchor of Memory Amid the early modern Afghan diaspora more generally, tales of the saints played important roles in preserving cultural memory as groups of Afghans migrated from old habitats to new ones. The saint often acted as a narrative reference point around which the memory of other episodes or persons could cluster. Given the scale of Afghan migration into India, tales of the saints came to play a heightened role in preserving the collective tribal past as the Afghans travelled further and further from their ancestral habitats. In this way, a collective Afghan past was created in the depths of the diaspora by affirming (p. 93) a sense of Afghan commonality among members of different clans as being Page 18 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History ‘Afghans’ who shared an interwoven past and a common genealogy. It is in this sense of tying the memory of the saints to collective tribal history that we should understand the accounts in the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani and later Afghan histories of specifically Afghan saints acting as discoverers of wells, initiators of tribal customs, or instigators of migrations. Afghan saints were positioned in memory as the key agents of Afghan history. In numerous cases, saintly legends were used in this way to link tribes to their spaces of residence: texts and territories again. Saintly text summoned distant geographies of origin intended to unite the Afghans in their multiple spaces of dispersion in India. Given the large number of Afghan settlements established in India, by around 1600 making sense of their origins and their connections to earlier Afghan habitats was clearly important. As time passed, saints and the institutionalized commemorative forms of their shrines and texts forged a firm anchor for the tribal past in the texts and territories of the diaspora. These saints were also associated with aetiological narratives concerning the founding of villages or water sources. Origin stories connected with specifically tribal Afghan saints stood at the forefront of historical memory, helping to lend an autochthonous character to an Indian human landscape whose Afghan associations could in this way be presented as in some sense sui generis. For, if an Afghan saint was responsible for creating the local Indian landscape—its wells, springs, and settlements—then that landscape inexorably belonged to the Afghans; and the Afghans, in turn, belonged to it. In the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, saints were thus at times presented as the original settlers of new tribal habitats. Shaykh ‘Ali Sarwar Lodi Shahu Khayl was thus described as having settled at the qasba (small town) of Khalwar in Punjab, where his descendants made up the tribes (isbat) who were subsequently influential in the area.73 Such stories clearly belonged to an older repertoire that had developed from interclan competition for lands now lying within the borders of present-day Afghanistan, (p.94) for we should bear in mind that the Afghans were probably migrating westward as well as eastward throughout this period. It is in this sense that we should understand the story of Shaykh Sabit Baraich as instrumental in allotting the Baraich tribe (qawm) their lands at Shorawak to the west of the Sulayman mountain range. Having established a new home for his clansmen, the shaykh then miraculously ensured their protection from the poison of Shorawak’s snakes and from the hands of the neighbouring Baluch. His final miraculous act was to bring forth a spring for the Baraich and their herds.74 In a similar vein, the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani described how Shaykh Muti Khalil was appointed the head (sar-e halqa) of twelve families of the Sarbani clan,75 while Shaykh Bahdin Bakhtiyar lived on a mountain with two thousand Bakhtiyar families settled under his protection.76 Like Shaykh Sabit, Shaykh Bahdin also made a water source appear for his tribal protégés by striking (in a rare example of a Quranic metaphor among these stories) his ‘Mosaic rod’ (‘asaye musawi) down onto a rock, which split to reveal a spring. The social function Page 19 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History of these narrative associations of water sources with saints was manifold, ranging from establishing rights of access in the example we have just seen to maintaining the neutral ownership of springs through identifying them as the property of neighbouring saintly shrines.77 In the description of Kabul found in the great Mughal catalogue of empire, A’in-e Akbari, we thus read that the mountain springs that ran down into the city were located beside the shrines of Khwaja Hamu, Khwaja (p.95) ‘Abd al-Samad, and the footprint shrine (qadamgah) of Khwaja Khizr.78 These customs were also present in the diaspora. In the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, there is a description of the tomb in Lucknow of Malik Adam Kakar, an Afghan notable who came to be regarded as a great saint, as lying beside an important sacred well.79 As we have seen in Chapter 1, textual narratives were inseparable from the spaces they invoked, spaces which in the diasporic settings of the Afghan texts’ reception were nothing less than the locations of memory, lieu de memoire. These patterns are also seen in the Akhbar al-awliya (Reports of the Saints), which was written in the Indian south by ‘Abd Allah Khweshgi in 1666.80 Composed by an Afghan author far from home who was dispatched to the Deccan in Mughal service, the Akhbar al-awliya commemorated the saints of Qasur in Punjab, where its author was born and which had been an important Afghan settlement for several centuries by the time the Akhbar al-awliya was written. Of course, during this period of imperial relocations, this literature of displacement was by no means uniquely Afghan. A comparable example is the Ma’asir al-kiram that Azad Bilgrami (d. 1786) wrote on the divines of his north Indian home of Bilgram from the same Mughal outpost of Aurangabad in which ‘Abd Allah Khweshgi had written his Akhbar al-awliya.81 As we will see in Chapter 4, other Sufi works from the Deccan manifested similar ties to remembered northern homelands. Nonetheless, ‘Abd Allah Khweshgi’s literary activities do exemplify the connections between an Afghan Sufi commemorative literature and the sense of displacement experienced by Afghans moving around India in imperial service. Other Afghan texts were also later written in the diaspora that were devoted to the histories of specific tribal or clan groups that had settled in India. Accounts of patronal or ancestral saints often occupied an important part of these texts too. (p.96) To the east of ‘Abd Allah Khweshgi’s hometown in Punjab, in 1710 ‘Ali Muhammad Ansari composed his Tazkirat al-ansar (Commemorations of the Forerunners). In this account of the history of the Afghan settlement of Jullundur, the remembered past of the Afghan clans once again shared its pages with stories of the saints.82 For example, the Tazkirat al-ansar recounted the history of the Sufi Ibrahim Danishmand, his marriage to one of the daughters of the Pashtun clan of Barakzay, and his subsequent fathering of his own clan. The Danishmand clan that descended from this saint had migrated to Jullundur in Punjab during the reign of Sikandar Lodi in the fifteenth century.83 A later migration of Afghans to Jullunder was said to have been led by another Sufi Page 20 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History blessed man, Shaykh Muhammad Darwesh (d. 1671), whose descendants became the spiritual and political leaders of the Jullundur Afghans. Recounting tales of numerous other Danishmand Sufis, the text validated the history of the entire Danishmand clan through the deeds of the saints who belonged to their lineage, so tying together saintly and tribal memory for their mutual preservation. Yet in its comprehensive scope, the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani remains the most important of these histories. Presented in the text as the miracle-working champions of Afghan pride, the saints of the tribesmen reflected a stubborn sense of Afghan honour—the famous pashtunwali perhaps—maintained in the face of the Afghans’ defeat by the Mughals. One story in the Tarikh-e Khan (p. 97) Jahani thus concerned the modest dutifulness of the Afghan Sufi, Shaykh Wato Shuriyani Khweshgi, in serving for thirty years in the kitchen of the famous saint Khwaja Mawdud Chishti (d. 1139) at Chisht in the mountains east of Herat.84 Though none of the sons or deputies (khulafa) of Khwaja Mawdud recognized the qualities of the humble Afghan, before the master died, it was upon the Afghan Shaykh Wato that he chose to bestow his cloak (jaba) and so appoint him as his successor.85 Another story demonstrated the importance of wondrous signs of the miraculous in establishing the calibre of Afghan sainthood through an account of a group of villagers of the Kakar clan demanding a miracle from nine Sufis of their own clan. In response, the Afghan Sufis ordered their villagers to fill nine cauldrons with beef and water and set them over nine fires to cook overnight. When the cauldrons were ready, the Kakar blessed men climbed inside them and passed the whole night with the boiling stew. But in the morning, while the beef had disintegrated, the Sufis climbed cheerfully out of their cauldrons unharmed. Convinced by this fearsome display of God’s favour, their village clansmen promptly became their most assiduous disciples (halqa begush).86 Such extraordinary feats—the khariq-e ‘adat so frequently summoned in the text—were perhaps a deliberate stratagem aimed at reinforcing the pride of the struggling Afghans of the early seventeenth century through enhancing the reputation of their patron saints. If many of the stories in the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani summoned the memory of the tribal settlements of a largely pastoral society, as we have seen, it would be a mistake to regard the Afghan diaspora as being composed solely of wandering herdsmen and warriors. As we have noted, trade was an important factor in bringing the Afghans’ wealth in India, and we even know of several Afghan (p. 98) blessed men who were said to have been involved in trading activities themselves. Shaykh Bustan Baraich (d. 1593), who migrated from Roh to settle at Samana in Punjab, was one such saintly merchant; he was once accompanied on a seaborne trading mission to Goa by Ni‘mat Allah, the author of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani.87 Because the Baraich tribe was among the most important trading groups among the Afghans, it is tempting to speculate that Shaykh Bustan served in some way to sacralize their collective activities; the narratives told of Page 21 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History him certainly commemorated his trade missions. His ability to save his ship from being wrecked at sea also reflected legends associated with the saints of other Muslim trading communities. Given the wealth in trade and land of the leaders of the Afghan tribes and clans in India, it is important to recognize that the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani was the product of a highly prosperous diasporic tribal elite. Reflecting the importance of their blessed men, this affluence found spatial no less than textual expression through the lavish patronage of shrines to the Afghan Sufis. Located in Punjab, the shrine of Shaykh Muthi Kansi reflected the prosperity of the dominant clans while also echoing the imperial style of the Mughals. The description of Shaykh Muthi’s shrine in the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani testified to this opulence in its picture of rooms ‘fitted out with velvet, gold brocade and clothes hangers; and then there were also the costly Afghan [wilayati] carpets and kilims. There were the finest water-vessels and royal awnings; elegant cushions, silver bedsteads and superior bed-sheets were also spread out; marquetry chairs with coverlets were placed opposite.’88 The description serves as a fitting reminder of the strange contradictions of a text produced amid a diasporic circle of Afghan notables enjoying the richest spoils of empire and yet dedicated in large part to the memory of a marginal group of tribal shepherds and soldiers devoid of connections to any state system. Given the broader undercurrent in the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani of Afghan (religious, political, and tribal) integrity, it is significant that several saints were also presented as the progenitors of whole tribes or clans. Here it is important to recognize the role of prominent Sufis (often by the same token sayyids) as genealogical (p.99) brokers between the autonomous genealogy of the tribe on the one hand and, on the other hand, the scripturalist genealogies of prophetic ancestry that we have seen tying all of the ‘tribes’ or ‘peoples’ (aqwam) of the world into a common human ancestry traceable to the first man, Adam. Whether through an explicit bloodline in the case of sayyids, or else through the divine blessing (barakat) that all Sufis possessed, the figure of the saint marked a point of interface between local and pan-Islamic models of ancestry, forming the conceptual thread that tied different modes of social organization into a unified model of the world and its multiplicity. With regard to early modern Sudan, Neil McHugh has drawn attention to related processes by which Sufi blessed men acted as mediators between social institutions that were inherently conflicting, here the moral and political economy of the Funj Empire and the Arabo-Islamic norms of their influential and powerful neighbours. The Sufi blessed men ‘personified the convergence and mutual accommodation of opposing forces and … were often able to manipulate symbols to their own advantage as well as that of the larger community … [T]hey became brokers of power as well as of culture’.89 In literate contexts at least, in India by the seventeenth century, we find that almost all models of ancestry in the lands touched by Islam had already undergone this process of conceptual fusion in which genealogy and sainthood played so central a part. Among the Afghans, the most important case of a Page 22 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History saintly progenitor was Shaykh Bayt, the son of the ‘first Afghan’ and companion of the Prophet, Qays ‘Abd al-Rashid. Shaykh Bayt was regarded as the founder of the prominent Batni tribe, from which numerous other tribes and clans subsequently emerged, as detailed in a long section of the Tarikh-e khan Jahani devoted to cataloguing the tribal descendants (awlad) of the most important Afghan saints.90 In a further reflection of the interweaving of ethnogenesis and sainthood, Shaykh Bayt gave its name to the Lodi clan by handing bread to their ancestor Ibrahim and announcing the Pashto words ‘Ibrahim is the eldest’ (Ibrahim lo di).91 Interestingly, these saintly narratives were not always used to glorify ancestors. An account (p.100) of a child born of an illicit liaison between the daughter of Shaykh Bayt and Shah Husayn, a non-Pashtun ancestor of the sultans of Ghur, was recounted to explain the aetiology of the Ghilzay ethnonym as those ‘born of a thief ’ (Pashto ghil zay) in memory of the saint’s stolen daughter.92 Such genealogical connections between saints and tribesmen were not unique to the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani and can also be found in other Indo-Afghan texts. In the Tarikh-e Sher Shahi (Sher Shah’s History), completed in 1572 during the reign of Akbar, its author Sarwani drew attention to the place of Sufis within the folds of tribal genealogies, as seen in his description of the ancestry of the heads of the Sarwanis of Roh (sardar-e sarwaniyan-e Roh).93 These origin stories were also reflected in the traditional account of the origins of the Timuri branch of the Chahar Aymaq tribes of northwestern Afghanistan and Khorasan, as recorded in the medieval Persian hagiography Maqamat-e Amir Kulal. Here, the origins of the Timuri section were dated back to the marriage of the Sufi saint Amir Kulal (d. 1370?) to a daughter of the great conqueror Timur, hence the Timuri ethnonym.94 Back in India, in the later genealogical text Khulasat al-ansab, which was principally concerned with the origins of the Afghan Kuta Khayl clan, the eponymous ancestor of the clan was said to have been the saintly Shaykh Kuta Shihab al-Din, whose deeds (ahwal) the text recounted in some detail.95 As we have already seen, the eighteenth-century Tazkirat al-ansar ascribed similar saintly origins to the Afghan Danishmand clan in Punjab.96 Other saintly aetiologies were recorded in later ethnographic sources. In Afghan settlement (p.101) areas of the Derajat of western Punjab, the saint Sakhi Sarwar (d. c. 1291?) was held to have taken three wives from a royal, tribal, and sayyid family,97 whereas we hear a similar genealogical narrative from another early ethnographic source describing how the saint Musa Nikka was seen as the ancestor of the Waziris.98 As with our search for the ritual siblings of the ‘urs in Chapter 2, for the most important point of comparison for the Afghan narratives we must look outside India to the role of saintly genealogical legends among the Muslim tribal communities of Central Asia. Such ethno-historical traditions often associated a Sufi with the conversion of a tribe or its founder, as with the conversion of the Golden Horde by the semi-legendary Baba Tükles.99 Numerous Turkoman tribes Page 23 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History also maintain ethno-historical traditions relating their ancestry back to a Sufi saint whose shrine often formed the primary pilgrimage site for the tribe or clan in question.100 In the more cosmopolitan Indian environment, it was once again the Mughals, those other migrants to the opportunities of the south, who provided the Afghans with a set of rival narratives, having carried with them from Central Asia similar ethno-historical narratives punctuated by the deeds of their own saints. This self-conscious hauling of history into the diaspora is seen to best effect in the famous Tarikh-e rashidi of Mirza Muhammad Haydar Dughlat (d. 1551), which reflected the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani in its account of the conversion to Islam of the Mughal ancestor and ruler of eastern Turkestan, Tughluq Timur Khan (r. 1359–63), at the hands of the Sufi Shaykh Jamal alDin.101 Such saintly conversion narratives were also related to certain Afghan clans, and in the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, we read that it was through Shaykh Muhammad Sulayman that the Farmali clan was converted to Islam (ba-sharaf-e bay‘at-e (p.102) islam musharraf shoda-and).102 But by promoting at the Mughal court the legend of their ancestor being converted to Islam by the Prophet himself, the Afghans were able to produce the trump card. The pluralistic spaces of the diaspora constituted a competitive environment in which genealogical and ethno-historical narratives served as bearers of both memory and pride. For all the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani’s insistence on the distinction and difference of the Afghans, the fact remained that its celebration of the parochial and tribal was patronized in the same courtly context that had earlier been responsible for the Afghans’ close engagement with the cosmopolitan literary and religious arena of Hindustan. The difference, of course, was a reversal of political conditions, rendering the Afghan patron of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani a servant at another’s court rather than the master of his own. Yet like the Afghan-ruled Lodi and Sur courts before it, the Mughal court was no less a location for cosmopolitan encounters and exchanges. At precisely the same time that the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani was being completed, moulding the Afghans’ remembered past into the textual norms of Persianate ‘historiography’, or tarikh, the Hindu poet Keshavdas (fl. 1600) in 1612 was reshaping the rules of Brajbhasha kavya literature in his Jahangirjascandrika (Moonlight of the Fame of Jahangir) under the influence of the Islamic idioms of the same court.103 The Jahangirjascandrika was the earliest Brajbhasha poem to be written in praise of a Muslim ruler and also included panegyrics to a series of other members of the court; among these praiseworthy paragons was the Khan Jahan himself!104 The champion of Afghan clannishness was here praised in the verses of a Hindu court poet. Indeed, one of the most radical examples of Afghan cultural integration in India occurred in the Khan Jahan’s own lifetime in the writings of the bhakti poet Raskhan (fl. 1584 or 1614), whom tradition identifies as an Afghan but whose Hindwi poetry was written entirely in praise of the god Krishna.105 Written in the cosmopolitan (p.103) space of the court, even the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani was not wholly Page 24 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History consistent in its iteration of tribal ties, for despite its rhetorical focus on the integrity of the tribal system, a number of stories lifted from earlier histories hint at Afghan accommodation to the multiple religious geographies of India. These contradictions were perhaps symptomatic of a wider tension among the Indo-Afghans, held taut between the maintenance of the tribe and accommodation to the other groups and norms around them.

The Naqshbandi Ascendancy: Afghan Interactions with the Mughals’ Blessed Men The desire to affiliate Sufis with particular social or ethnic groups was by no means unique to the Afghans. In the competitive early modern context in which the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani was composed that witnessed the loss of Afghan political power in India, the crucial point of comparison is again with the blessed men associated with the Mughals. In a textual venture of connecting the Mughal rulers to their subjects through fellow association with the same shared saints, at the court of Akbar the sixteenth-century Persian court text A’in-e Akbari had enumerated the great Muslim saints buried in the soil of the Mughal realm alongside the emperor’s other subject peoples and possessions.106 But in addition to these cosmopolitan Sufi affiliations, the Mughals also aligned themselves with more partisan supernatural guardians devoted solely to the protection of the Mughals’ group interests as an ethnic faction like the Afghans. These figures effectively comprised the many Naqshbandi Sufis who followed the Mughals into India and affiliated themselves with Central Asian Turanis and Moghols in Mughal imperial service.107 Read from this angle, legends of the saints provide great insight into the inter-Muslim rivalries of early modern ethnic faction politics. A convincing example of such ethnic affiliation is seen in an account in the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya (Naqshbandi (p.104) Conversations) concerning the Naqshbandi migrant from Bukhara, Shah Palangposh (d. 1699) (see Fig. 3.1). In this narrative, which concerned events that took place only a few decades after the writing of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, Shah Palangposh was said to have employed his powers to help one of the commanders of Aurangzeb’s ‘army of Islam’ (lashkar-e islam) to defeat an Afghan tribal rebellion near Hasan Abdal.108 In the text, the Afghans were described in no uncertain terms as the Mughal ‘enemy’ (ghanim). Despite the later prominence among the Pashtuns of Naqshbandi Sufi

Fig. 3.1 The Space of Settlement: The Central Asian Takiyya, Aurangabad Courtesy of Nile Green

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History families (particularly of the Mujaddidi line), it is notable that there is no mention in the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani of any of the saints of the Afghans being affiliated with the Naqshbandiyya.109 Given the partisanship of immigrant Naqshbandi blessed men (p. 105) with the Mughals, the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani’s concern for a similar band of Afghan supernatural patrons is unsurprising. For in this imperial context, Indo-Muslim histories often spoke in terms of saintly ‘armies of prayer’ (lashkar-e du‘a).110 Yet in stark contrast to this stately trope of the saintly army, the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani preferred what was clearly regarded as the more indigenous ideal of the tribe or ta‘ifa.

Given our larger enquiries in this book into the role of Sufis in the settling of different Muslim communities in India, it is worth examining the process by which the Afghans became affiliated with the Naqshbandiyya who had initially been predominantly linked in India with the Moghols. This development is also illustrative of the processes through which Afghan identity evolved in negotiation with the cosmopolitan pressures of diaspora and empire. For, in the generation after the composition of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani and its model of tribal sainthood, from the middle of the seventeenth century the Afghans began to affiliate themselves to the lineages of Naqshbandi Sufis. The living blessed men and remembered lineages to which the Afghans connected themselves were not the Naqshbandiyya in its Central Asian form, but the branch lineage founded in north India by the ‘Islamic renewer’, or mujaddid, Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624). In a reflection of their connection to Babur and his Timuri ancestors, Central Asian (Turani) Naqshbandi Sufis had begun to migrate to India in the decades after Babur’s conquest of Hindustan in 1526. Waqf land endowment documents from Kabul demonstrate the fiscal and institutional processes by which this imperial Sufi expansion was made, with Mughal notables endowing a Naqshbandi madrasa in Kabul soon after the city became Babur’s capital.111 It was from their stage post in Kabul that, like the Mughal vanguard before them, Naqshbandi Sufis began to expand into India, training new members in Kabul to attend to the ethnically Moghol notables moving southward in increasing number. We should not make the mistake, however, of seeing the madrasa’s Kabul setting as unproblematically ‘Afghan’. On the contrary, this was a Mughal establishment in what was briefly the first Mughal capital. The most (p.106) important Naqshbandi figure in this movement down from the highlands to Hindustan was Baqi Bi’llah Birang (d. 1603), a shaykh belonging to the family of the great Central Asian saintly power broker, Khwaja Ahrar (d. 1490). After Baqi Bi’llah’s training in Kabul, his move to the new Mughal centre at Delhi marked the beginning of the Indian transformation of the Naqshbandiyya, promoting affiliation to its blessed men among first- and second-generation Mughal Central Asians residing in India. As is well known, the great period of change in Naqshbandi history came through the work of Baqi Bi’llah’s disciple, the self-proclaimed mujaddid, Ahmad Sirhindi. Sirhindi’s letters to the Mughal emperor have been the subject of much scholarly discussion in recent decades, but here we wish to draw attention to the makeup of his fellowship of deputies (khulafa) as recorded in the Hazarat al-quds Page 26 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History (c. 1053/1643) of his disciple, Badr al-Din Sirhindi (born c. 1003/1594). In the Hazarat al-quds, we clearly see the imperial circle from which many of the mujaddid’s closest followers were drawn. Some of these figures were originally from Kabul, such as Muhammad Sadiq Kabuli (d. 1609), who, like the Afghan patron of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, was employed in the service of Jahangir before the latter’s elevation to the throne.112 More interesting was another of Sirhindi’s deputies, Hajji Khizr Khan Afghan (d. c. 1624). Celebrated for the beauty of his voice, which he used to recite the call to prayer and sing hymns through the night on holy days, Khizr Khan belonged to the diaspora Afghans of Banur in Punjab. From the Hazarat al-quds, we learn that it was he who began to bring the Afghans of the Punjabi qasba towns of Bajwara and Bahawalpur into the Naqshbandi fold.113 Sirhindi also recruited three close followers from Bark in the Afghan settlement territories between Kabul and Qandahar,114 among whom was Mawlana Ahmad Barki (d. 1617), a scholar (‘alim) who first learned of the mujaddid through a copy of his letters passed on to him by a merchant travelling from India. Through such figures, during the seventeenth century the Naqshbandiyya slowly began to expand (p.107) beyond its ethnically Moghol constituency to reach other social and ethnic groups in India. From his base at Sirhind in Punjab, the mujaddid was ideally placed to reach the long-established Afghan settlements of the region, while the Naqshbandis’ association with figures in imperial service also brought its masters to the attention of Afghans serving the Mughal state. In this way, Sirhindi’s charismatic reformulation of the Naqshbandi lineage involved the gathering of followers from a range of ethnic backgrounds beyond the original Moghol remit of the Naqshbandiyya in India, a reflection of the supra-ethnic Sufi affiliations we saw developing earlier under the pre-Mughal Afghan dynasty of the Lodis and again under the Surs. It also seems reasonable to suggest that with their earlier association with such millenarian figures as Bayazid Ansari and Sayyid Muhammad of Jawnpur, some Afghans may have been attracted to the Naqshbandiyya by Sirhindi’s millenarian persona in a period seeing widespread anxieties over the turning of the Muslim millennium in 1591. Like the Afghans themselves, in the circles of the mujaddid, the Naqshbandi lineage was itself transformed by its diasporic passage to India and its encounter there with a cosmopolitan social geography manipulated by the exigencies of empire. From the seventeenth century, the association of the Afghans with the Naqshbandiyya represented one of the key ways in which the religious and social formations of the Afghans were transformed in the diaspora during the later Mughal period. In the following centuries, the Naqshbandiyya would become an integral part of Afghan life, commanding tremendous influence at the Barakzay court in Kabul during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet at the time of the completion of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani around 1613, these developments were only just beginning. As far as the Khan Jahan was concerned, the Afghans had no need for such Naqshbandi interlopers and their Mughal Page 27 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History connections. Instead, as we have seen, the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani included a lengthy celebration of the Afghans’ own tribal saints, those far from cosmopolitan figures whose loyalty was owed to none but their kinsmen. With the fall of Afghan power with the Mughal conquests and the relegation of the Afghans to the status of one ethnic faction among the many competing for influence in the imperial system, these tensions became more prominent. Written (p.108) amid these tensions, the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani is eloquent testimony to the role of written memory in creating these divergent models of the relationship between self, space, and the others who share it.

Post-imperial Re-positionings: The Afghans after the Mughals In order to understand the consequences of the processes we have seen at the Mughal court, it is necessary to briefly examine some of the Afghan works sponsored after the decline of Mughal power during the eighteenth century. The Tarikh-e Khan Jahani itself became tremendously influential during this period. After its early abridgement under the title of Makhzan-e Afghani (Afghan Coffers), both works were duplicated by numerous copyists, with the Makhzan also at times being appended to later works of Afghan historiography.115 In some later manuscripts of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, the text was reorganized to conform to the needs with which its readers approached the work over the centuries in which it came to be regarded as the acme of Afghan history. One late eighteenth-century manuscript of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani included an appended tract on genealogy (kayfiyat-e shajara), including instructions on how to locate the particular clan in the text from which a reader understood himself to descend but lacked knowledge of its wider genealogical implications, so transforming the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani into a tool of individual self-knowledge.116 Amid the post-imperial turmoil of the eighteenth century, when new and selfconsciously Afghan states arose from the embers of the Mughal imperium, the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani took on new importance as questions of tribal affiliation gained greater prominence than ever. Thus it was that when a series of new histories of the Afghans were patronized amid the Indo-Afghan revival during the eighteenth century, they drew greatly on the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani’s by (p.109) then classic formulation of the Afghan past. This new generation of Afghan histories included the Khulasat al-ansab (Genealogical Digest), composed in 1770 by the Rohila leader Hafiz Rahmat Khan (d. 1774), and the anonymous Risala dar ansab-e Afghanan (Treatise on Ancestors of the Afghans) and Tawarikh-e Afghani (Afghan Histories).117 A number of other histories have also survived from this fertile period of Afghan history, writings whose titles are now as uncertain as their authorship.118 With the emergence of a Pashto prose literature in the eighteenth century, a Pashto version of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani was also presented as the first section of the important Tarikh-e murassa‘ (Jewel-Studded History) of Afzal Khan Khattak (d. 1747). By the nineteenth century, the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani also began to inform the emerging British colonial literature on the Afghans and was drawn on by Page 28 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History Muhammad Hayat Khan in the Hayat-e Afghan (Afghan Life) that he composed for the British administration in Punjab.119 Numerous manuscripts of the Tarikhe Khan Jahani were also collected by colonial scholars. As we have seen through the spread of the ‘Indian’ branch of the Nasqhbandi lineage among the Afghans in the decades after the completion of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, connections with non-tribal Sufis were an important feature of Afghan social and religious life by the time of the recovery of Afghan power under the eighteenth-century Rohila rulers. Such Sufis thus found their place in the post-Mughal histories written by or for the Afghans. By the time of this revival of Afghan rule in India, in the Khulasat (p.110) al-ansab of the Afghan ruler, Hafiz Rahamat Khan, of Rohilkhand to the north of Delhi in place of many of the tribal saints of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, Ahmad Sirhindi was now explicitly mentioned among the great saints connected to the Afghans.120 By this period, the Naqshbandis had fully infiltrated the Afghan religious imaginary and economy, testament indeed to the incorporation of the Afghans into the sacred geography of the Mughal Empire. In various places, the Khulasat al-ansab also mentions the Chishti Sufi lineage, as well as explicitly describing Afghan connections to the Qadiri Sufi lineage.121 Whatever the claims of the Khan Jahan’s history, it is unlikely that this pattern of Afghan affiliations to non-Afghan blessed men, which we saw developing earlier in the diaspora, had ever really disappeared. In reflection of what we saw in Chapter 2 of the roles of the ‘urs ritual in joining peoples to places, evidence for the continuing, if fraught, process of Afghan accommodation to the sacred geographies of India is found in an early eighteenth-century account of the tomb of the Afghan notable Mir Musharaf, near the shrine of Nizam al-Din Awliya in Delhi, which became the focus for celebrations of an ‘urs festival. According to the Muraqqa’-e Dilhi (Delhi Scrapbook), under the aegis of Mir Musharaf ’s son, the flower gardens surrounding his tomb were illuminated with lanterns, while the love songs of the qawwals (praise singers) who performed at the ‘urs made the tomb a favourite spot for Delhi’s lovers and dandies. In the extravagant language of Dargah Quli Khan, ‘The lovers and entertainers arrange to meet here [particularly] during the monsoon … Even if the foolish muhtasib were to pass by, he too would be intoxicated by the smells … These aromatic gardens make the people yearn for wine and when they are enraptured they begin to sing and dance’.122 Through such spatialized acts of commemoration, at the same time that the Afghans were negotiating there relationship with their Indian environment we see a dead Afghan tribal notable being ritually claimed as part of India’s sacred geography. As the eighteenth century moved on, Afghan relationships with Sufis (p.111) continued to mediate such acts of accommodation. At the height of renewed Afghan power in Rohilkhand in the mid-eighteenth century, so many non-Afghan Sufis were drawn by the promise of patronage to the Rohila capital of Farukhabad that the city received the nickname of faqirabad, the ‘city of fakirs’.123 Among the more famous figures in close contact with the Afghan Page 29 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History Rohila rulers and notables were such Delhi-based Naqshbandis as Shah Wali Allah (d. 1762) and Mirza Mazhar Jan-e Janan (d. 1780).124 In a letter that Shah Wali Allah sent to the Afghan Rohila leader Najib al-Dawla, we see a reflection of the earlier accounts of the saintly protection of the Afghans by the medieval saints of Delhi. For, like the medieval saints of the city resorted to by Buhlul and Sikander Lodi, Shah Wali Allah assured the Rohila leader he had mystically foreseen the defeat of both the Jats and Marathas at the hands of the Afghans.125 For all these suggestions of the inter-Islamic ties wrought by membership (whether actual or conceptual) in the trans-regional networks of the Sufi lineages, the ideal of the tribe was from then to retain its role as the bulwark of Afghan historical identity. The relationship between crises of identity caused by sudden shifts in status and the creation of an Afghan tribal historiography was made explicit in the Khulasat al-ansab. For its Afghan author, Hafiz Rahmat Khan, stated that the incentive for composing his own genealogical history came from the dangers he had seen in the settling in India of his own clan of the Kuta Khayl.126 Not only had their migration caused them to forget their ancestry, it had also led them to neglect the solidarity and sense of common community that such ancestral ties to other Afghan clans should foster: I saw that the majority of the high-born people of Afghanistan [wilayat] had become displaced [bija] from their homeland [mulk u watan]. They had settled in India and over the generations forgotten their genealogies [ansab], such that no-one could distinguish to whom (p.112) he was closer and from whom he was distant, but only knew that he was from this tribe [qawm] or that clan [khayl]. Since as fate had it, my ancestors had come and settled in India, I too followed them and came to settle there. For the rest of the Kuta Khayl it was more or less the same, such that none of them remained in the homeland itself.127 Such was the importance of affirming the ties of genealogy that in his attempt to textually sanctify the status of the Afghan tribes, Hafiz Rahmat looked beyond the older tribal saints of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani. In line with the scripturalist tendencies apparent throughout the Khulasat al-ansab, Hafiz Rahmat eschewed the fading memory of the saintly tribesmen and resorted instead to the Quran and the life of the Prophet to authorize the moral duty of knowledge of one’s ancestry (ma‘rifat-e nasab).128 Though the stories of the tribal blessed men had come and gone, the tribe itself remained at the centrestage of history. Amid the renewed attention to tribal (and so axiomatically Afghan) formulations of identity that accompanied the expansion and subsequent retraction of Afghan power in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, language became identified as a marker of belonging and affiliation in new—and one is tempted to say modern—ways. Like the category of history (tarikh) for the Tarikh-e Khan Page 30 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History Jahani, it was now language (zaban) that presented itself as a problem to be resolved through literary intervention.129 The rise of Ahmad Shah Durrani (r. 1747–73) and his establishment of a large but short-lived Afghan empire centred on Qandahar had witnessed attempts to replace the familiar Persian of Mughal and Safavid administration with Pashto, resulting in the composition of the first Pashto grammatical works, intended for the use of Persophone bureaucrats.130 Yet with their foundation so firmly set in the Durrani administration, this short spate of linguistic codification lasted a little longer than the Durrani (p.113) imperium itself, although the rise of British power, moving westwards from Bengal into contact with the post-Durrani kingdoms in Rohilkhand, presented further incentives to compile such dictionaries and grammars. Pashto remained in these works the minor sibling of Persian, with each of these grammars presenting Pashto through the medium and categories of Persian. For our purposes here, the most interesting example of these foundational works of Pashto linguistics is the ‘Aja’ib al-lughat (The Wonders of Words, 1813). This four-language Pashto dictionary was compiled by Ilahyar Khan, the son of Hafiz Rahmat Khan, whose Khulasat al-ansab we have just discussed. Yet it is not the lexicographical contents of this work that we wish to highlight here but rather the Persian preface in which its author described his method and motivations in compiling it. After demonstrating his Afghan tribal genealogy in imitation of that presented in his father’s Khulasat al-ansab, Ilahyar Khan recounted how during the reign of his father ‘most’ (aksar) of the Afghans of all clans had left their homeland (wilayat) to come to India in a new period of migration.131 Perceiving that even in such a short period the Afghans subsequently born in India had lost the ability to speak Pashto, Ilahyar Khan set about learning the language from the elders who had been born in the homeland or wilayat.132 He then gave his rationale for this attempt to preserve the language of the forefathers: ‘To know and understand one’s own language [zaban-e khod] is proper; it is a guide to one’s rootedness and nobility [asalat wa najabat]. For how else would one know which tribe [qawm] someone was from and from what pedigree and lineage [hasb u nasab]?’133 Formulated here at the perceived moment of the absorption of a new body of Afghan migrants into the cosmopolitan Indian spaces of the diaspora was a new sense of the connection between identity and language.134 Paradoxically, the Afghans had their own language (zaban-e khod), even if they could no longer speak it! And (p.114) so this language demanded to be preserved and, indeed, revived. Just as for the Khan Jahan at the court of Jahangir, for whom it was no longer enough that the history of the Afghans should consist merely in memory, lore, and the chronicles of others, so for Ilahyar Khan it was the ancestors’ very words that demanded preservation in the diaspora. As in the case of the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani, the backdrop to these atavistic sentiments was a recent diminishing of Afghan power.

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History The efforts of Ilahyar Khan and other early promoters of Pashto written letters were by no means the sole linguistic current directing the tide of Afghan history. The eighteenth-century rulers of Rohilkhand patronized both Persian and Pashto writers, as well as a series of poets in the vernacular by then gaining the name of Urdu.135 The earliest history of the rise and fall of the Afghan rulers of Rohilkhand was thus written not in Persian or Pashto but in the north Indian Urdu dialect of Janbhasha. This was the Qissa-ye ahwal-e rohila (Romance of the Rohila Deeds) of Rustam ‘Ali Bijnuri (fl. 1775), a non-Afghan former servant of the Rohila Afghans who found employment after their fall teaching Hindustani to an English soldier.136 As Afghan political power in India once again dissolved in the last decades of the eighteenth century, the Afghans were re-enveloped by the clamour of languages around them. But as in the case of Ilahyar Khan, there was now a new sense of identification with the Pashto language as the old cosmopolitan realm of Persian began to dissolve in India, only to survive ironically in the old Mughal outpost of Kabul. Emerging from the printing presses of Delhi and Punjab, in the early twentieth century we find the beginnings of a new arena of Pashto texts that would from the 1920s collectively compete with the cosmopolitan status of Persian for the loyalty of the Afghans. Like genealogy and the remembered past, text and language were repeatedly reformulated and reconceived in negotiation with the cosmopolitan geographies of India, against (p.115) whose textual dynamism we have seen the historical identity of the Afghans taking shape. Here in India, Afghan history was not only made in fact but also given meaning and form in writing by adopting the generic and narrative forms of tarikh historiography that were proper to the cosmopolitan courtly spaces of Persian. Against this background of multifarious mobile peoples and the languages and texts they held in common, this chapter has sought to bring the history of the Afghan diaspora out of the illusory shadows of the ‘homeland’.We have placed the Afghans instead into the cosmopolitan and inter-regional geography of early modern interactions in which the Sufi saints loomed large as markers of memory and identity. Notes:

(1) Halim (1974), Qanungo (1965), Siddiqi (1971 and 1982). (2) Gommans, ‘Afghāns in India’, in Gaborieau, Krämer, Nawas and Rowson (2007). This chapter was written before the publication of Aquil (2007). (3) A few words on terminology may be necessary here. In this chapter, the term ‘Afghan’ is used in its original sense of referring to the Pashtuns and not the Hazaras, Uzbeks, Farsiwans, Aymaqs, Arabs, Kuchis, and sundry other ethnic groups living in the territories of modern Afghanistan. In using the term ‘Afghan’ in this way, I expressly do not suggest that this limited ethnic remit be applied to the modern Afghan nation state, even if for their part some contemporary Page 32 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History Pashtun nationalists do consider the Pashtuns to be the only ‘true Afghans’. Though coeval with the processes explored later, the troubled grafting of the term ‘Afghan’ onto the modern framework of ‘nationality’ has its own later history and, as such, falls beyond the scope of this chapter. (4) Cf. Arlinghaus (1988) and Nichols (2001). (5) The main primary sources used in this chapter are Harawī, Tārīkh-e Khān Jahānī wa Makhzan-e Afghānī, al-Dīn (1960–2); Hāfiz Rahmat Khān, Khulāsat alansāb (Bodleian Library, MS Ouseley 172); Shaykh Kabīr, Afsāna-ye shāhān (British Library, MS Add. 24, 409); Mushtāqī, Wāqi‘āt-e Mushtāqī (British Library, MS Or. 1929); Ilahyār Khān Hāfiz al-Mulk Nawwāb Hāfiz Rahmat Khān, ‘Ajā’ib al-lughāt (British Library, MS Or. 399); ‘Abbās Khān Sarwānī, Tārīkh-e Sher Shāh (Bodleian Library, MS Elliot 371); and Ahmad Yādgār, Tārīkh-e shāhī (Tārīkh-e Salātīn-e Afāghīna), Hosain (1939). Partial or complete translations of several of these texts are also available. Bernhard Dorn’s History of the Afghans (1829–36) is a translation of a single manuscript (MS Persian LX in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London) of the early abridgement of the Tārīkh-e Khān Jahānī known as the Makhzan-e Afghānī; Nirodbhusan Roy’s Niamatullah’s History of the Afghans (1958) is apparently a complete translation. Siddiqui’s Waqi ‘at-e Mushtaqui of Shaikh Rizq Ullah Mushtaqui: A Source of Information on the Life and Conditions in Pre-Mughal India (1993) and Ambashthya’s Tārīkhi-šer šāhī by ‘Abbās Khān Sarwānī (1974) are also complete translations. However, wherever possible, I have relied on and given references to the original Persian versions. For an overview of the sources, see Imamuddin (1959). (6) Brubaker (2005) and Cohen (2001). (7) Digby (nd). (8) Husain (1994), pp. 1–18, and Shafi’i (1929). (9) Digby (nd) and Gommans (1999). (10) Although I am aware of the discomfort of many anthropologists with the notion of the ‘tribe’, I have adopted the term here in its broadest sense to designate a social unit held together by an ideology of genealogy and common descent, especially one composed of corporate descent groups. The terms used in the Persian sources that I have translated here as ‘tribe’ vary and include tāyifa, qabīla, and asbāt. Despite the popularity of the term tāyifa in the early Persian texts referring to the Afghans (particularly the Tārīkh-e Khān Jahānī), in modern Pashto usage, the term qawm is generally preferred. (11) Rahim (1961), pp. 34–58 and Siddiqui, ‘The Composition of the Nobility under the Lōdī Sultāns’, in Nizami (1977).

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History (12) Matsuo Ara has argued that the great proliferation of funerary architecture under the patronage of the Indo-Afghans reflected the horizontal distribution of power among an acephalous tribal elite. See Ara (1982). (13) Joshi (1985), pp.1–20. (14) Green, ‘Idiom, Genre and the Politics of Self-Description on the Peripheries of Persian’, in Green and Searle-Chatterjee (2008). (15) Siddiqi, ‘Wajh’-i-Ma‘ash Grants under the Afghan Kings’, in K. A. Nizami (1972). (16) On the debate over the identification of this tomb, see Ara (1982) and Digby (1975b). (17) Zain Khan (1982), p. 92. (18) Digby, ‘‘Abd al-Quddus Gangohi (1456–1537 AD): The Personality and Attitudes of a Medieval Indian Sufi’, in K.A. Nizami (1975a). (19) With the end of Afghan rule, ‘Abd al-Quddus cultivated links with the Mughals, writing letters to both Bābur and Humāyūn. On ‘Abd al-Quddūs’s relationship with contemporary politics, see Digby, ‘Two Captains of the Jawnpur Sultanate’, in Gommans and Prakash (2003) and I.A. Khan (1977). Despite the saint’s connections with the Afghans, it seems to have been Humayun who constructed his tomb shortly after his death in 1537. (20) I.A. Khan, (1977), p. 80. (21) Digby (1964). (22) Shaykh Kabīr, Afsāna-ye shāhān, British Library, MS Add. 24,409, f. 108–11. (23) Shaykh Kabīr, f. 197v. (24) Although Mushtāqī was not an Afghan himself, he bore close family connections with the Lōdī rulers, and in his earlier career as an imām, he seems to have been patronized by notables of the Afghan Lōdī rulers. See Rizq Allāh Mushtāqī, f. 37r–f. 37v. (25) Rizq Allāh Mushtāqī, f. 6v–f. 7r. (26) Gulbadan Begam (1902), Persian text pp. 48–9, translation pp. 144–6. (27) For more on Ahmad-e Jām, see Ivanow (1917). (28) Rizq Allāh Mushtāqī, f. 13v. On the life of Samā‘ al-dīn, see the account of his son-in-law, Jamālī (1893), pp. 171–84.

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History (29) Yādgār (1939), pp. 47–8; see also Ni‘mat Allāh (1960–2), pp. 224–7. (30) Yādgār (1939). (31) Jamālī (1893), p. 178. (32) Rizq Allāh Mushtāqī, f. 31v–f. 32r. (33) Husaini (1988). (34) Jamali-yi (2002) and Latif, ‘Jamali’s Relations with the Rulers of Delhi’, in K.A. Nizami (1977). (35) Several of these poems have been published in the Oriental College Magazine (1935), pp. 36–7. (36) Minkowski (2006). (37) Shaykh Kabīr, f. 146v; also cited in Siddiqi (1966), p. 74. (38) Manjhan (2000). (39) I am grateful to Allison Busch for drawing my attention to this. (40) Ni’mat Allāh (1960–2), pp. 822–5. (41) Ibid., p. 744. (42) For selections of this early Pashto literature, much of it Sufi in character, see Raverty (1860). (43) Green and Searle-Chatterjee (2008). (44) Rizq Allāh Mushtāqī, f. 9r. (45) Rizq Allāh Mushtāqī, f. 20r–f. 21r; Yādgār (1939), pp. 99–108. (46) Cf. Vogelsang, ‘The Ethnogenesis of the Pashtuns’, in Ball and Harrow (2002). (47) On the history and codicology of the Tārīkh-e Khān Jahānī, see Imamuddin (1948) and (1960). (48) Imamuddin (1948). (49) Ni‘mat Allāh (1960–2), pp. 107–13. The author noted that although these events were not recorded in the Hadīth, they were recounted by such reliable authors as Nāsir al-dīn Tūsī in his Asnāf al-makhlūqāt. The account was also later recounted in the Khulāsat al-ansāb (Rahmat Khān, f. 20v–1v, 27r).

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History (50) Abū al-Fazl (1875), vol. 1, p. 591. In common with other versions of the legend, the Afghans’ progenitor was here said to have been given the name of ‘Afghān’ rather than ‘Pathān’. (51) On the Pashtun tribes, see Glatzer, ‘The Pashtun Tribal System’, in Pfeffer and Behera (2002). Though anthropologists have often regarded tribes as organized social units, the reading presented in the present chapter of the tribe as ideal social model is also briefly reflected in Eickelman (1981), p. 104. (52) Cf. Varisco (1995). (53) Norris (1968), p. 153. See also Hall (2005). (54) Cited in ud-Din (1962), p. 46. (55) This tradition was also recorded by Sharaf Khān Bitlīsī in the Persian history of the Kurds that he wrote under Ottoman rule in the late sixteenth century, a work that in many respects may be considered the twin text of the Tārīkh-e Khān Jahānī. See Sharaf al-Dīn Bitlīsī (2005). (56) Gilroy (1997) and Sanders (1969). (57) Equiano (nd), pp. 38–44. (58) McHugh (1994), p. 10. (59) Green and Searle-Chatterjee (2008). (60) Webb (1996). (61) The potentially competitive relationship between ties of Sufi (or more broadly Islamic) allegiance and identity and the bonds of the tribe have been the subject of considerable discussion by anthropologists and historians of the Pashtuns and other tribal societies. See Ahmad (1976), Gellner (1969), and Lewis (1998). More generally, see the essays in Ahmed and Hart (1984). (62) Evans-Pritchard (1949), Mazzaoui (1972), and Paul (1991). (63) Mélikoff (2003). (64) Demidov (1988) and DeWeese (1994). (65) Ni’mat Allāh (1960–2), pp. 184–5. Nonetheless, much of the biographical data provided on Qutb al-dīn in the Tārīkh-e Khān Jahānī does conform to that provided in the famous Siyar al-awliyā of Mīr Khwurd (d. 1369) and the Siyar al-‘ārifīn of Jamālī Dihlawī (d. 1536). (66) Ni‘mat Allāh (1960–2), pp. 184–5.

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History (67) Andreyev (1997) and Arlinghaus (1988). (68) Nizam al-Din Ahmad Bakhshi (1975), pp. 119–20. (69) Ni‘mat Allāh (1960–2). The affiliation through different generations of Afghan Pashtun clans to particular Sufi families remains a feature of Afghan Islam to the present day, not entirely helpfully being termed ‘maraboutic Sufism’ by Olivier Roy. See Roy (1990a). Links between Pashtun tribesmen and local saintly families are also seen in Raverty (1862), p. 55, and Shah (1906), pp. 120, 124. (70) Ni‘mat Allāh (1960–62). The question of the relationship of sayyids to the Afghans was also raised in the Khulāsat al-ansāb (Rahmat Khān, f. 58v). (71) Ni‘mat Allāh (1960–2), pp. 644–5. The story was later repeated in the Khulāsat al-ansāb (Rahmat Khān, f. 58v–f. 61r). (72) Ni‘mat Allāh (1960–2), pp. 642–3. (73) Ibid. On this narrative theme more generally, see M.A. Khan (2004). It is perhaps worth noting that Shāhū Khayl was also the clan of the Lōdī sultans. (74) Ibid., pp. 754–5. (75) Ibid., p. 759. In some manuscripts of the text, as well as the Akhbār alawliyā, this figure is given the tribal name of Shaykh Mutī Khayl. Its (accidental?) replacement of Khayl with Khalīl in some manuscripts may reflect the non-Afghan identity of later copyists. (76) Ibid. (77) We might compare such miracles to the formal prayers for rain offered to the shrines of such saints as Sīdī Muhammad al-Kuntī (fl. ca. 1450) by the Hassāniyya-speaking tribesmen of Shinqīt in Mauretania (Norris [1968], pp. 99– 100). More generally, the legends recorded of the tribal saints of such confederations as the Tashumsha of Western Sahara (ibid) bear many similarities to those recorded in the Tārīkh-e Khān Jahānī. (78) Abū al-Fazl (1875), vol. 1, p. 572. (79) Nim‘at Allāh (1960–2), p. 818. Malik Ādam’s mausoleum was later maintained by his descendants, who acted as the institutional heirs (sajjāda nashīns) of his blessing power. (80) Shafi‘i (1929) and Storey (1927–71), vol. 1, pt ii, pp. 1009–12. (81) Ghulâm ‘Alī Āzād Bilgrāmī (1910).

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History (82) Sections of the unpublished Tazkirat al-ansār are translated in Zia (1996), pp. 133–46. During the late 1870s, the oral tradition of Jullunder’s Afghan saints, as transmitted by the city’s faqīrs, was collected by Richard Carnac Temple. Recounting the saintly foundation of the settlement and the competition for jurisdiction over the region of the Afghan saint Nāsir al-dīn Shīrānī with a Yogi named Jālandhar, the narratives demonstrate the absorption of the remembered saints into the wider narrative imagination of India’s cosmopolitan sacred geographies. See Temple (1884–1900), vol. 3, pp. 159–95, vol. 3, pp. 323–6. (83) Another Dānishmand shaykh, Lādun Dānishmand, appears in connection with Sikandar Lōdī in Mushtāqī’s Wāqi‘āt-e Mushtāqī (Mushtāqī, f. 24v). Several other Dānishmand shaykhs are mentioned in Ni‘mat Allāh (1960–2), pp. 330, 382, 724. (84) Khwāja Mawdūd also features in one of the most famous of all Persian hagiographies, the Nafahāt al-uns of the great Naqshbandī Sufi of Herat, Jāmī (d. 1492). See ‘Abd al-Rahmān ibn Ahmad Jāmī (1955). (85) Nim‘at Allāh (1960–2), pp. 741–2. (86) Ibid., pp. 818–21. Among the Wazīrī tribesmen, a similar story connected the power of a local saint with the ability of his followers to place their hands in boiling water. See Shah (1906), p. 121. (87) Ni‘mat Allāh (1960–2), pp. 743–4. (88) Ibid., p. 747. (89) McHugh (1994), p. 189. (90) Ni‘mat Allāh Ni‘mat Allāh(1960–2), pp. 843–70. (91) Ibid., pp. 770–2, 601–3. (92) Ibid. However, in some manuscripts, the Pashto phrase reads ghil zūī (thief son). A similar version of the story was earlier recounted by the Mughal courtier Abū al-Fazl (1875), vol. 1, p.591. Bosworth has also argued for a non-Pashtun origin for the Ghilzay, seeing them as descendants of the Turkish tribe of the Khalaj, who later entered a confederation with neighbouring Pashtun tribes. See Bosworth, ‘Khaladj’, in Gibb, Lewis, Pellat, and Bosworth (1960–2002). (93) Sarwānī, f. 69r–f. 69v. (94) Singer (1982), pp. 65–76. Cf. Muminov and Babadzhanov, (2001). (95) Rahmat Khān, f. 14r–f. 20r. (96) Hussan Zia (nd), pp. 133–46. Page 38 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History (97) Raverty (1855), pp. 338–41. (98) Shah (1906), p. 124. (99) DeWeese (1994). (100) Basilov, ‘Honour Groups in Traditional Turkmenian Society’, in Ahmed and Hart (1984), pp. 225–7. (101) Mirza Haydar Dughlat (1996), Persian text 10–13, trans. pp. 8–11. Like other Indo-Muslim historians, Dughlāt was also a devotee of the Sufis, being particularly associated with one Mawlānā Ahmad. (102) Ni‘mat Allāh (1960–2), p. 649. (103) Busch (2005). (104) I am grateful to Allison Busch for this information. (105) Snell, ‘Raskhān the Neophyte: Hindu Perspectives on a Muslim Vaishnava’, in Shackle (1989). (106) Abū al-Fazl (1875), vol. 2, pp. 207–25. (107) Digby, ‘The NaqshbandÎs in the Deccan in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Century A.D.: Bâbâ Palangposh, Bâbâ Musâfir and Their Adherents’, in Gaborieau, Popovic, and Zarcone (1990) and Foltz (1996). (108) Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābādī (1939), pp. 15–16 (Persian text). (109) On Naqshbandī influence in late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century Afghanistan, see Edwards, ‘The Political Lives of Afghan Saints: The Case of the Kabul Hazrats’, in Smith and Ernst (1993) and Roy, ‘La Naqshbandiyya en Afghanistan’, in Gaborieau et al. (1990). (110) Ghulam ‘Alī Āzād Bilgrāmī (1996), p. 78. (111) Dale and Payind (1999). (112) Badr al Din Sirhindī (1971), pp. 345–7. (113) Ibid., pp. 347–9; also pp. 84–5. (114) Rizvi (1978–83), vol. 2, p. 232. (115) One such appropriation of the text is found in an extended version (by Ibrāhīm Batnī?) of Sarwānī’s Tārīkh-e Sher Shāh (Bodleian Library, MS Elliot

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History 372), which consists of folio 158r from the Tārīkh-e Khān Jahānī’s long section on the Afghan saints. (116) Salar Jung Library, MS Hist. 394. (117) The author of the Khulāsat al-ansāb (Rahmat Khān, f. 13r) clearly stated his use of the Tārīkh-e Khān Jahānī and the Tārīkh-e Sher Shāh of Sarwānī. (118) One such untitled manuscript (British Library, Or. 1877) consists of a first part devoted to the deeds of the Abdālī clan and a second part tracing the genealogy of the Afghans as a whole, tracing their origins from the patriarch Ya‘qūb via the Indo-Afghan dynasties up to prominent figures of the eighteenth century. Another untitled manuscript (Bodleian Library, Ouseley 410) that also probably dates from the Rohila period presented the historical pedigrees of the Afghan tribes and clans in the form of a long scroll. (119) Muhammad Hayat Khan (1874; trans. Priestly). (120) Rahmat Khān, f. 82v. (121) Ibid. f 14v, 82v. (122) Dargāh Qulī Khan (1989), p. 17. (123) Gommans (1999), p. 131. (124) Husain (1994), pp. 207–9. (125) Shāh Walī Allāh, Shāh Walī Allāh ke Siyāsī Maktūbāt, in Nizāmī (1950), letter 7, pp. 63–4. Shāh Walī Allāh also sent letters to the Afghan conqueror Ahmad Shāh Abdālī and other prominent Afghans of the age. (126) Rahmat Khān, f. 9r. (127) Ibid. f. 10r; alternative translation in Kushev (2001). (128) Rahmat Khān, f. 10v–f. 12v. (129) In the following discussion, I am greatly indebted to the work of V.V. Kushev, whose pioneering work on Pashto linguistic works first drew my attention to the contents of Ilahyār Khān’s dictionary. (130) Kushev (2001). (131) Ilahyār Khān, f. 2v. (132) Ilahyār Khān, f. 3r. (133) Ilahyār Khān, f. 4r. Page 40 of 41

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Tribe, Diaspora, and Sainthood in Indo-Afghan History (134) Cf. Bayly (1998). (135) Husain (1994). (136) Bijnori, An Eighteenth Century History of North India: An Account of the Rise and Fall of the Rohilla Chiefs in Janbhasha by Rustam Ali Bijnori [Qissa wa ahwāl-e rōhela], in Siddiqui (2005).

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space

Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space Nile Green

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.003.0019

Abstract and Keywords This chapter surveys the widespread phenomenon of the migrant Sufi saint in South Asian history. It examines how non-Indian origins were important to the success of Sufis and how these holy migrants were often connected to larger communities of migrants. After the general survey section, the chapter turns to two case studies that show how migration could be both real and imagined, with the prestige of non-Indian origins leading to exaggerations or changes in the biographies of particular Muslim saints. Keywords:   Islam, Sufism, migration, sainthood, Muslim saints, Persian, Urdu, sacred space, cultural geography, shrine

The Mobile Blessed Men As participants in both a discursive tradition and a pre-industrial world system, from early in their history Muslims have placed great emphasis on both acts and ideas of travel.1 On a mythopoeic level, Muslim conceptions of history may themselves be read as responses to the hijra or migration to Madina that set Muslim historical time in discursive motion. On such discursive levels, the language of travel and migration went on to become a standard part of the religious and cultural vocabulary of Islam, from the ritual focus on the annual pilgrimage to Mecca to the ubiquity of imagery of travelling and wayfaring in both the secular poetry of Muslims world and the technical manuals of Sufis.2 The imagery of travel has been a convention of Muslim poetry from the nostalgic glorification of Bedouin life in the Arabic poetry of the ‘Umayyad period to such modern works as Muhammad Iqbal’s Bang-e Dara (The Caravan’s Call). And on a concrete level, these themes were reflected in long-standing practices Page 1 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space emphasizing distant travel as a means of acquiring access to learning and initiatory lineages among both scholars and blessed men.2 As early as the eleventh century, the famous Sufi biographer Qushayri (d. 1072) remarked that the Sufis were either of the wandering or the sedentary kind, while the etiquette regulations for medieval Sufi lodges written by ‘Umar Suhrawardi (d. 1234) likewise referred (p.117) to these two classes of Sufi.3 The early Sufi handbooks of both Suhrawardi and Hujwiri also explicitly described the adab or etiquette of what were by the beginning of Sufi history in India in the eleventh century already discursively formalized practices of travel.4 Such practices were in themselves made possible by the promotion of commercial and military interests that sustained the trans-regional routes followed by the Sufis no less than the warriors and merchants whose lives they touched with their miracles and morals. Just as in Chapter 5 we will see the Sufis as the sanctifiers of the static spaces of settlers, these blessed men and their remembered itineraries were also the sanctifiers of the mobile travel spaces more routinely trodden by other Muslims who relied on their supernatural protection and route-blessing precedent. The early modern Ottoman travelogue of Sayyidi ‘Ali Ra’is (d. 1562) described his journey from India to Anatolia as a series of stages between saintly stopping places at which he sought blessings for the next leg of his travels.5 As witnessed in the early development of Muslim commercial law, the maintenance of trade routes was also an important feature of the governance of Muslim-controlled medieval and early modern states. It is small wonder that blessed men and merchants were frequent partners throughout the history of the Indian Ocean, from the medieval role of the Kazaruni Sufi network in guaranteeing bills of exchange to the trading activities of Iranian Sufis during the nineteenth century in Bombay.6 If commerce was one facilitator of early modern migration between Muslim regions, then the business of soldiering was another. At times, Sufis were no less willing than other travellers to take advantage of the security, supply lines, and information networks that a roving army brought with it. We should not be (p.118) surprised, then, to find living Sufis following the footsteps of merchants and soldiers who in turn sometimes trod trails symbolically blazed by the saints of earlier times. This was a reflection of both the logistics and imaginaries of early modern travel. This was particularly true of the arrival of Sufis in the Deccan, as seen with the Qadiri and Shattari Sufis of ‘Adil Shahi Bijapur and later with the Chishti and Naqshbandi Sufis of Mughal Aurangabad.7 Following established routes, Sufi blessed men moved widely between the urban centres of different regions in search of teachers, students, or the rewards of a wealthy patron. Yet, Sufis were not only on the receiving end of the cultural balance sheet. For whether with regard to mercantile travellers or the dislocated bureaucratic and military personnel of the Mughal Empire, through their architecture and narratives the Sufis gave lasting voice to the itinerant lives of their uprooted constituencies in an early modern era of unprecedented mobility. Formed by both action and imagination, Page 2 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space this culture of movement was in turn aided by the existence of the broadly dispersed idioms and discourses of Arabic and Persian. These were lingua francas that themselves moved in step with the Sufis, whose lodges we will see in Chapter 6 serving as important spaces of book-learning. Once again, texts and territories were shaped and explored by and through one another. As in all religious traditions, plentiful examples may be found of solitary Sufi dwellers in the wilds of nature. Such recluses were certainly an important feature of India’s sacred landscapes, albeit a feature more often reflected in painting than in writing. But the Sufi blessed men discussed in this book were for the most part connected with urban spaces and thereby with the community life around them. The advantages of the commercial and military infrastructures of early modern travel often saw Sufis settle in regions far from their places of birth, places which as hubs and nodes within wider geographical networks were also the adoptive homes of other new residents who, through their hagiographical narratives of relocation, the Sufis helped settle. The bargain between saint and settler was, however, a two-way exchange. By way of buildings, (p.119) lodges, and land grants, the material capital that Sufis required in order to establish themselves in a new region made good relations with such a client community a prerequisite for the success that through architecture, text, and ritual transformed a living blessed man into a saintly immortal. In practice, this often meant that the movement of Sufis into new areas mirrored the larger migrations of the communities of memory who linked themselves to their shrines. The larger processes of settlement and acculturation that created new Muslim communities in Bengal, Sind, Awadh, and the Deccan was inseparable from the making of Muslim spaces for these new communities through the buildings, narratives, and rituals that lodged the Muslim presence in the ‘memory space’ around the tombs of such migrant Sufis. In many respects, what we see in early modern India was comparable to the processes of Muslim space-making in such other regions as Sudanic Africa in the early modern period. What R.S. O’Fahey has written for the same period in African Islamic history can be seen in the role of migrant Sufi lineages in the acts of patronage, teaching, and miracle-working traced throughout this volume in India: ‘the characteristic Islamic presence … was the holy lineage, which usually traced its origins to an immigrant who intermarried locally. The lineage gains a monopoly over education, medical and magical practice in its locality, and frequently consolidates its power by receiving tax-exempt status or landed estates from the rulers’.8 Through embodied lineages of genealogy and blessing that transmitted Muslim history from one place to another, the Sufis were central to the creation of new Muslim homelands for those who settled or converted in the geographies of their burial.

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space Muslim Geographies, Spatial Narratives Like other forms of sacred spaces, Muslim spaces took their meanings in relation to other places. This formulation was most obvious with regard to mosques, which as ritual spaces sanctified (p.120) by prayer were always required to be orientated in the direction of Mecca. The process by which spaces of Muslim prayer were brought into a distance-crossing relationship with Mecca was also seen in other ways in which Muslim spaces were created in relation to other, absent places. The ritual buildings known as Hussayniyyas and imambargas in which the remembered events of the Shi’i passion were reenacted each year were spaces that were transformed through ritual and narrative into other temporally and spatially distant places, in this case into the battlefield of Karbala.9 Such Shi‘i sacred spaces derived their meaning from the relationship which rituals were able to forge between new spaces of Shi‘i homemaking and the distant geography of Iraq. As such, they played a crucial role in making the identity-defining events of the Shi‘i past present in the spatial and temporal elsewhere of new Indian communities. Once again, the creation of these architectural invocations of distant geographies was often accompanied by the immigration of blessed persons from these older spaces of memory. This might occur through the influx of a relatively large body of people, as in the case of the Iranian Shi‘i ‘ulama of Awadh, or through the migration of individuals, as in the case of the lone Sufi migrants who established small-scale Muslim centres in the former forestland of Bengal.10 In each case, descendants in successive generations continued to make present these connections of new homelands and old ones, whether these ‘homelands’ were the factual spaces of physical ancestry or the imaginary homelands created by no less influential acts of identification. It was through such ways of tying different geographies and their peoples together that India’s different Muslims were able to bridge the cognitive—spatial as well as temporal—distance between the Arabian narrative geography of their religion’s Heilsgeschichte and the visible geography of their everyday lives. The example of the Mecca-orientated mosque and the Karbala-focused imambarga provide prototypical examples, but there existed many other unique examples of the same process in India. (p.121) For centuries, the great necropolis at Makli (‘Little Mecca’) in Sindh provided a local substitute for burial in the sacred earth of the Hijaz, while also acting as a burial ground for generations of Sufi blessed men and their elite patrons, bound in perpetuity through their shared spaces in the soil.11 Another example was seen in southern India at Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid mosque, which in being constructed with bricks of earth carried from Mecca allowed believers to symbolically say their prayers on the soil of Mecca without ever leaving the Deccan. However, it was ultimately human bodies and culture objects that had been in contact with them that were more important mediators of space. The placing of relics (asar, tabarrukat) of either the Prophet Muhammad or the Sufi saints in specially-constructed buildings provided one Page 4 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space such way of vicariously bringing the sacred history of older Muslim regions into the Islamizing spaces of new homelands. For the relic’s physical link to a blessed body formed a transportable connection between different places.12 The reliquary shrines commissioned for purported cloaks of the Prophet in Qandahar in Afghanistan and Khuldabad in the Deccan were two of the most notable South Asian examples, though hairs of the Prophet’s beard were also preserved in special shrines in Rohri in Sindh and Bijapur.13 Other shrines known as qadamgahs (‘foot spaces’) were built around the footprints of the Prophet or such other major Muslim figures as Imam ‘Ali. Being more common than Prophetic cloaks, hairs, or swords of good provenance, these imported rock footprints formed a widespread means of planting an Arabian sacred history in the soil of India. Such qadamgahs were especially important in the making of Muslim space in Bengal, while the creation of a Shi‘i sacred geography in the Deccan was aided through the discovery in a dream of a handprint of ‘Ali around which the Qutb Shah rulers of Hyderabad patronized the hilltop shrine known as Mawla ‘Ali. The process continued right through the early modern period. In 1724, a footprint of ‘Ali was brought to Delhi by Qudsiya Begum, which thereafter formed an (p.122) important centre of pilgrimage during the Mughal imperial twilight; pilgrimages to it were described in the eighteenth century Muraqqa‘-e Dihli.14 Whether cloaks or footprints, all such relics served as visible and enduring objects of memory. Through narratives as well as relics, other spaces in India became associated with the blessed bodies of the Muslim prophets, most famously in the association we read in Chapter 1 of Sri Lanka with the descent of Adam to earth (its location marked by a giant footprint) and the Kashmiri tradition that Jesus was buried in Srinagar. Another important example was the widespread form of secondary shrine known as the astana. Found throughout India, such shrines were typically marked by only a stone, tree, or small building but their simple physical forms were augmented through narratives describing them as stopping-places during the travels of a major saint who both originated and was buried elsewhere. All over India, such astanas were dedicated to the great saints of Ajmer and Baghdad, Mu‘in al-Din Chishti and ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani, including one for the former in Aurangabad in the Deccan and one for the latter in the mountainous north at Srinagar. In this way, astanas could be used to reproduce saintly geographies in regions where there was no blessed body to bury. Just as these different types of Muslim space in India made links to other geographies through the medium of the body, so did the many shrines built to the Sufi saints also invoke absent geographies through the mobile medium of the blessed person. A shrine’s links to the Arabian geographies of Quranic text could be created in a number of different ways. On the most basic and instrumental level, shrines such as those in rural Punjab and Rajasthan could be institutional players in the long-term acculturation process of converting local populations to Islam, a religion which like Christianity and Judaism remained imaginatively tied Page 5 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space to its textual holy lands of scripture.15 In other cases, as we will see in Chapter 6, through their uses of books many shrines served as (p.123) important brokers of entry into the trans-regional textual arenas of Arabic and Persian. However, like reliquary and footprint shrines, Sufi shrines were primarily able to bridge distant geographies through the semantically powerful medium of the body. While ties of texts reinforced these corporeal connections, the most widespread means by which shrines tied different geographies together was through the buried presence of a blessed man. Such mobile men had originated in regions associated with the remembered events and personalities of earlier Muslim history but became permanently connected to their spaces of settlement through the commemorative act of shrine construction. The importance to the creation of Muslim space in India of this corporeal linking of geographies that was accentuated in turn by hagiographical narratives. This is attested by the fact that so many of the major shrines of the subcontinent were dedicated to Sufis who had migrated to the region of their eventual burial from older Muslim geographies, whether beyond India or in other cases from spaces of earlier Muslim settlement within India. Such major shrines as those of Shah Madar (d. c. 1050) in Makanpur, ‘Ali ibn ‘Usman al-Hujwiri (d. c.1075) in Lahore, Mu‘in alDin Chishti (d. 1236) in Ajmer and Gesu Daraz (d. 1422) in Gulbarga all conformed to this pattern, as did scores of lesser-known shrines all over India. Linking these territories to texts were the abundant hagiographical narratives that described a saint’s birth, family origins, education. and wanderings in these earlier geographies of Islam. These stories were arranged through the logic of genealogy which in this way served to add a centripetal dimension to the spaces of local identification that developed around such shrines. The spatial genesis of early Sufi written memory in the early Muslim regions of Iraq and Khurasan became an enduring touchstone in the history of Indian Islam as stories set in these older textualized geographies found constant re-expression in India’s folk literatures and hagiographical writings. As we will see later, narratives attached to Sufis buried in India recounted tales of travels and associations with these older locations of memory in turn. In both written and spoken forms, the Sufi textual traditions continued to carry these stories of other places into the varied Indian spaces of Muslim settlement and (p.124) conversion. New Muslim spaces were created as part of remembered genealogical lineages through space and time that helped early modern Muslims navigate their search for connection between the spaces of their present and past belonging. What was crucial to the enduring transmission of such narratives was the architectural presence of a shrine that served to render the migrant blessed man into a permanent saintly presence in his host community, his migration physically eternalized in brick and stone. Through the hagiographical narratives attached to them, these saintly tombs were able to permanently tie together the distant geographies of a saint’s travel itinerary as the distant spaces of narrative were invoked beside the visible space of architecture. The saintly homelands and Page 6 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space migrations that were invariably emphasized in Indo-Persian hagiographies in this way took on three dimensions in the architectural creation of new Muslim geographies in regions in which the saints were buried. In making permanent the life of the saint who was buried there, shrines ensured that in narrative form the memory of his life (much of it perhaps spent far away) endured in the environs of his demise. Although, as we will see later, the details of a saint’s remembered homelands could certainly change, the topographic presence of a large and ornate shrine served to prompt or even invent historical memory by its constant demand for explanation, a process, as we will see in Chapter 8, that continued into the twentieth century. As we will see in Chapter 5, the reciprocal acts of material investment and patronage made by a saint’s client community were crucial to this process. For it was the shrines’ robust physicality and temporal stability that lent them so important a role in these co-identifications of geography. Studies of particular shrine communities in India have drawn attention to the importance of shrines in preserving the narratives of ethnogenesis that fixed community histories around the architecturally reinforced stories of saintly migrants and settlers remembered as the ancestors or patronal prototypes of the community at large. The maritime arena of the Indian Ocean provided one set of such saint-connected spaces. One of the most striking illustrations of this process is the role of the shrine of Bava Gor in southern Gujarat as the sacred memory space of the Muslim Sidi (p.125) community of African descent.16 Remembered as having migrated from East Africa at a distant earlier date, Bava Gor and his brother and sister interred alongside him were regarded as the founding ancestors of the Afro-Indian Sidi community. Lesser shrines to other Sidi ancestor saints were established in other Sidi settlements throughout Gujarat, such as Nagarchi Pir at Saurashtra. India’s seafaring communities provide other examples of the interplay of shrine spaces, travel narratives, and community ethnogenesis. The shrine of Makhdum-e Shah at Salaya in Gujarat similarly entwined narratives of sainthood, sea-travel, and community aetiology.17 In Southeast Asia, it was the south Indian Sufi Shah al-Hamid of Nagore who was the most important figure in this process, and narratives of his travels from Baghdad to Mecca, Khurasan, northern India and, eventually, the Tamil south of his burial and enshrinement were later transmitted across the Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia, where in time replicas of his shrine were constructed along the Malaysian coastline.18 Amid the overland itineraries of north India’s continental connected geographies, the same processes were at times related to ethnogenesis narratives of convert communities, as with the Jats connected to the shrine of Baba Farid al-Din in Punjab and other tribal groups who regarded the immigrant saint as their community founder through narratives of their collective conversion at his hands.19 In another pointer to the corporeal reconfiguration of space, the burial of Baba Farid in the town of Ajodan eventually saw the identifying name of the town itself transformed into Page 7 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space ‘Pakpattan’, the ‘pure city’. This was one of many Indian towns to be named after the saint buried there, the most evocative being the town of Hasan Abdal (‘Hasan the saintly substitute’) on the grand trunk road between the Khyber Pass and Delhi. The process continued as Muslims made new homes in the industrializing Indian cities of the colonial era and a major urban example was the shrine of the Arabian migrant and patron saint of Bombay, Hajji ‘Ali, located on a rocky outcrop several hundred (p.126) metres from the coastline among the waves of the Arabian Sea. Amid the earlier maritime traditions of many of Bombay’s different communities and the earlier frequency of sea travel between Bombay and the ports of Yemen and the Persian Gulf, the enshrined and narrativized body of Hajji ‘Ali acted as a resilient anchor for the memories of migration that characterized the history of Bombay no less than the broader patterns of Muslim settlement and home-making we are tracing in early modern India.20 Physical spaces of any kind are rarely meaningful in themselves. Like any other sacred spaces, those dedicated to wandering Sufis could only acquire meaning through their association with a wider corpus of cultural knowledge. With regard to the shrines of the saints, this took the form of oral or written texts describing the life of the saint. In such ways, shrines served to fuse diverse geographies together through their institutional promotion and upholding of narratives describing a saint’s place of individual or family origin, place of education and spiritual initiation, as well as his pilgrimages and other travels. Through the narrative claims made concerning the origins and travels of the saint in question—geographical origins which were sometimes (as with the AfroIndian Sidis) seen as coinciding with those of the saint’s client community— shrines were able to mediate between their clients’ past and present geographies of belonging. The narratives were in turn reinforced by such rituals of remembrance as the ‘urs that were performed around the shrine. While many remembered traditions did relate to genuine acts of travel, the nature of hagiography and indeed narrative meant that imaginary journeys were as much a feature of this space-making process as factual ones. In the following pages we turn to case studies of both possibilities. For by way of illustrating the links of these narratives of travel to the spaces of enshrinement, the remainder of this chapter focuses on the hagiographical narratives associated with two Sufi shrines in the erstwhile Mughal capital of Aurangabad. We will see how different types of saintly journey reflected these themes of overlapping geographies, saintly migration, and the varying meanings of travel (p.127) between the early modern and modern eras. However, before turning to the narratives, it will first be helpful to sketch something of the background by way of the medieval Sufi entry into the Deccan.

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space The Sufis Enter the Deccan Sufis first entered the Indian south in any number during the fourteenth century, when parties of north Indian Sufis travelled south in the wake of the conquests of the Turkish sultans of Delhi. Some of these blessed men travelled as part of the transfer of peoples from the Indian north to the south that the conquests brought, including the short-lived relocation of the sultanate capital from Delhi to Daulatabad in 1329.21 In the following decades, Sufi settlements were established in such towns as Khuldabad and Gulbarga, whose large shrines later became major sites of Muslim as well as Hindu pilgrimage in the Deccan. The establishment of the important early Sufi settlement and later shrine town at Khuldabad had in this way come about through the southward migration of members of the Sufi circle of Nizam al-Din Awliya (d. 1325) in Delhi. Some decades later the same Delhi-based circle was re-established in the new political centre of the Deccan at Gulbarga through the migration of the elderly Sufi resident of Delhi, Muhammad al-Hussayni Gesu Daraz (d. 1422). Through their saints’ genealogical narratives and ancestral shajara ‘trees’, these early shrines were explicitly linked with a sacred geography elsewhere of tombs belonging to Muslim saints of the same initiatic lineage or silsila. The miraculous powers of the Chishti saints of Khuldabad and Gulbarga was in this way presented as coming through their association with the earlier Chishti saints of Ajmer and Delhi. Under the independent Deccan sultanates that succeeded the short early reign of Delhi over the Deccan, first the Bahmani sultans of Bidar and later the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar and Qutb Shahs of Golkonda fostered political and cultural connections with Iran. This new association of the Deccan with Iran was (p.128) partially manifested in political affairs, with the names of the Safavi shahs of Iran sometimes announced in Friday khutba sermons in the Deccan.22 These new links of political and cultural geography were cemented through the immigration of Iranian Sufis and scholars to the Deccan, most famously the great Bahmani minister Mahmud Gawan (d. 1481) and the Sufi Shah Khalilullah (d. 1456) of Kerman, whose dervish crown-shaped shrine in the Bahmani capital of Bidar was one of the most remarkable buildings ever constructed in the Deccan.23 These elite migrations helped develop and sustain a transregional Persianate culture in the Deccan that found expression in the architectural style of major monuments, literary production, and miniature paintings no less than the spread of Shi‘i forms of Islam. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in turn witnessed the influx into the Mughal realm of Sufi and other text-producers seeking to escape persecution in Safavi Iran, some of whom found patrons, disciples, and enshrinement in their new Indian environment.24 With the Mughal conquests of the independent Deccan sultanates that culminated in the 1680s, new migrant communities settled in the Deccan’s new capital at Aurangabad.25 Along with the soldiers, merchants, administrators, and scholars associated with the new empire came Page 9 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space groups of Sufis. A small number of these blessed men were over time transformed into the patron saints of the new city’s communities through the patronage of shrine buildings and the commemorative rituals and hagiographical narratives that brought their shrines to life. In common with the saints of many other regions of India, the major Sufi saints of Aurangabad were all migrants to the Deccan. However, reflecting the changes in cultural and political geography that the Deccan’s incorporation into the Mughal Empire had brought with it, the saints of Aurangabad all heralded from either northern India or Central Asia rather than Iran. Yet, these acts of travel were not always sufficient for what (p. 129) was by the early modern era a long-established narrative template of saintly migration, leading the Aurangabad saints’ successive hagiographers to at times exaggerate their links to older Muslim geographies outside India. Imbued as it was with meaning, migration thus belonged to the realms of imagination as much as action. As we have already noted, the period of imperial Mughal rule saw the cultural geography of the Deccan realigned in ways that reflected the different geographical identities of the new elites who settled in the south. Nonetheless, these realignments of cultural geography were an ongoing process that, as we will see in Chapter 5 with regard to shrine patronage, saw later powers such as the Mughals and Asaf Jah Nizams attempt to link their own territorial claims to those of the medieval Turkish sultans of both Delhi and the Deccan. Through texts as well as territories, the Mughal conquests that unified the Deccan with north India for the first time in centuries took on discursive forms of claiming space with which, as text-producers, migrant Sufis from regions of older Mughal control were complicit. This was seen in the ways in which Sufi texts written in the new imperial capital of Aurangabad imaginatively connected the new capital’s Sufi spaces to the distant geographies of Hindustan and Central Asia with which the Mughals had older ties.26 Space and narrative were linked in this claiming of space through the foundation of new Sufi shrines in Aurangabad and the development there of the hagiographical texts that provided discursive ways of connecting these formerly separate Muslim geographies of the Mughal north with the conquered south. In linking these new Deccan shrines with a sacred geography in north India and Central Asia, the hagiographical texts produced in the migrant shrines established in Aurangabad by imperial elites served to embed the city in a sacred geography that mirrored the political geography of the Mughal imperium.

Shah Palangposh and Shah Musafir: Patrons of a Forgotten Migrant Community The geographical narratives attached to the shrine of Shah Palangposh (d. 1699) and Shah Musafir (d. 1715) in Aurangabad illustrate the (p.130) themes of migration, travel itineraries, and shifting saintly identities in relation to the early modern Central Asian settler community that emerged in tandem with their own move to the Deccan. Their shrine, known popularly as Panchakki after its Page 10 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space attractive water-mill, was built originally in Shah Musafir’s lifetime but substantially expanded and re-modelled under his successor, Shah Mahmud (d. 1762). The Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya, the early biography of the two blessed men and their circle of followers written in the 1730s by Shah Mahmud, described in detail the journeys of Shah Musafir and Shah Palangposh to Aurangabad from their Central Asian homelands. A remarkable record of the mobile imperial lives of early modern Muslims in India, the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya recounted a large number of journeys made by Shah Musafir and Shah Palangposh’s followers, some of whom in turn travelled from Aurangabad to places as far away as Alexandria in Egypt.27 As we will see in more detail in Chapter 5, the text also described the building of the shrine, so that we know the names of the patrons responsible for its construction. Like the rest of the devotees of Shah Palangposh and Shah Musafir, these patrons belonged to the Turani or Central Asian ranks among the Mughal armies and the migrant Central Asian community that developed around them in Aurangabad. As the burial place of the founder saints of their community, the shrine of Shah Musafir and Shah Palangposh was to serve as a space of memory which through architecture, ‘urs rituals, and texts written and preserved there such as the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya served to safeguard a history of relocation. The sharply defined Turani profile of the fellowship that flourished around the two migrant Sufis was made unambiguously clear on every page of the Malfuzate Naqshbandiyya. Even its language was not the literary Indo-Persian of other texts written in the city at the same time, such as those from the circle of the North Indian Sufi migrant Nizam al-Din Awrangabadi (d. 1729). Its language was rather the vivid vernacular that the two Central Asian Sufis brought with them from Transoxiana and which was clearly common to their circle of firstgeneration settlers in Aurangabad. The very language of the text thus carried with it linguistic markers and (p.131) memories of the distant former spaces of Turani life.28 The cultural references within the text were also associated with the Central Asian region which the two blessed men had recently left. In this way the sacred shrine geography most commonly referred to, and the Sufi texts described as being most read in the Aurangabad shrine, were all associated with Naqshbandi circles that were at this point still firmly associated with, and indeed rooted in, such earlier Naqshbandi territories as Bukhara and Herat. In the many narratives of journeys made by the blessed men and their followers to, from, and within Central Asia that were recounted in the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya, the remembered presence of the places, buildings, and people of distant towns and cities was still fresh and vivid. There was as yet no sense of the lost Central Asian homeland that was a clear feature of the desperate textual recovery of a migrant past that we have seen in the Afghan Tarikh-e Khan Jahani in Chapter 2. Rather there was the almost palpable living memory of distant places that was also the most striking feature of the autobiography of that most notable Turani migrant, the emperor Babur.29 Page 11 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space The Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya’s coalescence of sainthood, travel, and soldiering was all the more notable for the ways in which it tied these themes together as a single parcel of memory. It was clearly a Muslim tradition of book-learning and miracle-making that Shah Musafir was dispensing from the takiyya in which he was later buried in Aurangabad. But what was no less vigorously asserted in the text was that this was a specifically Turani tradition that was being transmitted and which the author of the text was writing into remembrance. Its author Shah Mahmud’s proud habit of dropping constant references to the names and posts of Shah Musafir and Shah Palangposh’s many followers in the upper echelons of the Mughal imperial service characterizes the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya as a written act of migrant memory-making built (p.132) around the enduring enshrined bodies of two blessed men from a Naqshbandi linage with long associations with the Mughal elite. These ties stretched back to the devotion of Emperor Babur’s father to ‘Ubaydullah Ahrar (d. 1490). These ties were echoed down to the age of Aurangzeb through the many clubby reminders of intimacy, fraternity, and common origins that were passed between the Mughal elite and representatives of the Central Asian Naqshbandis, even as the latter began to branch out among such other ethnic groups as the Afghans.30 It is small wonder that in the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya, Shah Palangposh was presented as riding his own horse into battle with a retinue of dervish retainers running by his side, for this was nothing less than a reflection of the habits and iconography of the Mughal military elite.31 Despite its textualization of the remembered geography of Central Asia, the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya also described visits by the two blessed men to a small number of non-Naqshbandi shrines in the Deccan. For example, in the account of Shah Musafir and Shah Palangposh making pilgrimages to the Chishti shrines of Khuldabad and Gulbarga, we see their commemorator and heir’s attempt to textually accommodate the newly arrived Sufis to the pre-existing medieval sacred geography of the Deccan. This was a process, as we will see in Chapter 5, that was reflected in more concrete terms by the policies of patronage pursued in the region by the Mughal and Asaf Jah elites. For these other arrivistes similarly sought ties to this older geography. But in spite of these brief narrative connections to this localized landscape of memory, the shrine of the two Central Asian shaykhs was never to fully find a place within that landscape. As we will see later, while the shifting ties of cultural geography that developed through Aurangabad’s subsequent history came to be reflected in revised accounts of the origins and travels of another saint Shah Nur, this was never to become the case with Shah Palangposh and Shah Musafir. For they remained tied to distant geographies that held diminishing cultural meaning in the Indian south. Ultimately, it seems that the Central Asian community (p.133) in Aurangabad to which their shrine was so exclusively aligned in its early history was too narrow a basis on which to build a sustainable clientele. Through the circulation of the life stories recounted in the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya, the Page 12 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space saints were never able to escape the associations with a Central Asian geography that with the Mughal Empire’s retraction from Aurangabad seemed unfamiliar compared to the better-known Baghdad, Khurasan, and north Indian cities that we will see in the next section becoming a feature of the updated (and perhaps imagined) travels of Shah Nur. This image of the living Naqshbandi blessed men and their associates in Aurangabad as a high-class and even imperious circle was reflected half a century after the composition of the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya in a Persian guidebook to the shrines of the region written by the otherwise unknown Khaksar Sabzawari.32 While we know nothing more about this author, his name at least points to his own or his family’s ancestry in either of the two Khurasani towns named Sabzawar. His description of the Naqshbandi shrine in the 1770s showed that despite the shift of the Deccan political centre to Hyderabad in the preceding decades, the heirs to the Naqshbandi migrants had managed to carry on the grand style of their earlier days in Aurangabad. As we will see in more detail in Chapter 5, Sabzawari was dazzled by the huge imported carpets on display at the shrine and the decoration of each of the dervish cells. Yet, he was also careful to point out that the shrine remained an elite and predominantly Central Asian place of residence, with its master and residents being drawn from the same social or ethnic background. Sabzawari’s use of the term moghol in this context reminds us of the longevity of confluences of ethnicity and social status in early modern India, confluences that were themselves written onto the landscape as the region around Aurangabad was known as Mogholai well into the nineteenth century. Yet by the 1800s, the shrine itself became more notable as the location of evening promenades beside its pools and fountains. By the twentieth century, it was more famous as a kind of sanctified stately home for its lordly (p.134) sajjada nashins than as the centre of a flourishing pilgrimage cult; it was more the location of history than piety. In this way, the splendid workmanship of its construction and the considerable attractions of its large pools and gardens provided the shrine with a curious afterlife as a pleasure space not altogether removed from the eighteenth-century descriptions of the shrines of Delhi recorded in the Muraqqa‘-e Dihli, a text itself written by an imperial Mughal traveller from Aurangabad. Even so, the shrine still served as an anchor of memory, even if its original imperial patrons had not been replaced by new groups of devotees. In modern times, what remained at the Panchakki shrine was a monument to the migrant Central Asian community described so vividly in the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya, that a text survived at the shrine in its sole manuscript until its publication in the 1940s.33 By then the record of a migrant community and its keen early sense of a separate identity had long since disappeared. The genealogies of Central Asian descent upheld by the few families who assiduously attended the shrine’s ‘urs festivals passed down their memory to the twentieth century. Preserved through the combined effort of text and territory. Page 13 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space While texts such as the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya and the pilgrimage guide of Sabzawari provide a sense of the subtleties of such lost mobile identities, it was ultimately in the name of the main saint of Panchakki that the most widely recognized testament to this multilayered past would survive. No matter how forgotten the narratives contained in the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya became, through his title of Shah Musafir or the ‘traveler saint king’, migration became the key act by which the saint was identified. In the years after the construction of his mausoleum, this mobile identity was rendered permanent through the inscribing of the stone tympanum above the entrance to his burial chamber with a poetic chronogram. It was written in his honour by the great eighteenthcentury litterateur, Ghulam ‘Ali Azad Bilgrami (d. 1786), who spent several years living at the shrine during its heyday. Aside from a few pious banalities, it was the same poem from the stone tympanum that was partly quoted in the only early-twentieth-century account to be written of Shah Musafir, Imam al-Din Naqvi’s (p.135) Barakat al-awliya (Blessing of the Saints).34 In this same poem, preserved in both the text and territory of saintly memory, the saint’s death was described using the language of travel—musafir shodan, muqim shodan, rihlat— that we have seen as no less culturally significant than the actual act of travel(see Fig. 4.1): The traveller saint king left this world for the throne of truth. He foretold the date of his journey of death: From this world of two poles he was a traveller (musafir).

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space In these lines written by Bilgrami, the mundane travels of the living blessed man from the Central Asian town of Ghijdavan (p.136) through Afghanistan and down through Hindustan to the Deccan became immortalized in a stone inscription as a metaphor for life and death. The blessed man’s journey from Central Asia to south India and his transformation there from living flesh into buried saint were rendered in the poem as a journey between two worlds, in the idiom of the Sufis that Bilgrami drew on between the two aqtab or poles of existence. It was ultimately through such commemorative

Fig. 4.1. Migration Writ in Stone:

combinations of text and territory that the journeys of

Bilgrami’s Poem at the Shrine of Shah Musafir

the Sufis were elevated to a level of cultural meaning

Courtesy of Nile Green

beyond the other quotidian facts of a blessed man’s life. It is fitting that the author of this short poem inscribed above the doorway to the shrine was Azad Bilgrami. For Bilgrami’s own life was itself one of widespread travel and textual production in which he repeatedly transformed the territories of experience and memory into text, text that in response to the multiple geographies of his itinerant life was written in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. Born in the north Indian qasba town of Bilgram to a family lineage that, as remembered in his full name, reached across space to the Iraqi town of Wasit, Bilgrami spent his life almost perpetually on the move. His was both an imperial life of itinerant service and a Muslim life of multiple pilgrimages through the sacred geographies of both India and the Hijaz. This took him from Bilgram to periods of residence in Sewestan/Sehwan, Lucknow, Malwa, Bhopal, Surat, Burhanpur, Bidar, Hyderabad, Gulbarga, Arcot, Aurangabad, as well as to Mecca and Medina, where he studied the Hadith Ur-texts of Muslim memory.35 Linked as he was to Mughal imperial service, aside from his hajj pilgrimages, Bilgrami’s Page 15 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space travels were a tour d’horizons of Mughal expansion, residing as he did in each of the key conquered cities of the Indian south in which in Chapter 5 we will see shrines being patronized by Mughal elites. In many of these Mughal-ruled towns —in Lucknow, Gulbarga, Khuldabad and Aurangabad—Bilgrami dwelt in such shrines and visited others during his Arabian travels, such as the celebrated shrine of Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili (d. 1258) in Mokha.36 The many books he wrote were in turn a response to these spaces of memory. They were (p.137) textualizations of territory that ranged in genre from the travel narrative of his early Safar Khayr and the biographical compendium of his Ma’asir al-Karam on the saints and scholars of his home region to the Hadith commentary Subhat alMarjan on the sacredness of India and the geo-historical Rawzat al-Awliya that is discussed in Chapter 7. Like the short poem he wrote for Shah Musafir’s shrine, Bilgrami’s own life encapsulated the interplay between text and territory, movement and settlement, with which this book is concerned. It was fitting, then, that on his own death he too was commemorated in space through burial beside the shrine of the medieval textualizer of the saints, Amir Hasan Sijzi (d. 1336) in the town of Khuldabad that Bilgrami himself textualized in his Rawzat al-Awliya. His textual accomplishments were remembered beside his grave down to the twentieth century, as children seeking the eloquence that would render them employable sought blessing from his tomb by picking up with their lips sugar lumps placed on his grave.37

Shah Nur Hammami: An Imaginary Arabian Migrant? Whether describing saints or anyone else, a standard feature of Arabic and Persian biographical genres was an emphasis on geographical and family origins.38 Such origins were framed in the terms of the formalized monikers relating to geography and kinship that biographers at least regarded as the principal forms of identification, so affording the kinds of textualized genealogies we have seen emerging among the Afghan diaspora in Chapter 3. An account of an individual’s genealogy typically featured in the opening passage of a biography, allowing the reader to instantly identify its subject in terms of space and kin. In saintly biographies, there were also details of the subject’s spiritual genealogy, the chain of initiation that tied the Sufi to the genealogical webs of spiritual authority that were themselves bound to particular geographical regions, often the early Sufi geographies of Baghdad (p.138) and Khurasan, but by the Mughal period Central Asia as well. This scheme of identification was seen particularly vividly in the textual tradition of Shah Nur Hammami, a Sufi who died in Aurangabad in 1692. Built in the years following his death by a senior member of the Mughal administrative elite, his shrine formed the city’s main pilgrimage space by the mid-eighteenth century, as we have read in the account of its grand ‘urs festival in Chapter 2. However, the earliest written account of Shah Nur is found in the great Persian prosopography of Mughal notables entitled Ma’asir al-umara, which was written in Aurangabad in the first decades of the eighteenth century. Like the Indo-Afghan genealogical histories Page 16 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space discussed in Chapter 3, the Ma’asir al-umara was a grand textual attempt to unravel the relationships between the many mobile elites who had passed through Aurangabad and other imperial cities in the heyday of Mughal rule. In its biographical notice on Shah Nur, the Sufi was described as having come to Aurangabad from Purab, that is, the regions of northeastern India lying to the east of the Ganges. His nickname was given in this account as Hammami (‘he of the bath-house’) which the writer of the Ma’asir al-umara explained was due to his giving people money to visit a hammam every time they saw him.39 The writer Shah Nawaz Khan went on to explain that a shrine was built for Shah Nur by Diyanat Khan, the diwan of Aurangabad whose own family lineage was traceable a few generations back to Iran. Both the blessed man and his patron were thus migrants who through body and brick conspired in the creation of Muslim space in the new imperial city. However, a number of decades later, Shah Nur’s history was again recounted in another Persian text entitled Bahar u Khazan.40 Here, Shah Nur’s geographical identity was already beginning to change. To begin with, Bahar u Khazan gave him the relation-name (nisba) of Hamadani, so indicating that his (p.139) family were originally residents of Hamadan in western Iran. In kinship terms, Shah Nur was described as having been a sayyid (that is, a blood descendant of the Prophet Muhammad) who was born in Baghdad and not northeastern India as testified to in the Ma’asir al-umara. The text went on to describe an extensive travel itinerary by which Shah Nur had visited many of the great pilgrimage places of the Middle East. He thus made several pilgrimages to Mecca; spent nine years studying in Egypt; and was finally initiated by a Sufi master in the holy city of Madina. After that, he finally travelled to India, passing through several of its earlier Mughal cities in turn before eventually coming to settle in Aurangabad. What we see here in Bahar u Khazan is important because it relates not only to a changing perception of the geographical identity of the saint, but also of the shrine. Here we see how sainthood, geography, and the Indo-Muslim social hierarchy of the ashraf (‘nobles’) interacted. To begin with, Shah Nur was identified for the first time as a sayyid, that is, as someone belonging to the elite social as well as religious class in Indo-Muslim society, a shift that in turn suggests a changing social profile at the shrine. For example, during the late eighteenth century when Bahar u Khizan was written, elaborate tomb enclosures were built around the shrine by local elites. Many of those associated with the shrine in this period were of Iranian heritage, such that the new geographical identity of Shah Nur as a migrant from the Iranian city of Hamadan appears to have been a narrative link to the remembered homelands of his new patrons.41 Through this narrative transformation, the space of the shrine was no longer identified with the geography and peoples of north India, but rather with the saint’s new remembered home city of Hamadan, and with such other Middle Eastern cities as Baghdad, Cairo, Madina, and Mecca. These cities were of course the most famous centres of religious instruction in the entire Islamic Page 17 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space memory space and migrant scholars from these cities had long enjoyed prestige in Indo-Muslim society. Indeed, (p.140) so did Arab Muslim migrants of any kind and their descendants. This shifting saintly identity and blossoming travel itinerary could be seen as forming a spatial charter for the shrine’s social elevation in a local context through claims to origins and travels in places associated with the ancestry of his elite patrons. For more humble pilgrims to the shrine, the changes served to link their local sacred space in the south of India to a more prestigious geography of Muslim pilgrimage in the Middle East. The saint’s imagined journeys in this way formed a means of establishing a connection between distant geographies and different kinds of pilgrimage space. Although to the naked eye the shrine was physically situated in the Deccan, to the eye of hagiographical text it lay at the end of a saint-trodden route leading all the way to Mecca. By the beginning of the twentieth century, a new generation of Urdu hagiographies formed yet another version of Shah Nur’s origins (see Fig 4.2). His first Urdu hagiographer, Imam al-Din Naqvi, claimed that he was a descendant of the sayyids of Hama in Syria.42 While refusing to comment on the saint’s birthplace, another early twentieth century writer, ‘Abd al-Jabbar Khan Malkapuri, referred to Shah Nur as a sayyid and gave him the nisba relationname of Hamawi to indicate an at least genealogical relationship to the Syrian city of Hama.43 In these accounts, we see again the importance of the claim that the saint was of high status sayyid Arab lineage and connected to the older Muslim memory space of Syria. In the context of a shrine visited by a clientele overwhelmingly composed of non-sayyid devotees, these genealogical and geographical claims certainly served to reify existing social and even spatial hierarchies. But through the importance given to the saint’s origins through an Arab genealogy traced from India through distant Syria to the Prophet Muhammad at Mecca, hagiographical text established the relationship of the local sacred space of Shah Nur’s shrine to an older geography of memory to which the saint vicariously connected his followers. (p.141)

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space Found in books composed in the early twentieth century, these geographical associations reflected the wider ties that connected the Nizam’s State of Hyderabad to other Muslim regions. Like the shrine of Shah Nur itself, by the early 1900s the official self-conception of Hyderabad State was as a place intimately connected to the heartlands of Islam, far to the west. Muslim intellectuals and blessed men continued to visit Hyderabad in search of patronage throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, including such major figures as the reformist thinker Jamal al-Din alAfghani (d. 1897) and the Iranian Sufi, Safi ‘Ali Shah (d. 1899).44 Fig. 4.2. An Imaginary Migrant? Wall While during the nineteenth Painting of Shah Nur Hammami century the unruly presence of Courtesy of Nile Green immigrant Arab soldiers and their descendants in the service of Hyderabadi nobles was a persistent theme in the city’s social history, Hyderabad’s Arabic connections continued on a more (p.142) cultivated level during the first half of the twentieth century as the city became an important focus for Arabic scholarship and publishing. Amid the selfconceptions of the Muslim notables of a princely state that was shifting its identity in the colonial era, for some Indian Muslims the narrativized ties of Shah Nur and other Deccan saints to an older Muslim geography in the Middle East served to link their own community history to that of an Arabian imaginary homeland. In such ways, migration was an idea as much as an act, and an idea that could be constantly reimagined through new tellings of a saintly life.

Further changes in the linking of Shah Nur to these different geographies were seen in the first hagiography of Shah Nur written after the fall of Hyderabad to the Republic of India in 1948. This was Aftab-e Dakan, written in Urdu by a local businessman whose own family claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad’s tribe, the Quraysh.45 In this text, Shah Nur’s birthplace was given for the first time as having been the old Sufi territory of Khurasan. While the itinerary of Shah Nur’s travels still included the Egypt, Madina, and Mecca of the earlier accounts, his travels were expanded to include a residence in the Khurasani city of Balkh associated in countless Persian hagiographies with such legendary early Sufis as Ibrahim ibn Adham. The Indian leg of his travels was also given greater emphasis, with Shah Nur now seen as having visited the shrine-towns of Ajmer and Gulbarga, as well as Delhi, to study with the Sufi masters, of those cities. To Page 19 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space what degree the itinerary followed by Shah Nur was a reflection of the popular stories describing the wanderings of Hatim Ta’i, who also followed this route, is uncertain, though their shared circuit of cities showed the continued importance of this narrative geography to the cultural imagination of Indian Muslims in modern times.46 At the very least, the commonality of such narrativized journeys shows how distant places were used to define and enhance the status of local saintly heroes. Aftab-e Dakan also reflected a shift in Indian (p.143) Muslim geographical sensibilities that was taking place in the second half of the twentieth century. Although Shah Nur’s Middle Eastern origins remained important, the Arab dimension to his lineage and wanderings had lessened through his new association with Khurasan. Combined with his Indian itinerary and his visit to Balkh, this Khurasani connection reflected Shah Nur’s modern association with the Chishti Sufi lineage through the work of his cult’s twentiethcentury reviver, Shams al-Din Chishti. Although the Chishti lineage had originated in the town of Chisht in Khurasan (now western Afghanistan), its main centres were in the same cities of India that Shah Nur was presented as visiting for the first time in Aftab-e Dakan. This expanded Indian itinerary was notable since in the twentieth century the Chishti lineage became widely regarded by many Indian Muslims as something approaching a national Sufi order. Understood in the nationalist imagination of the mid-twentieth century as the most ‘Indian’ expression of Islam, the Chishtis were seen as more rooted in the soil of India than any other Sufi lineage. Writing in the background of such nationalist re-conceptions of Muslim history, the author of Aftab-e Dakan made efforts to emphasize Shah Nur’s connections with the new national geography of India. Although like so many major saints, Shah Nur received the prestige of being born in Khurasan and of travelling through the Middle East as far as Mecca and Madina, the new Indian stages of his itinerary sought to affirm the relationship of his shrine to a Muslim geography with firm ties to the nation. In a city which a few decades before Aftab-e Dakan’s composition had been the second city of the Nizam’s state which the Indian Republic dissolved by military invasion, these claims show how the saints’ old role of connecting their followers to changing notions of belonging and homeland have continued into modern times.

From Persons to Spaces While we intuitively think of buildings as the epitome of all that is sedentary and thereby by definition as static spaces, we have conversely seen how India’s shrines to wandering Sufis captured the dynamic between movement and settlement that has shaped the self-histories of so many Indo-Muslim communities. In so (p.144) doing, these spaces of burial rendered permanent the memory of the migrations of those they enshrined. For through burial and the ritual and narrative acts of remembrance that followed it, the foreign body of the blessed man came to incorporate different geographies through the intertwining of distant and local places in the journeys of his remembered Page 20 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space person. Made permanent through architecture, the remembered migrant invoked the presence of other places towards a variety of cognitive and social ends, ranging from traditions of ethnogenesis to the cementing of emotional bonds between different Muslim regions. Whether at the Afro-Indian shrine of Bava Gor in Gujarat or at the Central Asian shrine of Panchakki in Aurangabad, the memory of the other spaces connected to a shrine could flourish or dwindle in accordance with the fortunes of the settler communities whom the saint served as collective patron. In other cases, as we have seen with Shah Nur, accounts of a saint’s genealogy, geographical origins, and journeys could change in response to shifts in political geography or in the profile of the shrine’s clientele. A continuum of saintly body, hagiographic narrative and shrine architecture thus served to tie the geographies of a saint’s beginnings with those of his ends, the places of his birth, spiritual education, initiation, and pilgrimages with those of his eventual burial and enshrinement, so connecting the memory spaces and living spaces of a shrine’s clientele. Although Sufi shrines have served as spaces for the localized expression of Muslim identity, the narratives that gathered around them served to tie the geography of India to that of other Muslim. Through their shared architectural styles, common linguistic terminology, and imported ritual practices, the shrines of medieval and early modern India, Central Asia, and Iran promoted the integration of new Muslim convert or settler communities into their surrounding local regions while at the same time creating recognizable and trans-regional forms of Muslim space that could be reproduced across wide geographical areas. Between a migrant Sufi and his local architectural and textual commemorators, such Muslim spaces were reproduced wherever Muslim communities emerged in early modern India. They created recognizably Islamic homelands linked by narrative and genealogy to the older memory (p.145) spaces of a collective Islamic Heilsgeschichte. These shrines can be envisaged as knots on the landscape, tying the claims of their client communities to the surrounding land in visible and durable form. On the most conspicuous level, these ties of the geography of belonging were manifested in styles of Indian shrine architecture, using imported techniques and aesthetics (notably the dome and chinikhana wall decoration) that had originally developed in Central Asia, Iran, or still further west.47 As Richard Eaton has argued, such similarities were most apparent along a ‘corridor’ of migration and subsequent Perso-Islamic influence in India.48 As we will see in Chapter 5, under Mughal rule the Deccan’s landscape as a whole acquired this architecturally endowed Mughal appearance that served to cognitively link the conquered south to the imperial geography of the north. And alongside the visual impact of the imported aesthetics of architectural territory came the textualization of a saint’s migrations through a shrine’s hagiographical narratives, narratives that were symbiotically dependent on the physical presence of the shrine. By these narrative acts of travel and these physical facts of architecture, the blessed men were transformed into the Page 21 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space saintly immortals of their surrounding communities. They were anchors of memory. Notes:

(1) Eickelman and Piscatori (1990) and Netton (1996). (2) Green, ‘Saints, Rebels and Booksellers: Sufis in the Cosmopolitan Western Indian Ocean’, in Kresse and Simpson (2007) and Peters (1994). (3) Abdur Rabb (1971), pp. 47–8 and Abū Hafs Suhrawardī (1991). (4) Ibid., pp. 42–8, and al-Hujwiri (1999), pp. 345–7. (5) Sidi Ali Reïs, The Travels and Adventures of the Turkish Admiral Sidi Ali Reïs, trans. Vambéry (1899), for example pp. 33, 84–5, 91. On other literary expressions of travel from this period, see Alam and Subrahmanyam (2007). (6) Green (2011) and Risso (1995). (7) Eaton (1978) and Green (2006b). (8) O’Fahey, ‘Islamic Hegemonies in the Sudan: Sufism, Mahdism and Islamism’, in Brenner (1993), p. 23. (9) Cf. Schubel (1993) and idem, ‘Karbala as Sacred Space among North American Shia’, in Metcalf (1996). (10) Cole (1988) and Eaton (1993). (11) Nadiem (2000). (12) Meri (2010) and Mouton (1993). (13) Eaton (2003). (14) Dargāh Qulī Khān (1993), pp. 51–2 (Persian text). (15) Eaton, ‘The Political and Religious Authority of the Shrine of Baba Farid’, in Metcalf (1984) and Lawrence, ‘Early Indo-Muslim Saints and Conversion’, in Friedmann (1984). (16) Basu (1995). (17) On these maritime community identities, see Simpson (2006). (18) Ricci (2011), pp. 195–6. (19) Eaton (1984). (20) On Hajji ‘Ali and other Bombay shrines, see Green (2011). Page 22 of 24

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space (21) Ernst (1992b) and Wink, ‘Islamic Society and Culture in the Deccan’, in Dallapiccola and Lallemont (1993). (22) Bredi (1990) and Khalidi (1992). (23) Aubin (1991) and Siddiqi, ‘The Ethnic Change at Bidar and Its Influence (AD 1422–1538)’, in Kulkarni, Nayeem, and Souza (1996). (24) Ahmad (1976) and Dadvar (1999), pp. 268–81. (25) Green (2006b), Chapter 1. (26) Green (2004a). (27) Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābādī (1939–40) (trans. Digby [2001]). For a fuller discussion, see Green (2006b). (28) For more on the language of the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya, see Green, ‘Translating the Spoken Words of the Saints: Oral Literature and the Sufis of Awrangabad’, in Long (2005). (29) On migration between Central Asia and India and connections between Mughal rulers and Naqshbandi Sufis, see Beisembiev (1994) and Foltz (2001). (30) See Foltz (2001) and Friedmann, ‘The Naqshbandis and Aurangzeb: A Reconsideration’, in Gaborieau, Popovic and Zarcone (1990). (31) Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya, p. 28. (32) Khāksar Sabzawārī, Sawānih (Asiatic Society of Bengal, Curzon Collection, ms 85, 33r–33v). I am grateful to Carl W. Ernst for supplying me with a copy of this manuscript. (33) The details of its publication are described in the preface to the Persian edition and discussed in Green (2006b), pp. 120–1. (34) Naqwī Gulshānābādī (1903), p. 128. (35) Hasan ‘Abbās (2005), pp. 29–53. (36) Ibid., pp. 7–12. (37) Haig (1907), p. 58. (38) Gibb, ‘Islamic Biographical Literature’, in Lewis and Holt (1962) and Mojadeddi (2001). (39) Shah Nawaz Khan (1911–52), pp. 475–7.

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Migrant Sufis and Sacred Space (40) Zahūr Khān Zahūr, Nūr al-anwār, an Urdu translation of the sections of Khizān ū Bahār of Bāhā’ al-Dīn Hasan ‘Urūj (d. 1814) related to Shāh Nūr Hammāmī (ms, Collection of Mohammad Abd al-Hayy, Aurangabad). (41) For more discussion, see Green, ‘Shi‘ism, Sufism and Sacred Space in the Deccan: Counter-Narratives of Saintly Identity in the Cult of Shah Nur’, in Monsutti, Naef, and Sabahi (2007). (42) Sayyid Imām al-Dīn Naqūr Hanafi Gulshānābādī (1903–4), p. 128. (43) ‘Abd al-Jabbār Khān Malkāpūrī (1912), pp. 1101–13. (44) Ahmad (1969) and Green (2004b). (45) Tārā Sāhib Qureshī (1985). (46) Champion, ‘“Les meilleurs saints sont musulman”: La figure de Hatim comme modele de saintete dans l’hagiographie islamique indienne: L’exemple du Bihar’, in Mallison (2001). (47) On Central Asian and Iranian influences on Indian shrine architecture, see respectively Khan (1987) and Yazdani (1995), pp. 114–213. (48) Eaton (2002).

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan

Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan Nile Green

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.003.0022

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the creation of a sacred Muslim geography or ‘memory space’ in south India (‘the Deccan’) from the sixteenth to eighteenth century. Looking at a large number of shrines built to Sufi holy men – many of them migrants from distant places – it traces the step by step creation of a concrete apparatus of cultural memory. The links of saints to Mughal and other Muslim elites is examined as part of the process of patronage, while Persian sources are used to give a sense of the pilgrimage and other ritual performances hosted at these mausoleum shrines. Keywords:   Islam, India, Deccan, mausoleum, shrine, cultural memory, memory space, patronage, Mughal, pilgrimage

Mughal Patronage of Sufi Institutions Through examining the acts of building and patronage that expanded the Muslim landscape of southern India in the late Mughal and eighteenth-century successor state periods, this chapter turns to the institutional dimensions of the making of Muslim space. The focus is on the process by which policies of architectural patronage served to transform the itinerant and ephemeral body of the living blessed man into a permanent presence in a landscape rendered Muslim through acts of architectural space-making. If through its connections to Mughal imperial expansion into the Deccan, there was a colonizing dimension to this patronage policy—as we saw in Chapter 4, many of the Sufis so enshrined were migrants from the Mughal territories to the north—then we must bear in mind that what was being colonized was primarily an earlier landscape of Page 1 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan Muslim rather than Hindu political and spiritual power. For, while with one hand of largesse the Mughals and their successors constructed new shrines around the cadavers of the blessed men with whom they affiliated themselves, with the other hand they sought to connect themselves to a pre-existing sacred landscape constructed by the medieval and early modern Muslim sultanates of the Deccan. Even if, as we will see in Chapter 7, there was at times narrative competition between supporters of Brahmins and Sufis for control over the meanings of the landscape, this policy of making space was primarily a creative rather than a destructive practice, of investing in a newly built Muslim geography rather than pillaging an existing Hindu one.1 Since (p.147) most of the chapters in this book are concerned with the Deccan, the same region is taken here as a case study to show how the production of textual narratives examined in other chapters was accompanied by an architectural adapation of the landscape as part of the symbiotic architectural and textual process of making Muslim space. Other examples of the kinds of spatial narratives, hagiographies, and geohistories explored with regard to specific shrines in other chapters could be discussed with regard to any of the many shrines shown in this chapter to have been patronized by the Mughals and their successors. For, whether through creating spaces of epigraphic inscriptions or narrative hagiographies, places of reading or provokers of writing, the making of Muslim territory was a dynamic activity that was inseparable from the creation of text. Shrines created new geographies of memory and belonging, concrete and visible testaments to the emblematic saintly persons who served as markers of historical identity through the historical narratives and commemorative rituals that brought these buildings to life. In short, a shrine was a monument in its original sense: a monumentum or ‘something that reminds’. These were not entirely new developments in the early modern era. Like other Indo-Muslim dynasts before them, the Mughal rulers were keen patrons of shrines built around the tombs of notable Sufis from the beginning of their reign.2 Before his arrival in India, Emperor Babur (r. 1526–30) held great affection for the shrines of the Naqshbandi saints in Central Asia. His chronicler and companion Zayn al-Din Khan (d. 1533) recorded that, on Babur’s first arrival in Delhi, the conqueror had immediately made a circumambulation or tawaf of the tomb of Nizam al-Din Awliya (d. 1325), before going on to visit the shrine of Qutb al-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki (d. 1235) the next day and spending the night there.3 Reflecting the continual interplay between the architectural memory of saints and sultans, on the following day Babur visited the tombs of the former Muslim kings of Delhi. In the years after Babur’s death, subsequent Mughal rulers (p. 148) patronized many living Sufis, and these rulers and their courtiers were no less instrumental in endowing new or restoring old shrines of the dead Sufi saints whose spaces of memory were so crucial to India’s sacred Muslim geography. To remain with the shrine of Nizam al-Din in Delhi that heralded the Mughals first interaction with India’s Sufis, we may note by way of example that Page 2 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan the mausoleum was extensively rebuilt twice under Babur’s successors, first by Faridun Khan in 1563 and again by the Mughal governor of Delhi, Khalilullah Khan, in 1652, who added the famous multi-pillared veranda and bulbous dome. During the reign of Aurangzeb the most notable royal intercession at Nizam alDin’s shrine was the burial there in 1681 of Aurangzeb’s sister, Jahanara. Elsewhere in Aurangzeb’s Delhi, a splendid shrine was constructed after the death of the Sufi Sayyid Hasan Rasulnuma in 1691. Pre-existing medieval shrines in other parts of India received no less royal attention during his reign and the shrine at Ajmer of the founder of the Chishti lineage in India, Mu‘in alDin Chishti (d. 1236), was visited by Aurangzeb no less than his predecessors, and he patronized the shrine and its residents lavishly.4 The notables of Aurangzeb’s court were even more active, with several members of the court granting revenues to the shrine of Ashraf Jahangir Simnani (d. 1437) at Kichaunchha in Awadh, for example. Elsewhere in Awadh, Aurangzeb was personally instrumental in granting land and endowing buildings at the shrine of Shah Pir Muhammad (d. 1673) at Salon and to the family of scholar–mystics later named after the Farangi Mahal (‘European mansion’) that Aurangzeb granted them in Lucknow. Sub-imperial patronage supported numerous other Sufi institutions during his reign.5 When the Mughals turned to the Deccan under Shah Jahan and especially Aurangzeb, their conquests of the Muslim-ruled sultanates of the region were accompanied by a no less deliberate religious policy. This aimed on the one hand at co-opting the living descendants of the region’s Sufi saints who as sajjada (p. 149) nashins administered the Deccan’s many existing shrines, and on the other hand at creating a new sacred geography by patronizing shrines of blessed men already affiliated with the Mughals in north India and Central Asia. In this way, the Mughals imported their earlier patronage policy from Hindustan to the Deccan, resulting in a policy of the ‘Mughalization’ of the Muslim geography of the Indian south that would be continued through the eighteenth century by the successor states who ruled in their name (see Fig 5.1). This Mughalization of the Deccan’s landscape even had a stylistic dimension, as styles associated with the Mughal north were reproduced in the south, most manifestly in the sloping bangala roofs that were imported from the north to be recreated in such buildings as Shah Jahan’s palace complex in Burhanpur and the shrine of Qadir Awliya in Aurangabad. Through architectural creation, space itself was mobile and reproducible. Despite the traditional image of Aurangzeb’s antipathy to so-called ‘unorthodox’ religious practices, patronage of Sufi institutions was therefore an important feature of his reign and policies, which for all the fame of the Fatawa-e ‘Alamgiri was not restricted to the textual patronage of Hanafi jurisprudence.6 This points to the way in which, in its respectable and ‘Shari‘a-bound’ forms at least, Sufism remained integral to notions of Islamic ‘orthodoxy’ in the later Mughal era. For Sufi blessed men were key members of the Muslim religious elite of early Page 3 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan modern India.7 Sufis and ‘ulama were not separate groups and, as we will see in Chapter 6, ‘shrines’ were multifunctional complexes in which the writing and reading of books played an important role that connected ‘popular’ (and ‘elite’) practices of shrine pilgrimage to the textual arena of written discourse, including law. As we will see later, at least one Sufi shrine incorporated a specific architectural feature for the dispensing of Shari‘a judgements. In early modern India, Islamic ‘orthodoxy’ was therefore produced as a quotient of specific social actors’ control over powerful spaces as well as texts. (p.150) Indeed, with their landholding and multifunctional shrine complexes, such materially-endowed Sufis were the religious establishment. As such, the creation of newly endowed Sufi institutions or the patronage of existing ones offered a crucial means by which the state was able to either introduce new members to that establishment or cultivate links with its existing members.8 With the Mughal conquests of the Deccan sultanates between around 1640 and 1690, this north Indian strategy of patronizing both new and existing shrines was transported to the Deccan, particularly after the relocation of the Mughal court to Aurangabad Fig. 5.1 Making the Deccan Mughal: in 1681. Due to the number of Mausoleum of Rabi‘a Dawrani, mosques, markets, shrines, and Aurangabad havelis that were built in Courtesy of Nile Green Aurangabad during its heyday under Aurangzeb and his early Asaf Jah (‘Hyderabad Nizam’) successors, the city acquired the sobriquet of khujista bunyad, ‘the auspiciously founded’. No less auspicious than the city’s imperial foundation was the (p.151) patronage of the Sufi architectural spaces that must be seen as much in terms of policy as piety. In particular, their construction must be located within the frontier policy by which the Mughals sought to establish cultural claims to and practical collaboration in a region newly conquered from a trio of sultanates whose own ties to its Sufi establishment were much older.9 In this respect, the Mughal policy of the co-option and creation of Sufi shrine complexes in the Deccan can be compared to the frontier policy of the Ottomans a century and a half earlier, whose expansion into Syria, Egypt, and southeastern Europe was similarly accompanied by either the re-endowment of existing Sufi institutions or the creation of new ones based around ‘imported’ Sufis with ties to Ottoman notables.10 In many early modern Muslim sultanates and empires,

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan Sufis were in such ways connected to conquerors and settlers and to these new arrivals’ institutional or imaginative claims to the land around their shrines.

The burial of Aurangzeb in 1707 at the shrine of Zayn al-Din Shirazi (d. 1369) in Khuldabad in the Deccan was therefore less the hasty burial of an uncertain succession than part of a wider pattern of imperial involvement with Sufi institutions in the region. Like other aspects of Mughal rule, in the decades after Aurangzeb’s death these patterns of patronage were continued by the Mughals’ successors in the Deccan. Most notable among these ‘successor’ patrons were the founder of Hyderabad State, Nizam al-Mulk Asaf Jah I (d. 1748), and his courtiers, though the same patterns were echoed in smaller post-Mughal successor states in the south. In the case of the Asaf Jah ‘Nizams’ as in that of the Mughals before them, the forging of dynastic ties to such shrine complexes was an important element of the state-making process. It created relationships with an influential Muslim establishment which, through the inherent mobility of the Sufi blessed man, could be reproduced in a range of territorial settings, from (p.152) cities to small towns and at times their rural hinterlands. Such patronage of Sufi spaces—through both the repair of existing shrines and the foundation of new ones—not only broadens our understanding of the leastknown period of Mughal architectural history. It also demonstrates the centrality of the embodied Islam of the Sufis to the wider political and cultural landscapes of early modern India, as the space-making process transformed the mobile and ephemeral blessed man into the static and architecturally-eternalized saint. While the majority of earlier studies of the Deccan’s Muslim architecture have concentrated on the pre-Mughal period, by combining literary references (by both modern surveyors and early modern chroniclers) with original surveys of shrine architecture in various towns of the Deccan, this chapter hopes to highlight an important but neglected aspect of the social history of architecture under the later Mughals and their eighteenth-century successors.11 In so doing, the chapter forms the concrete counterpart to the studies of textual spacemaking in the remainder of this volume.

A Saintly Survivor: The Shrine of Gesu Daraz at Gulbarga In the pre-existing Muslim landscape that the Mughals entered in the Deccan, the shrine of Muhammad al-Husayni Gesu Daraz (d. 1422) at Gulbarga loomed largest in sanctity. It was patronized over previous centuries by the Bahmani and ‘Adil Shah sultans. Connecting themselves assiduously to this spiritual seigneur of their newly-won territories, many important Mughal supplicants visited the shrine to pay their respects, including Aurangzeb himself, his son Muhammad Shah, and his future successor in the Deccan, Nizam al-Mulk. In 1686, Gulbarga fell to the Mughal armies almost a decade before the fall of Bijapur, whose ‘Adil Shah sultans had ruled it. Nonetheless, Aurangzeb’s early pilgrimages to Gulbarga must be seen within the context of his campaigns against (p.153) the Bijapur sultanate, within whose territories Gulbarga lay and by whose ‘Adil Shah rulers its shrines had long been maintained. Several of Aurangzeb’s pilgrimages were recorded in the Ma’asir-e ‘Alamgiri by the royal chronicler Saqi Must‘ad Page 5 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan Khan, who like other Indo-Persian chroniclers, made clear the connections between royal pilgrimage and military success. It was in this manner that Must‘ad Khan recorded a pilgrimage by the emperor in 1686 while en route to laying siege to the capital of the Qutb Shah sultans in Golkonda. On this occasion, Aurangzeb spent a week in Gulbarga, during which time he repeatedly visited the shrine and distributed 20,000 rupees to the hereditary representatives or sajjada nashins of the saint and to the shrine’s many resident dervishes and beggars.12 After successfully conquering Golkonda, several months later the emperor made a further pilgrimage, once again ‘removing the veil of poverty from the heads of the [shrine’s] residents’.13 The military dimension of such royal pilgrimages is perhaps best brought out in another episode recounted in the Ma’asir-e ‘Alamgiri, relating to the capture of Sambhaji, the son of the Maratha leader Shivaji, in 1689. According to Must‘ad Khan, Sambhaji’s unexpected capture had actually been predicted to Aurangzeb some ten days before the event by Mir Sayyid Muhammad, the descendant and erstwhile sajjada nashin of Gesu Daraz at Gulbarga. When the prediction came true, Aurangzeb rewarded the sayyid personally and granted 10,000 rupees to the shrine.14 Mir Sayyid’s son had already been appointed as sajjada nashin of the shrine by Aurangzeb and the latter was later careful to maintain the goodwill of this blessed representative of the most important shrine in the Deccan by awarding him at court with a jewelled dagger and a horse with gold trappings.15 Aside from such grants in cash and treasure, surviving buildings in the outer courtyard of the Gulbarga shrine complex bearing the characteristic (p.154) bangala-style arches of the architecture of the late Mughal period suggest some renovation at the shrine during the years after the fall of the city to Aurangzeb. However, on the whole the shrine does not seem to have undergone great architectural development during this period in spite of the imperial patronage of its sajjada nashins. One interesting addition apparently dating from shortly afterwards in the Asaf Jah Nizams’ period are wall paintings at the complex within the mausoleum of one of Gesu Daraz’s descendants which echo the earlier Bahmani period decoration of the tomb of Ahmad Shah Bahmani (d. 1436) at Bidar.16 Despite the ties of the shrine at Gulbarga with the earlier Deccan sultanates, the Mughal conquests seem not to have diminished its status, and the visitations and gifts of Aurangzeb probably further increased its prestige. Here, as in other Muslims regions of the world by the early modern period, the saints had been tied to their surrounding geographies for much longer than the mobile conquerors of the 1500s and 1600s. This often ensured that the newly arrived rulers of the ‘visible realms’ needed to tie their claims to such territories with the more time-honoured local bonds of the saintly rulers of the ‘invisible realms’, or ghaybat, from where the saints were seen to manipulate events in the tangible world of men.

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan Around the time of the emperor’s death in 1707, the Hindu resident of Aurangabad and chronicler Bhimsen (d. unknown) penned a portrait of the shrine in his Persian Tarikh-e-Dilkusha that is worth quoting in full. ‘The mausoleum,’ he wrote: has a big dome and all around the platform is strongly built with stone. It is believed that this building will not be inferior to the similar buildings in Delhi. [The saint’s] relatives live around the mausoleum and are quite well placed. Other domes have also been constructed where many people reside. In the days of the rulers of the Dakhan, a big amount was being collected by way of religious offerings. Similarly, a huge amount was collected from the rulers of Bijapur and Hyderabad and the rich and major zamindars in the neighbourhood. Many villages that fetched handsome revenue were allotted for the mausoleum and for its maintenance. Since it also came (p.155) within the extent of the captured territory, the king of the age [that is, Aurangzeb] set aside some villages for the same purpose.17 The case of Gulbarga shows that far from being punished or destroyed for their connections with the Deccan sultans, under diplomatic management, the leading pre-Mughal Sufi shrines of the Deccan continued to prosper under the new Mughal dispensation, as indeed they would continue to do under the Asaf Jah rulers in turn. The longevity of the saints and their spaces in the landscape was often far greater than that of kings. Even so, their futurity could not be taken for granted and was itself subject to the manipulations of patronage and policy. The fate of earlier, medieval shrines in such conquered political centres as Bijapur and Hyderabad shows the ways in which the Mughal conquests were accompanied by a mix of continuity and rupture in the Deccan’s sacred landscape. As we will see, even though Muslim conquests have often been associated with the destruction of Hindu holy sites, the fortunes of Muslim shrines were no more assured.

Conquered Capitals: Bijapur and Hyderabad While Gulbarga continued to flourish as a pilgrimage centre, the city of Bijapur whose rulers had for the past two centuries supported scores of Sufis became a virtual ghost town after its conquest in 1686. Bhimsen and other chroniclers described its vastly diminished population and plundered, ruinous cityscape.18 Most of those with means fled the broken city, with many of the former courtiers of its ‘Adil Shah rulers later finding employment with the Mughals. Sufis from Bijapur, whether hereditary sajjada nashins or otherwise, were in different cases more or less fortunate than their co-citizens. Some of the city’s many shrines fell into disuse and decay over the decades that followed the conquest. Though already waning, the golden age of Bijapur’s Chishti and Qadiri Sufis was abruptly prevented from revival by the destruction of the city and its inhabitants.19 Some (p.156) Sufi residents like Mahmud Bahri (d. 1718), who Page 7 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan gave up writing Dakani Urdu for the Persian more familiar to the new conquerors, seem to have been forced into lives of itinerant wandering by the fall of the ‘Adil Shahs. Other Sufis, like Tipu Mastan Awliya (d. 1725) and the Qadiri master Sayyid ‘Abd al-Latif (d. c. 1736), left Bijapur to find new patrons in emerging Mughal centres in the Karnatik. In spite of the destruction of their home city, by founding new Sufi lineages in new regional centres, such Sufis were able to transmit the prestige of Bijapur’s longer-established Sufi lineages into regions lacking similarly time-honoured saintly traditions. As they had before from other places, once again the saints marched on. Other Sufis, however, remained in the city of Bijapur and were able to weather the long storm of Bijapur’s ruin more comfortably through the confirmation of their land and revenue grants by Aurangzeb. He made at least seven such grants to mainly Qadiri sajjada nashins at pre-existing shrines in Bijapur during the two decades between the conquest of the city and his death in 1707.20 According to the chronicler Lala Mansaram, during his period as Mughal governor of Bijapur Nizam al-Mulk (the future first Nizam) also regularly attended upon, and so undoubtedly patronized, the Bijapur Sufi Sayyid Ibrahim Baghdadi as well as granted over a thousand rupees to a poor dervish and his sons outside Bijapur.21 Nevertheless, the conquest of Bijapur and the sudden disappearance of its political and commercial position meant that there was no notable patronage of new shrines during the reign of Aurangzeb. After his death, however, the city did see the construction of two new shrines. The adjacent shrines of the brothers Sayyid Karim Muhammad (d. 1693) and Sayyid ‘Abd al-Rahim (d. 1710) aligned themselves with the pre-existing religious topography of the city through their position near the south-eastern corner of Bijapur’s ‘Adil Shahi Friday mosque.22 Built in 1731, this pair of shrines was part of a wider pattern of patronage of Sufi shrines by Asaf Jah notables throughout the territories of Nizam al-Mulk in the years (p.157) during which he established his new state in the Deccan. Like Aurangzeb before him, the Deccan’s next immigrant ruler sought to use the Sufis to forge ties with his new territorial domains. In the city of Hyderabad, the Mughal conquests saw the introduction of new saintly lineages aligned to the spiritual and political geography of Mughal Hindustan. This was seen in the case of Shah Yusuf al-Din Qadiri (d. 1709) and Shah Sharaf al-Din Qadiri (d. c. 1709). These two mobile Chishti Sufis were north Indian disciples of Shah Kalim Allah (d. 1729) of Delhi who accompanied the Mughal armies to Golkonda/Hyderabad before establishing an outpost there after the city’s conquest in 1687. In time, their shrine became one of the most important sacred sites of Hyderabad and in Chapter 2 we have already seen it hosting an ‘urs festival at which the presence of dancing girls earned the censure of Hafiz ‘Ali Shah of Khayrabad in the mid-1800s.23 A more factional dimension existed alongside the introduction of new Sufis after Aurangzeb’s conquest of Hyderabad and his patronage of the city’s Mecca Masjid in 1688, echoing Mughal rhetoric legitimizing the conquest through reference to the Page 8 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan Shi‘ism of the city’s Qutb Shah rulers. Hyderabad’s great Qutb Shahi Shi‘i ‘Ashurkhana was turned into a stable for the horses of the Mughal cavalry; part of the building was destroyed in the process. It was only after the later transfer of the Asaf Jah capital to the city in the 1760s and the general rise in Shi‘i fortunes under the reign of the Asaf Jah Nizams that this great Shi‘i monument to the memory of the distant Iraqi battlefield of Karbala was restored by Nizam ‘Ali Khan Asaf Jah II in 1764–5. Along with a new gateway, outer halls and wooden colonnades were also added at this time.24 Along with the return of Shi‘i families to favour, the Asaf Jah period also saw other reversals of the policies of Aurangzeb, which show a measure of departure from Aurangzeb’s practices that accompanied the broader continuity of their rule with Mughal custom. As in Delhi at the same time, the reign of Nizam ‘Ali Khan Asaf Jah II in Hyderabad saw a resurgence (p.158) in the importance of the courtly dancing girls and cultivated courtesans (tawa’if) whose role at court had been steeply diminished by Aurangzeb after 1668. These Asaf Jah modifications of Aurangzeb’s policies came together in the revival of patronage of the great Shi‘i hilltop shrine outside Hyderabad known as Mawla ‘Ali that had earlier been patronized by the city’s Qutb Shah rulers. In the last years of Nizam ‘Ali Khan’s reign, several of the most famous dancing girls of the Asaf Jah court patronized a number of buildings at the shrine of Mawla ‘Ali, including pilgrim lodges, mosques, pools and fountains, and a ceremonial kettledrum terrace (naqqarakhana) to grace the path leading up to the shrine.25 Several courtesans were also buried in a capacious garden tomb at the site, along with prominent political figures of the Asaf Jah court such as Rukn al-Dawla. While the shrine of Mawla ‘Ali was not strictly speaking a Sufi institution, as we saw in Chapter 2 its annual ‘urs rituals as well as its forms of patronage associated it with the practices and patronage linked to Sufi institutions proper. The fate of the defeated Hyderabad of the Qutb Shahs also demonstrates the strange paths that the royal patronage of Sufis sometimes followed. This was particularly the case with regard to the last Qutb Shah ruler, Abu al-Hasan Tana Shah, who was famous in the Deccan for his attachment to the Sufi Razi al-Din Raju Qattal Husayni (d. 1684), one of the many blessed descendants of Gesu Daraz of Gulbarga.26 Just before the fall of his kingdom, Abu al-Hasan began the construction of a splendid shrine around the tomb of Razi al-Din outside Hyderabad’s Fateh Gate. While his post-conquest captivity in Daulatabad fort meant that Abu al-Hasan was never to be buried either in Razi al-Din’s shrine or among the tombs of his ancestors at Golkonda, his devotion to the saint did finally ensure his burial in a pauper’s grave within the shrine of Razi al-Din’s ancestor Shah Raju Qattal (d. 1330) at Khuldabad in 1699, within a few hundred yards of the grave of his vanquisher Aurangzeb in the shrine of Zayn al-Din Shirazi. But the shrine Abu al-Hasan had begun for Razi al-Din remained (p. 159) incomplete. Ignored by Aurangzeb for its ties to the Qutb Shah ancien régime, work did not continue on it until half a century later with the Page 9 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan intervention of a wife of Nizam ‘Ali Khan, who added a golden spire to its dome, and the later patronage of the Asaf Jah prince, Nasir al-Dawla.27

A Provincial Sufi Settlement: Balapur Other shrines in the Deccan did receive imperial or sub-imperial patronage during the reigns of Aurangzeb and subsequently Nizam al-Mulk. In a period that saw the mobile Naqshbandi Sufis linked with the Mughal elite spread rapidly from Central Asia through the early Mughal capital at Kabul and into Hindustan and thence, with its conquest, to the Deccan, the little-known Sufi settlement at Balapur in the northern Deccan is especially interesting. There the Naqshbandi Sufi ‘Inayat Allah (d. 1705) established a circle of followers in 1654 as the spiritual vanguard of the Mughals’ southerly expansion. His life reflecting many of the social no less than spiritual currents of the day, in 1649, ‘Inayat Allah had migrated to the Deccan from the early Naqshbandi bridgehead in India that was Punjab and from there he travelled widely before settling in the early Mughal outpost of Burhanpur.28 It is unclear whether ‘Inayat Allah had been influenced by the teachings of the great Naqshbandi ‘renewer’ (mujaddid) Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624) in their mutual Punjabi homeland prior to reaching the Deccan. But he was certainly influenced by Sirhindi’s teachings in Burhanpur at the hands of Abu al-Muzaffar Sufi Burhanpuri (d. 1696–7 or 1705).29 The latter was no less mobile than his disciple: from the Punjab-originated lineage of Ahmad Sirhindi he was sent to Burhanpur on his own master’s orders. While both of Abu al-Muzaffar’s death dates suggest it is unlikely that he was a direct khalifa (deputy) of Sirhindi, his association with Sirhindi’s Punjabi circle is consistent with the spread of Naqshbandi–Mujaddidi missionary activity to (p. 160) the Mughal Deccan. In 1661, seven years after he first moved from Burhanpur to establish his own circle in neighbouring Balapur, ‘Inayat Allah received a jagir (land grant) from Aurangzeb, whose son ‘Azam Shah had resided for some time in what was then the frontier town of Balapur. The income from this grant helped to fund the construction of a luxurious khanaqah and shrine complex for ‘Inayat Allah. It was built on the far side of the Mun river from the urban centre of Balapur and at a short distance from Balapur’s fort and the chhatri pavilion built on the river by Aurangzeb’s general Jai Singh. As elsewhere in the Deccan, the spatial positioning of the shrine reflected the place of its occupants in Mughal society, set apart from the townspeople and their worldly rulers but at the same time comfortably close to the latter. The greater part of the shrine of ‘Inayat Allah was built in the baroque late Mughal style favoured throughout the reigns of Aurangzeb and Nizam al-Mulk. It made extensive use of highly decorated chuna plasterwork to which architectural (almost trompe l’oeil) wall-paintings were subsequently added. Constructed around several courtyards, the shrine buildings comprised a mosque, rooms for visiting dervishes (darwish-khana), and residential quarters (zanana) for the saint’s descendants (see Fig. 5.2). However, as a pious spatial reminder of the Naqshbandis’ textual doctrinal antipathy towards saintly Page 10 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan mausolea, the tombs of ‘Inayat Allah and his son and successor as first sajjada nashin, Sayyid Munib Allah (d. 1748), were left uncovered by any structure amid the wider splendour of their shrine. It was a grand place nonetheless. In an impressive visual signifier of the shrine’s importance, the outer courtyard was entered through a high gateway, a hathi pol designed to enable the elephants of the military elite to pass through it. Like many of the Deccan’s shrine gateways, including the great processional archway at the shrine of Gesu Daraz, this portal dates from a period shortly after the original construction of the shrine. The extensive stables (tawila) beyond the gate offer further testament to the class of imperial visitors that the shrine received in a period in which horses remained an expensive imported luxury. The elaborate beautification of the shrine also included an unusual calligraphic water-channel maze forming the names Allah and Muhammad, a concrete visualization of the holy names (p.161) chanted by Sufis resident at the shrine. Suitably enough, following the original land grant of Aurangzeb, one of the main patrons of this ornate shrine was Nawwab Iraj Khan, apparently a descendant of the great Mughal architectural and literary patron of Burhanpur, ‘Abd al-Rahim Khan-e Khanan (d. 1626–7).30 It remains unclear, though precisely which portionsof the shrine he built. In 1737, a mosque and tomb were constructed at the Balapur shrine for the Sufi Mawlawi Ma‘sum Shah (d. unknown) by the local notable Mirza Amin, who endowed these buildings in memory of his father.31 The most striking feature of the shrine was a triple-arched balcony set in front of the shrine’s outer courtyard that bears close resemblance to the

Fig. 5.2 A Central Asian Lineage in the Deccan: Shrine of ‘Inayatullah, Balapur Courtesy of Nile Green

imperial ‘display balconies’ (jharokha-ye darshan) of Mughal palaces, such as that in the diwan-e ‘am of the Red Fort in Agra. Such jharokhas were (p.162) also adapted into Hindu temple architecture during the eighteenth century for the display of cult images.32 The appearance of such a construction in a Sufi shrine of the period is eloquent testimony to the twin grandeur of the blessed persons of the Balapur Sufis and the public spaces they occupied. Access to the balcony was only possible from the residential quarters of the sajjada nashins, who sat in the jharokha to instruct their followers or grant blessings and prayers to the people of the town. They may also have sat there in their capacity as faqih jurisconsults, legislating on the problems of the townspeople and so lending the jharokha its local name as the ‘place of law’ (dar al-shar‘). In such ways, the Sufis were embedded in the Page 11 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan legal establishment and the maintaining of social order in the imperial provinces. Yet the adoption of this most iconic feature of the architecture of Mughal imperial authority is a startling reminder of the status and perception of Sufis during the late Mughal period. Helped by their varied endowments, the descendants of ‘Inayat Allah were able to maintain a flourishing tradition of scholarly Naqshbandi Sufism throughout the precolonical period. Many of the Balapur Sufis were significant enough to feature extensively in ‘Abd al-Jabbar Khan Malkapuri’s early-twentieth-century Urdu biographical dictionary of the Deccan saints.33 Other local Sufi lineages were established during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the nearby town of Ellichpur. There, in their capacity as the Asaf Jah governors of the Berar province (suba), the Panni Afghan nawwabs of Ellichpur patronized a number of buildings with Sufi associations, so continuing the long connections we have seen of the diaspora Afghans with the Sufis of their southern settlements.34 As with the Asaf Jah Nizams, the Mughals’ other Muslim successors thus continued the spatial and spiritual policies of their imperial forebears.

(p.163) A Former Royal Centre: Bidar Having been one of the earliest Deccan cities to fall into Mughal hands, Bidar presents further examples of Mughal and Asaf Jah patronage policies. Bidar belonged to the territories of Bijapur but was taken by Aurangzeb in 1656 while he was still viceroy of the Deccan. He later appointed a series of governors to administer the city which, in keeping with Mughal practice, was renamed as Zafarabad (‘City of Victory’), toponymically inscribing the memory of the Mughals’ arrival onto the urban landscape. During the reign of Aurangzeb, new walls were built for Bidar that included four gateways bearing inscriptions dating their respective completion to between 1671 and 1682.35 Members of the city’s new Mughal ruling class indulged themselves in sponsoring the architecture of imperial pleasure, constructing havelis, gardens, and terraces from which to gaze at the sky on moonlit nights. One example was the Chandni Chabutra (‘moonlit terrace’), built by Husam al-Din Khan, Aurangzeb’s governor, in the early 1690s. Nonetheless, as in other Mughal cities, religious architecture featured strongly among the civic projects of Bidar’s new rulers. A considerable number of new mosques were constructed, including one built in a blend of local Bahmani and imported late Mughal styles by Aurangzeb’s governor Mir Khalilullah and another the so-called Kali Masjid (‘black mosque’), built by the local notable ‘Abd al-Rahim in 1695 in honour of the emperor.36 The mosque and surrounding formal garden built in the suburbs of Bidar by the Mughal governor Mukhtar Khan in 1671 was one of the few mosques in the Mughal Deccan possibly associated with the destruction of a Hindu temple. A Persian inscription records Mukhtar’s demolition of the temple as part of Aurangzeb’s mission of establishing Islam in the Deccan.37 We should bear in mind, however, the context of this propagandist text, addressed as a rebuke against the recently defeated Page 12 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan Shi‘i rulers of Bidar as well as against its Hindu residents. In any case, with the coming of (p.164) Asaf Jah rule the garden seems to have been handed back to Hindu worshippers. Sufi institutions also played a role in the Mughal reorganization of space in Bidar. One of the earliest of these constructions was sponsored by one of the Afghan officers stationed in Bidar after the conquest, Ahmad Khan Khweshgi. Ahmad Khan was a member of the same Khweshgi clan of Afghans as ‘Abd Allah Khweshgi Qasuri (d. after 1720), whom we encountered among the diasporic Afghans of Chapter 3. In a further reminder of the symbiosis of textual and spatial creation, the Afghan patron of buildings in Bidar was related to the writer of Akhbar al-Awliya, one of the first texts of Sufi commemoration to be composed in Aurangzeb’s Deccan. In an anticipation of what would happen in Aurangabad a few decades later, in 1659 Ahmad Khan Khweshgi added a mosque to the pre-Mughal Sufi shrine of Mahbub Subhani in Bidar, so affiliating the new polity to the region’s pre-existing sacred geography.38 The same pattern was seen in the Mughal sponsorship of a new shrine for Sayyid Amir Hamza Qadiri (fl. 1670?) in Bidar. The migrant Sufi Amir Hamza was a descendent of ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani of Baghdad and arrived in Bidar from Iraq early in the reign of Aurangzeb, his career in this way reflecting the wider pattern of Sufi migration into the newly conquered Deccan. The patronage of Amir Hamza by Bidar’s new rulers is evinced by the construction of his shrine during the Mughal period and a sanad certificate given to the saint (or his family) by Aurangzeb. As in Gulbarga and Hyderabad, the patronage of pre-existing Sufi institutions formed no less a part of Mughal colonization than the creation of new shrines. In Bidar, this process was associated with the shrine of the Qadiri Sufi, Abu al-Fath Shams al-Din Qadiri, better known as Multani Padshah (d. 1529). The reasons are uncertain for the association of Mughal officers with this shrine rather than the more famous and architecturally more impressive shrine of the migrant Sufi Shah Khalilullah, the son of the famous Iranian Sufi Shah Ni‘mat Allah Wali (d. 1431). However, given the Shi‘i associations of the Ni‘matullahi lineage in India, the neglect of Khalilullah’s shrine may well have been related to the wider marginalization of (p.165) Shi‘ism under Aurangzeb, though some Ni‘matullahi family members do seem to have been incorporated into the Mughal administration in the north. The shrine of Multani Padshah was extended during the Mughal and early Asaf Jah periods. An elaborate tomb at the shrine bears a versified inscription dating it to the reign of Aurangzeb, and during the eighteenth century the last Mughal governor of Bidar, Mir Kalan Khan, was also buried there. As a fillip to the grand ‘urs rituals that were held there, the shrine also received a ceremonial musicians’ naqqarakhana gallery of the kind associated with Mughal and early Asaf Jah renovations of other Sufi shrines. Though the structure was not specifically dated with a founding inscription, it echoes what we have seen in Chapter 2 of the increasingly elaborate scale on which ‘urs festivals were celebrated in the Mughal era. It was not only through Page 13 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan sponsoring buildings, but also through the rituals those buildings enabled that the Mughals were able to connect themselves to their territories of conquest. Elsewhere in Bidar, new buildings were sponsored for the city’s Chishti Sufis. A domed mausoleum was constructed for the Mughal Chishti dervish Abu al-Hasan upon his death in 1678, within the shrine compound of the earlier Chishti Sufi Shah ‘Ali (d. 1584), who was the great-grandson of Shah Abu al-Fayz discussed below.39 In a rare though by no means unique example of female enshrinement, the mausoleum of the female saint, Minnatullah Bi Sahiba (fl. 1450), was also renovated during the reign of Aurangzeb in 1696. Following the move of the Asaf Jah Nizams’ capital from Aurangabad to Hyderabad around 1763, the fortunes of Bidar’s shrines rose again with the first burials of members of the Deccan’s ruling family since its conquest a century earlier. In this way a renewed political centre at Hyderabad helped revive the fortunes of an earlier sacred geography through the prestige and patronage associated with royal burials. In 1763, Salabat Jang, the deposed Nizam of the Deccan, was also buried in an enclosure at the shrine of Multani Padshah.40 The association of Mughal and Asaf Jah elites with Multani Padshah’s family may also be seen in the patronage of a mosque in 1695 in the shrine of his descendant, (p.166) Shah ‘Ali Qadiri, by another of Aurangzeb’s governors, Rustam Dil Khan. The use of the shrines of Multani Padshah and his descendants as burial sites for members of the Mughal and Asaf Jah elite is reflected in the similar association of Bidar’s major pre-Mughal Chishti shrine. The shrine of the aforementioned Shah Abu al-Fayz (d. 1474) had earlier been endowed by all of the Bahmani rulers of Bidar.41 Reflecting the burial of Salabat Jang a short distance across the city, two of the sons of Nizam ‘Ali Khan were buried in a black stone enclosure in the shrine. Maintained through an endowment of two villages, a roofless jali tomb enclosure was also built there for Nizam ‘Ali Khan’s wife, ‘Ashuri Begam.42 This association of the pre-Mughal shrines of Bidar with members of the Asaf Jah Nizams’ family during the second half of the eighteenth century reflected the movement of the Asaf Jah capital from Aurangabad to Hyderabad early in the reign of Nizam ‘Ali Khan. The latter’s decision to bury members of his close family within the shrines of Bidar shows an important pattern of cultural continuity between the Mughal and Asaf Jah periods. For, though Nizam ‘Ali Khan himself and all after 1800 of the subsequent Hyderabad Nizams would be buried in the Mecca Mosque in Hyderabad itself, in the later eighteenth century the function of Sufi shrines as places of royal burial continued to be as important as it was to the family of Aurangzeb at the century’s beginning. The choice of Bidar over Khuldabad, in whose shrines both Aurangzeb and Nizam ‘Ali Khan’s father Nizam al-Mulk were buried, reflected the relative proximity of Bidar as an early saintly necropolis to the new capital at Hyderabad. It also reflected the proximity of the Din Panah and shrine of Nizam al-Din Awliya in Delhi as discussed in Chapter 1. The relationship between Bidar and Hyderabad makes an interesting comparison with the ties between Khuldabad and Aurangabad Page 14 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan during the latter’s years as capital under Aurangzeb and Nizam al-Mulk. In both (p.167) cases older, medieval Sufi shrine geographies associated with earlier Muslim dynasties were adopted as burial centres by the new rulers and notables of a neighbouring political centre that possessed few comparably antique shrines of its own. In such ways, older religious spaces were claimed for newcoming rulers seeking deeper roots in their regions of settlement. Through burial and patronage the elites of the early modern Deccan sought to spatially connect themselves with the architecturalized memory of their medieval forebears.

A Medieval Sufi and Royal Necropolis: Khuldabad This process can be seen even more clearly in the fortunes of the medieval shrine centre of Khuldabad during the reigns of Aurangzeb and Nizam al-Mulk. As with Bidar, the renewed burst of patronage at Khuldabad must be seen as contingent upon the rise of the neighbouring imperial capital of Aurangabad after its endowment by Aurangzeb in 1681. Khuldabad served here as a historical equivalent to the mythical space of Adam’s expulsion from Eden described in textual form as being in Sri Lanka by Ghulam ‘Ali Azad Bilgrami (d. 1786), who was himself appropriately buried at Khuldabad. For in the historical memory of early modern Muslims, in the graves of Khuldabad lay the blessed bodies of those who first brought Islam to the Deccan. Tradition held that fourteen hundred saints arrived there from the north at the time of the medieval Tughluq invasion of the Indian south. In the later Mughal period, this memorial tradition was re-emphasized by the writing in Aurangabad of Azad Bilgrami’s geo-history, Rawzat al-awliya (‘Heavenly Garden of Saints’, 1739 or 1748). Nor was Khuldabad only a burial place of Sufis, for the original Nizam Shahi founder of Khirki (the forerunner of Aurangabad), the Ethiopian elite slave Malik ‘Ambar, also chose to be buried there before his death in 1636. Prefiguring the continuity of patronage policies we have seen taking place at Bidar, both Aurangzeb and Nizam al-Mulk were also buried in the shrines of Khuldabad’s Chishti saints. Other rulers buried at Khuldabad included the short-lived Mughal emperor A‘zam Shah (d. 1707); the last Qutb Shahi king of Golkonda, Abu al-Hasan (p. 168) (d. 1702); Nizam al-Mulk’s son and successor as Nizam, Nasir Jang (d. 1750); and the first ruler of Arcot, Nawwab Anwar al-Din Khan (d. 1748–9). These royal burials contributed greatly to the prestige of Khuldabad by adding the all-important seal of royal affirmation to its sacred landscape. This symbolic alloy of royalty and sainthood was best seen in the name of Khuldabad itself, which was chosen in reference to Aurangzeb’s posthumous title of khuld makan (‘sheltered in eternity’), after the emperor’s burial there. When the name Khuldabad replaced the town’s earlier name of Rawza (‘Heavenly Garden’), it was a sealing of this spatial pact between the architectural memory of saints and kings.

Page 15 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan Even prior to the Mughal conquests, Khuldabad’s prominence in the Deccan’s overlapping sacred and political geography had led the Emperor Akbar to financially support the Khuldabad shrines. Akbar’s interest in patronizing the shrines of Khuldabad can be partly explained by his initial conquests of the northern Deccan region of Khandesh in 1601 and his establishment of a palace and military outpost in its chief city of Burhanpur, circumstances which prompted an interest in the rest of the Deccan. Burhanpur’s Faruqi rulers (r. 1370–1601) had long maintained patronage ties with Khuldabad, which Akbar was careful to maintain. Subsequently, in 1605 Akbar issued a farman granting the Khuldabad shrines the income of three villages in the newly conquered region of Khandesh, with agrarian space maintaining saintly space in a familiar economic bond.43 Akbar’s successors continued this policy and similar revenue grants were made by Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, confirming earlier grants and adding new ones conferring revenue from villages in subsequently conquered territories in the Khuldabad region itself. These farmans are of interest not only for showing the nature and scale of imperial patronage of this saintly geography, but also for demonstrating the kinds of activity that such grants supported. Several grants—for example farmans issued by Aurangzeb and later by Shah ‘Alam—specified that their revenue was intended to support the performance of the annual (p.169) ‘urs of Muntajib al-Din Zar Bakhsh (d. 1309) and its attendant langar feast.44 Despite the demise of Mughal power in the Deccan after Aurangzeb’s death, during the reign of Muhammad Shah and the rise of Nizam al-Mulk, Khuldabad maintained its status as the principal holy site in the hinterland of Nizam al-Mulk’s capital at Aurangabad. Disheartened by his lack of success in his rebellion against his father, Nizam al-Mulk’s son Nasir Jang (d. 1750) even retired to the shrine of Burhan al-Din Gharib (d. 1337) at Khuldabad and adopted the dervish dress and lifestyle before his later burial next to his father in the same shrine.45 Sultans, then, could become Sufis themselves, and if this was more often done in poetry through the vicarious princely adaptation of Sufi personae, it occasionally happened in person. Mughal and Nizam Shahi patronage at Khuldabad extended well beyond royal burials or land grants. Reflecting Khuldabad’s prestige as the commemorative ground of saints and kings, Aurangzeb had encircled Khuldabad with stone walls, including a splendid gateway with a ceremonial naqqarakhana musicians’ gallery. Other Mughal additions to the townscape included the construction of two exquisite garden tombs for members of Aurangzeb’s close family. Royal and aristocratic interest in Khuldabad also resulted in architectural patronage of the shrines themselves, which were extensively rebuilt during the reigns of Aurangzeb and Nizam al-Mulk. Alongside additions to its mosque, the shrine of Zayn al-Din Shirazi received a new courtyard with baluster columns and cusped arches, while similar additions were made to the neighbouring shrine of Burhan al-Din Gharib. Both of these shrines, as well as that of Muntajib al-Din Zarbakhsh, benefited from the addition of the ritualized ‘urs architecture of Page 16 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan naqqarakhanas during the reign of Aurangzeb or the early Asaf Jahs.46 The main entrance to Zayn al-Din’s shrine, however, was built by a celebrated dancing girl of Aurangabad towards the end of Aurangabad’s period as Asaf Jah capital around 1760. This echoed the growing status of tawa’if dancers, (p.170) as we saw in Chapter 2, as increasingly prominent figures in the lucrative ‘urs festivals.47

A New Imperial Capital: Aurangabad From the time of its re-foundation by Aurangzeb in 1681, Aurangabad found itself amid a medieval sacred Muslim geography.48 In their attempt to connect themselves to their new territories, various members of the Mughal elite saw fit to patronize and promote the shrines of the migrant Sufis who journeyed to Aurangabad from the north. The cityscape was richly patronized by Emperor Aurangzeb himself, whose wife Rabi‘a Dawrani was buried there in the grandest mausoleum that the Mughals constructed south of Agra (see Fig 5.1), transferring the Mughals’ imposing architecture of memory from Hindustan to the Deccan.49 Set amid this older sacred landscape, during the first decades of Mughal rule Aurangabad possessed neither a saintly textual history nor an architectural pantheon of its own within its urban confines. Yet in the decades that followed Aurangzeb’s death, Aurangabad continued to be a city of importance and under Nizam al-Mulk acted for some four decades as the capital of the nascent state of the Asaf Jah Nizams before their relocation to Hyderabad. It was during these years between the death of Aurangzeb and the reestablishment of Aurangabad’s status as ruling capital by Nizam al-Mulk around 1724 that an architecturalized geography of sainthood finally did emerge in the city. With only a short history to draw upon, it was around the interred bodies of the Sufi masters who migrated to Aurangabad under Aurangzeb that this sacred space was developed. This creation of a saintly architecture for Aurangabad began with the north Indian Sufi migrant Shah Nur Hammami, whom we encountered in Chapter 4. Shah Nur was fortunate to have a khanaqah built and endowed for him during his lifetime by the Mughal diwan of the Deccan, Diyanat Khan, an Irani notable and (p.171) important textual patron of musical forms that had previously belonged to oral registers of unwritten memory.50 In a significant conjoining of the spaces of patron and Sufi, the khanaqah was located close to Diyanat Khan’s family residence in Aurangabad and it was in this khanaqah that Shah Nur was buried on his death in 1692. Shah Nur’s sajjada nashins later maintained the shrine’s connections with local notables and oversaw the growth of the shrine’s wider popularity to the level that by the 1730s the literary remembrancer Shah Nawaz Khan could describe it in his Ma’asir al-Umara as the most important shrine in the city. We have already read the account of its splendid late Mughal ‘urs festival in Chapter 2. This pattern of the ritual and architectural devotion of the notables of a new successor state capital to a shrine founded by an unlettered dervish was also observed in Lucknow a few decades later in the Page 17 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan creation of the shrines of Hazrat ‘Abbas and Shah ‘Abd al-Razzaq, as well as in such southern successor states as Arcot and Karnul. Shah Nur Hammami’s khanaqah consisted of a series of courtyards and gateways. Facing the main external gateway to the shrine was another musicians’ gallery, albeit this time at ground level. Its structure reflected the design of ground-level naqqarakhanas of earlier Timuri mausoleums outside India, such as those at the Shah-e Zinda saintly funerary complex at Samarqand.51 As part of the importing to the colonized south of such culturally Mughal forms, the naqqarakhana probably belonged to the initial period of the shrine’s construction under Diyanat Khan, though it was substantially restored and later decorated with finely worked chuna plasterwork. The walled outer courtyard of the shrine was entered through a tall gatehouse that was surmounted by a more capacious naqqarakhana in modern times. Beyond this gateway lay a large courtyard that formed the residential part of the complex, with the khanaqah and its several hujras (cells) providing accommodation for dervishes. An unusual feature of the courtyard was a covered terrace known as the Allahwala dalan, a specifically ceremonial architectural element used for the practice of group zikr (p.172) meditation by the shrine’s Sufi residents. The courtyard is shaded by a number of large trees, including plane and pipal trees, ‘whose shadows’, opined the eighteenth-century memorialist Sabzawari, ‘remind you of the gardens of paradise’.52 This use of gardens to create visual connections between the tangible spaces of the saints and the invisible gardens of paradise described in the Quran was a widespread practice, linking the built geography of sainthood with the textual geography of scripture. The saint’s mausoleum in the inner courtyard featured a square chamber of exaggerated height surmounted by a bulbous dome. Small pilasters decorated the corners of the mausoleum in reflection of the Mughal imperial mausoleum of Rabi‘a Dawrani a few miles away, completed in 1660–1. A mosque was constructed to the west of the mausoleum; its walls featured an inferior but nonetheless imported Mughal style of chini-khana decoration. Beside it, to the north, lay a pool, whose water was delivered by an underground nehr conduit, the construction of which reflected the infrastructural expense involved in founding such Sufi institutions.53 As in other Muslim regions in early modern India and elsewhere, such water conduits may have been linked with the bringing of the surrounding area under cultivation. A small walled garden to the north of the complex is interesting for containing the purported grave of one of Shah Nur’s Hindu companions. The cenotaph of another of these followers is located outside the shrine, immediately beneath the main wall but at the closest point outside the shrine to the tomb of Shah Nur himself. The ‘conversion’ and subsequent burial of such Hindu devotees at Sufi shrines was a persistent narrative theme in the Deccan, where numerous graves are attributed to such converts.54 But what is interesting about the ‘Hindu’ graves at the shrine of Shah Nur is their spatial location outside the main wall of Page 18 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan the shrine and within a separate courtyard of their own, the position of burial serving as a marker of social difference and community separation amid a (p. 173) wider schema of shared devotion to the saint.55 The shrine’s location near to the residence of its patron Diyanat Khan underlines its links with his extended family, as the ties between saints and disciples frequently passed through generations of kin. The courtyard in whose centre Diyanat Khan was buried to the south of the shrine later served as the burial place for many other members of his family, showing the importance of the shrines’ role as cemeteries for local elites in attracting patronage. Like many other producers of Persian texts of written memory, in a corresponding act of the spatial preservation of memory, Shah Nawaz Khan, the author of the great Mughal biographical dictionary Ma’asir al-umara and relative of Diyanat Khan, was buried at the shrine alongside his son after their murder in 1758.56 Yamin al-Dawla, another relative murdered alongside them amid the political intrigues at the Asaf Jah court in Aurangabad, was also interred there. Numerous other members of Diyanat Khan’s extended family lie buried there, from the migrant Mughal statesman Amanat Khan (d. 1684) onwards.57 In time, the shrine became surrounded by a more extensive burial ground, the location of the graves of not only ordinary townspeople but also of tomb enclosures belonging to members of the city’s Asaf Jah elites, including early members of the famous Salar Jang family. Several fine grave enclosures and platform tombs from this period surround the shrine, one bearing a chronogrammatic inscription recording the death of Muhammad Zaman Hakim in 1702. The inscription reads: Agar az tu pursani tarikh-e u Begu rawnaq-afray-ye awj ast

—1114 If of you they ask his date Say it is the zenith of creating splendour

—170258 (p.174) The years in which the shrine of Shah Nur evolved also witnessed the construction in Aurangabad of one of the most notable examples of late Mughal architecture. Surviving documents seem to suggest that the early wealth of Panchakki, the shrine of the Central Asian Naqshbandi Sufi migrants Shah Sa‘id Palangposh (d. 1699) and Shah Muhammad Musafir (d. 1715), was associated with lands granted by followers attached to the armies of Aurangzeb and Nizam al-Mulk. The introduction of Naqshbandi Sufism into the Mughal dominions by itinerant Central Asian Sufis and their deputies was an important development of the early modern period. However, despite imperial Mughal connections with the Naqshbandis, shrines associated with the lineage are comparatively rare in the Deccan compared with northern India, a reflection perhaps of the relatively short period of direct Mughal control over the Deccan. Even so, in addition to Page 19 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan the Naqshbandi shrines at Aurangabad and Balapur, a further shrine to a Naqshbandi Sufi connected with the Mughals, Khwaja Muhammad Sadiq, was erected at Sangamner to the west of Aurangabad in 1756.59 This Khwaja Muhammad Sadiq may have been the Central Asian Turani Naqshbandi Sufi of the same name mentioned in the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya as a follower of Shah Musafir in nearby Aurangabad around 1715. Reflecting the evolution of the Naqshbandi shrines at Balapur and Aurangabad, the shrine at Sangamner seems to have mainly been constructed a number of years after the death of a Sufi who himself (or whose recent ancestors) had, like Shah Musafir, migrated to the Deccan from the Bukhara region of Central Asia. Reflecting the ethnic as much as religious affiliation of such patronage, the patronage in Aurangabad of the shrine of the two migrant Sufis from Bukhara was particularly associated with Turani soldiers in the service of the great Turani general, Ghazi al-Din Khan Firuz Jang (d. 1710) and later of his son, the ruler Nizam al-Mulk. The affiliation with the soldiers of empire of Shah Musafir and his heir Shah Mahmud later brought fruitful rewards in the construction of a mosque, khanaqah, and mausoleum complex. Known as ‘Panchakki’ after the watermill attached to its pool, the shrine complex was situated on the west bank of the river Kham, (p.175) which ran beneath the defensive wall forming the western edge of Aurangabad. An early Sufi lodge or takiyya was established on the riverbank site by Shah Musafir in the years after 1680 and gradually embellished during his lifetime, though this early complex of mosque and khanaqah seems to have been built of perishable materials such as wood and thatch. While the complex had been founded during the lifetime of Shah Musafir, it was substantially expanded and remodelled into its present form under his successor, Shah Mahmud (d. 1762). Shah Mahmud had assumed the position of sajjada nashin after the death of Shah Musafir in 1715 and established himself as the foremost blessed man serving the Central Asian notables of the imperial city. In the biographical dictionary of poets and notables, Khazana-ye amira (1763), Aurangabad’s foremost man of letters, Azad Bilgrami, ascribed the construction of the shrine to Shah Mahmud.60 Bilgrami was a personal friend of Shah Mahmud and, along with a number of other dervishes and writers, lived at the shrine for seven years from 1740. He described Shah Mahmud as being responsible for the ‘buildings’ (‘imarat) of the takiyya, along with its bridge, pools (hawz-ha), and water channels. Further evidence for the changes at the shrine is found in the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya, where Shah Mahmud himself described how the stone mosque and khanaqah were built in 1730–1, during the second period of Aurangabad’s beautification as the capital of Nizam al-Mulk Asaf Jah.61 The work cost 19,000 rupees and was initiated by the devotee Turktaz Khan, a Central Asian officer formerly in the service of the imperial armies and a close companion of Nizam al-Mulk.62 In addition to constructing the main buildings of the shrine, as we have seen, Shah Mahmud also built a stone bridge leading to the shrine from the city and a large Page 20 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan gate in the city walls beyond it. These additions served to beautify the route to the shrine from both the city and the neighbouring Nawkhanda palace of the Asaf Jah Nizams. Once again, the rulers of the visible and invisible (p.176) realms were spatially adjacent to one another in the built urban fabric of the early modern city. Over the following decades, the Panchakki shrine acquired numerous other sources of revenue, via further land revenue grants and pious donations (nazrana) of property and cash made by devotees. Nizam ‘Ali Khan Asaf Jah II later granted the produce of several gardens outside Aurangabad as a gift (in‘am) to the dervishes of the shrine in 1789.63 The many offerings made to the shrine were embedded in a highly bureaucratic and legally defined system of donations, with the hundreds of uncatalogued grants, receipts, and sets of accounts that survive from the shrine showing the professional bureaucratic methods shrines used to manage their finances. Surviving documents also provide evidence of the shrine acting as a bank for its devotees in Aurangabad by offering loans for various purposes.64 Other documents refer to the shrine’s connections with the Maratha peshwas of Poona during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who regularly remitted taxation from the shrine’s landholdings in their territories as an offering (nazrana) to the shrine, while other Hindu notables granted gardens and mango orchards to the shrine.65 The architecture of the Panchakki shrine reflected the scale of patronage with which its construction was associated. Its inner courtyard was dominated by the architecturally most outstanding features of the entire complex, the mosque and adjoining mausoleum. These were surmounted with domes surrounded by miniature turrets and delicate decorative merlons, while the mosque was supported by fluted baluster columns. The complex represented a continuation of the school of late Mughal architecture seen most vividly in the garden-tomb of Rabi‘a Dawrani on the outskirts of Aurangabad (see Fig. 5.1). These similarities were most evident in the shrine’s decorative schemes of fluted pillars, (p.177) cusped arches, and elegantly moulded and highly polished chuna plasterwork. There has been some debate among architectural historians over the relative merits of chuna work and the marble favoured during the reigns of Akbar and Shah Jahan over the original appearance of this plasterwork when polished. A contemporary voice may add a note to the debate, for the French traveller Jean de Thevenot was sure of his opinion on the matter. On visiting the tomb of Rabi‘a Dawrani in 1667, shortly after its completion, he wrote: ‘It is built of a white polished Stone, and many take it for marble, though it come short of that, both in hardness and lustre.’66 In a close mirroring of imperial and saintly space, the funerary mosques beside the Aurangabad mausoleums of the emperor’s wife and the Panchakki saints were almost identical. In front of the Panchakki mausoleum was a platform (jalaw-khana) which later hosted the graves of the shrine’s sajjada nashins, physically locating them adjacent to the saints whose blessings they claimed to pass on through their own sons to future generations. In a Page 21 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan spatial marker of the prestige of this saintly lineage, some time after 1762 a chhattri dome was raised above the grave of the first sajjada nashin, Shah Mahmud. We have a description of the interior of the shrine from the 1770s by the writer of a guide to the shrines of Aurangabad and Khuldabad, Khaksar Sabzawari. Sabzawari wrote of the presence of fine carpets from Afghanistan or Central Asia (wilayat) and decorated rooms for residential dervishes. Such was its opulence that Sabzawari twice described Panchakki as the finest takiyya in the entire Deccan.67 Given that this was the shrine most closely associated with the patronage of Turani settlers from the Central Asian north, Sabzawari’s description is a telling reminder of the occasional luxuries of the Sufi life in an age of empire. As befitted a Naqshbandi shrine, the mausoleum of Shah Musafir and Shah Palangposh blended into, rather than towered above, the mosque. The alignment of mausoleum and mosque was such that the tombs of the saints were positioned directly behind the mihrab of the mosque, which directly adjoined the mausoleum. This was partly an indication of piety, a desire to be near to the (p. 178) focus of prayer. But as the analagous position of the cenotaph of the Mamluk ruler Nasir al-Din al-Hasan in the Sultan Hasan complex in Cairo shows, midway between mihrab and Mecca such a position could also indicate the authority of the interred. A low door with a raised threshold flanked by two jali windows led into the burial chamber of Shah Musafir and Shah Palangposh. The use of jali screens at Sufi shrines was well established by this time. Used to great effect at the shrine of Ahmad Khattu in Ahmadabad, such screens were adopted into the architectural vocabulary of the Mughals after Akbar’s conquest of Gujarat and used most memorably at the shrines of Muhammad Ghaws (d. 1562–3) at Gwalior and Salim Chishti (d. 1571–2) at Fatehpur Sikri. At Panchakki, in a notable reflection of Naqshbandi antipathy to certain shrine customs, the two cenotaphs are positioned on a raised platform connected to the adjoining mosque wall on the mausoleum’s eastern side, thereby rendering impossible the practice of circumambulating the tombs (tawaf al-qubur). Here we see how the specific tendencies of different Sufi lineages could influence the development of their shrine architecture. As we saw earlier in this chapter, at the Naqshbandi shrine at Balapur the tombs of the khanaqah’s founders were likewise positioned in such a way as to deny the possibility of ritual circumambulation and for similar reasons remained uncovered by a mausoleum. Nineteenth-century photographs of Panchakki show a small wooden mosque in the centre of the courtyard that has since burned down.68 The style of this mosque was consistent with that of the rest of the shrine, with the construction of which it may well have been coterminous. The use of carved wood was a widespread feature of domestic architecture in this region of the Deccan, and as we see later, also featured elsewhere in the architecture of its Sufi shrines. The wooden mosque at the shrine of Shah Musafir, however, was a particularly fine example of a tradition of building in wood of which precious little now remains in Page 22 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan the Deccan.69 A notable exception is a wooden building that survives at the shrine (p.179) of Gesu Daraz at Gulbarga. Known at the shrine as the chihil sutun (forty columns) after its slender wooden columns, this construction overlooks a pool and is used chiefly for the storage of the ceremonial garments of the sajjada nashin of the shrine. While the source of the Gulbarga chihil sutun’s patronage and the precise period of its construction is unclear, its style and similarity to other Asaf Jah period buildings also point to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries.70 The southern and western sides of the inner courtyard contained almost a dozen rooms of varying size that made up the main body of the khanaqah. A rectangular pool in the courtyard was probably built at the same time as the adjacent mosque. This pool was built over the bank of the river Kham, which formed the complex’s eastern limit. On the river bank itself, several metres below the ground level of this pool, lay the main hall of the shrine. The construction of this hall was a feat of daring engineering in involving the construction of a high platform hanging above the river bank, which acted as both the ceiling of the subterranean hall and as the floor of much of the central courtyard above. However, the most striking feature of the shrine of Shah Musafir in Aurangabad was a second, larger pool built in its capacious outer courtyard. The pool was built over almost twenty-five years, starting sometime after 1724, by Jamil Beg Khan, another Central Asian general previously in Mughal service in the Deccan and by this time associated with Nizam al-Mulk.71 In 1747, the completion of the pool and its fountains were celebrated in a masnawi poem by Azad Bilgrami, who as we have seen resided at the shrine for seven years. Commemorating the builder and construction date of the pool, the poem summoned the calm atmosphere of the cultivated gardens and the sound of trickling water, themselves manmade allusions to the paradise depicted in the Quran. In early modern Iran, the pools attached to shrines were striking (p.180) enough to be depicted by miniature painters, particularly in the case of the mausoleum of the poet Sa‘di.72 The construction of the Aurangabad pool required the provision of underground channels (nehrs) bringing water from the hillsides surrounding the city in a region where the control of water was one of the primary sources of agrarian wealth. The pool was remarkable for being fed by an ingenious hydraulic system that allowed the water to fall into the pool from an artificial waterfall (abshar) built into the walls of the shrine. Although this nehr drew upon a technology used earlier in the region by Malik ‘Ambar (who himself endowed the most famous conduit in Aurangabad known as the nehr-e ‘Anbari), the Panchakki nehr was nonetheless a considerable feat of engineering skill. Bringing water from villages several miles outside the city, like that at Shah Nur’s shrine, the Panchakki nehr is a testament to both the wealth of shrines and their integration into the basic infrastructure of the city. The nehr also powered the shrine’s eponymous panchakki watermill that ground grain for its residents and Page 23 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan neighbours, apparently also providing income through charges for its use. Like other aspects of Aurangabad’s architecture, the design of this mill seems to have been imported to the Deccan, where such watermills were previously unknown. The Ma’asir-e ‘Alamgiri points northwards towards the shrine’s original residents’ homelands in describing what seems to have been an identical watermill at Hasan Abdal where, the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya reported, the saints of Panchakki had spent time before settling in Aurangabad.73 Of the four major Sufis to establish themselves in Mughal Aurangabad, the north Indian migrant Chishti Sufi Nizam al-Din was the last. Relatively soon after his arrival in the city he seems to have been given a haveli by his follower and biographer (p.181) Muhammad Kamgar Khan (d. after 1743), another Turani in imperial service in Aurangabad. In the early 1720s, a khanaqah complex was built for Nizam al-Din in classic late Mughal style.74 Upon Nizam al-Din’s death in 1729, a domed mausoleum was constructed in the courtyard of the khanaqah, possibly by the ruler Nizam al-Mulk whom the local eighteenth-century memorialist Sabzawari declared as a faithful student (talib) of Nizam al-Din.75 The completion of the khanaqah in 1724 formed part of a wider architectural programme carried out around the city’s royal marketplace or Shah Ganj that also included the building of the Shah Ganj mosque. In one of the many spatialized texts of memory created as chronogramatic foundation inscriptions, that on the Shah Ganj mosque dates its building to 1723. The inscription points to the way in which the city was being deliberately beautified in this period as an Islamic space: The mosque of Shah Ganj is beautiful to look at And the world is like a moth around its face; When I searched after its date It was found in ‘the house of prayer’.76

As the second great mosque of Aurangabad, the Shah Ganj mosque and the nearby khanaqah of Nizam al-Din show how the patronage of large public buildings continued in the city after the relocation of the Mughal capital to Delhi. Other significant architectural projects during this period included such aristocratic residences as the Damri Mahal and the Salar Jang haveli, while considerable extensions were also made to Malik ‘Ambar’s Nawkhanda palace by Nizam al-Mulk during the 1720s, when the city served as the first capital of the Nizams. As the city adjusted to its post-Mughal status as capital of a new regional dispensation, the khanaqah of Nizam al-Din was thus constructed as part of a wider project creating a sacred Muslim geography within the urban confines of this founding capital of an emergent successor state. (p.182) At the shrine, the free-standing mausoleum of Nizam al-Din was positioned directly in the centre of the main courtyard. Although relatively small compared with that of Shah Nur a mile away, the detail of its execution and the Page 24 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan quality of its materials were of a fairly high standard, the lower portion of its dome decorated with a finely worked moulding of acanthus leaves like those at the shrines of Khuldabad.77 While the building shared its chhattri turrets with the other mausoleums of the city, the high takhtgah platform on which the mausoleum was positioned was more exaggerated than those of Shah Nur or the city’s Naqshbandis, possibly in reflection of the oti platforms that featured in the traditional architecture of wealthy domestic buildings in the Aurangabad region. Although the three shrines of Shah Nur, Shah Musafir, and Nizam al-Din formed the most important spaces at which the powers of Aurangabad’s patron saints could be accessed, the city’s Mughal and Asaf Jah elites also patronized a number of other shrines. The earliest of the saints buried in these shrines, Taj alDin Hamawi (d. 1698), was possibly a migrant from Hama in Syria. A small mosque and mausoleum complex in Aurangabad were devoted to his memory. Like Shah Nur, Taj al-Din was regarded as a Qadiri Sufi and descendant of the great medieval saint of Baghdad, ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani, whose blessing he carried to the new settlement in the Indian south. Although no surviving texts enable us to verify this genealogy, Taj al-Din did migrate to the city during the reign of Aurangzeb, having arrived there in 1659 before being joined by his son, Rukn alDin (d. 1743), who succeeded him as the first sajjada nashin of his shrine.78 An inscription at the shrine dated the construction of a second generation of buildings to the very end of Aurangabad’s role as Asaf Jah capital in 1776 during the lifetime of Rukn al-Din’s grandson, Sayyid Shah Aziz.79 Like other shrines in the region, it also served as a burial ground for local notables. Chich Begam, one of the daughters of Nizam al-Mulk, was buried beneath an elegant cenotaph there in 1748, (p.183) the same year as her father’s burial in the shrine of Burhan al-Din Gharib at Khuldabad. Another Sufi associated with the Qadiri lineage in Aurangabad was Qadir Awliya (d. 1687), a follower of Shah Nur. Reflecting the topographic position of so many shrines, that of Qadir Awliya lay just outside the city’s Ja‘far Gate. Although small, the shrine was ornately decorated: its bangala-style arches and roofs imported from Bengal, and its period chuna plasterwork, place it stylistically within the same category as other buildings patronized during or shortly after the reign of Aurangzeb. This shrine was also associated with Nizam al-Mulk. The Aurangabadi chronicler Mansaram described the shrine’s resident faqirs complaining to him that there was no money for celebrating the ‘urs or feeding the poor, and that as a consequence many of the faqirs were becoming addicted to smoking the huqqa pipe. Since its affairs were being poorly supervised, Nizam al-Mulk issued a sanad certificate with which he appointed a certain Sayyid Muhammad Mugni as manager of the shrine, though he also admonished the dervishes who lived there for enjoying the warmth of their tobacco pipes more than the interior fires of faith.80

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan Aurangabad’s final significant late Mughal shrine complex comprised a pair of neighbouring Sufi institutions known as the large lodge (bura takiyya) and the small lodge (chhota takiyya) of the Chishti Sufis Sayyid Haydar Husayni (d. 1739) and Shah ‘Ali Nehri (d. 1763), respectively.81 Reflecting the siting of other Deccan shrines, these complexes lay a short distance outside the city’s Paithan Gate. Their two founder figures were related in familial as well as religious terms, in that Haydar Husayni was both the uncle and Sufi master of ‘Ali Nehri. Haydar Husayni belonged to the blessed family of Gesu Daraz of Gulbarga and is traditionally held to have married his second sister to Nizam al-Din, whose wife was also a descendant of Gesu Daraz. ‘Ali Nehri, however, was the son of a Central Asian (Turani) soldier in the service of Aurangzeb, (p.184) though was himself born in Aurangabad. He was granted lands in villages surrounding Aurangabad by Nizam al-Mulk and was succeeded after his death by his son Qutb al-Din (d. c. 1785). Despite the names of the two shrines, the complex of Shah ‘Ali Nehri was by far the bigger, though due to recent reconstruction almost nothing now remains of the original mosque and other buildings of the bura takiyya. The chhota takiyya comprised the large domed mausoleum of ‘Ali Nehri surrounded by the tombs of his sajjada nashins, a large mosque, and a smaller adjoining mosque. The larger of the two mosques bore another chronogrammatic Persian inscription dating its foundation to 1737 during the reign of Nizam al-Mulk.82 The most notable aspect of the shrine, however, was its connection to the underground water channel or nehr that lent its founder his sobriquet of Nehri and ran into a large and deep pool adjacent to the shrine’s courtyard. As at the nearby Panchakki Shrine in Aurangabad, whose large pool was being constructed at the same time, ‘Ali Nehri’s chhota takiyya was supplied with vast amounts of water from a nehr constructed specifically for this purpose. Here again we see the degree to which Sufi shrines were integrated into the basic urban fabric of the city, delivering and controlling the supply of water to new areas of urban expansion. Azad Bilgrami described Shah ‘Ali as the builder of the complex, confirming shortly after the saint’s death the story of how his construction of the great water- channel earned him the nickname of nehri.83 Surviving documention shows how Shah ‘Ali’s sajjada nashins were expected to cover the expenses of the nehr’s maintenance out of the income from their land jagirs.84 The landed wealth of the shrines was in this way tied to broader social responsibilities. The use of such nehrs in the Deccan reflected the infrastructure of Sufi institutions beyond India, for similarly large reservoirs and (p.185) water supply systems were controlled by Naqshbandi khanaqahs in Central Asia as well as by the more distant Rahmani zawiyas of Algeria. Such technologies afforded them both symbolic and literal control over the agriculture of their surrounding areas.

Imperial Hinterlands: Jalna, Beed, Vaizapur, and Paithan Prior to Aurangabad’s re-foundation by Aurangzeb, the surrounding region had originally fallen to the Mughals after the defeat of the Nizam Shahs in 1633. In Page 26 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan the years of Aurangabad’s cultural and political prominence during the reigns of Aurangzeb and Nizam al-Mulk, both old and new shrines situated in towns in the surrounding regions saw the same patterns of patronage as Aurangabad and Khuldabad. Jalna (formerly Jalnapur) is one example. Like Aurangabad’s predecessor Khirki, prior to the Mughal conquests Jalna had been ruled by the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, during whose reign their governor Jamshid Khan built a mosque, travellers’ sara’i, and reservoir in around 1557. The town was taken by the Mughals during the reign of Akbar, and during the reigns of Aurangzeb and Nizam al-Mulk it saw numerous improvements to its civic and military infrastructure, its fort being constructed in 1725 in response to Maratha incursions. As in other regions of India, the settlement of Sufis in Jalna long preceded the arrival of the Mughals. Sufis from Delhi, such as Shah Latif Qadiri, may have arrived there during the Tughluq period as part of the influx of Sufis from the north that led to the establishment of the Khuldabad shrines with whose lineages Shah Latif was associated. A small shrine to Shah Latif was established adjacent to Jalna’s Friday mosque. Reflecting the wider pattern of migration of north Indian Sufis to the Mughal Deccan, the reign of Aurangzeb saw the establishment of a large shrine on the outskirts of Jalna whose architectural grandeur reflected that of Aurangabad’s Panchakki. The khanaqah was founded by two migrant brothers from Punjab, Jan Allah Shah Qibla (d. 1682) and Bab Allah Shah Qibla (d. 1685).85 Jan Allah (p.186) was described by the chronicler Khafi Khan as being the most assiduous believer in the whole of Deccan when it came to the performance of prayers and as one who enjoyed the state of communion (wasil) with God.86 Jagirs of land in the Jalna region were presented to Jan Allah by Aurangzeb during one of his several visits to the town and the grant was later confirmed by Shah ‘Alam in 1709, expressly for the maintenance of the tombs of the two brothers along with the khanaqah and its resident dervishes.87 The Asaf Jah ruler Nizam ‘Ali Khan later issued a sanad reconfirming the grant in 1780. Like the shrines of Panchakki and Balapur, that of Jan Allah was situated across the river from the urban centre of Jalna, while the style of the buildings was also similar to those of the Mughal shrines of Aurangabad and Balapur. The khanaqah buildings seem to have been first built during the brothers’ lifetime and subsequently expanded during the time of their early sajjada nashins. A large gateway surmounted by an impressive naqqarakhana led through the surrounding property of the shrine before another gateway led into the main courtyard. Here the free-standing mausoleum of the saintly brothers was surrounded by a mosque on the western side and a series of hujra ‘retreat’ chambers with individual domed roofs on the eastern side. These small chambers provided accommodation for the shrine’s resident dervishes, their simplicity and lack of windows conducive to a life of seclusion and contemplation. Supported by several dozen wooden baluster columns (see Fig. 5.3), a long dalan or gallery faced the mausoleum on the southern side of the courtyard in a fine example of the use of woodwork in shrine architecture. As well as for the simple provision of shade during the summer, such galleries were Page 27 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan employed for teaching in the collective reading groups we will encounter in Chapter 6. (p.187) From the time of its foundation, the shrine of Jan Allah Shah and Bab Allah Shah played an important role in the life of Jalna’s residents. The Mughal chronicler Khafi Khan described how many of Jalna’s wealthy citizens regularly took shelter at the shrine with their valuables when the town was raided by the Marathas. However, when Jalna was sacked by Shivaji’s forces in 1679, his Maratha warriors dared to enter the shrine and insult the blessed man Jan Allah himself. Echoing the darker side to Shah Musafir’s powers in

Fig. 5.3 Shaded Spaces of Learning: Wooden Dalan at Shrine of Jan Allah

Aurangabad that were recorded in the Malfuzat-e

Shah, Jalna

Naqshbandiyya, Khafi Khan described Jan Allah using his

Courtesy of Nile Green

powers of mystic concentration or tawwajuh to bring about Shivaji’s death in punishment for his men’s misdemeanours. For Khafi Khan attributed the subsequent death of Shivaji later (p.188) the same year to the Sufi’s pious curse.88 This tale of supernatural revenge notwithstanding, oral tradition at the shrine claims that Shivaji offered a large naqqara kettle-drum to Jan Allah, an object that whatever its provenance is still present at the shrine. Further oral traditions, subsequently recorded in local gazetteers and still current in Jalna, recorded that several other Sufis arrived in the town during the reign of Aurangzeb, such as Nur Shah Wali and Sayyid Rahman, whose shrines formed popular places of pilgrimage amid the larger sacred geography that the Mughals sponsored in the provincial Deccan. Despite the presence of such blessed men and saintly shrines in Jalna, not all of the town’s Mughal residents felt able to rely on their supernatural skills. According to the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya at least, when seeking a cure from the illness that was afflicting him, the Mughal news-collector (waqa‘i nigar) of Jalna chose instead to call on Shah Musafir in Aurangabad.89 As with the provision of other services, provincial Sufi miracle workers could scarcely compete with their counterparts in the metropolis.

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan Other towns in the Aurangabad region such as Beed (Bir) saw a similar revival in the fortunes of their medieval Sufi foundations under the Mughals and Asaf Jahs. Beed lies around a hundred and twenty kilometres south of Aurangabad and has been linked to the political, religious, and artistic currents of the Daulatabad/ Aurangabad region since the southern conquests of the Delhi sultans.90 Around 1700, the English ambassador Sir William Norris visited Beed and described its large stone walls as containing numerous handsome and well-built houses and a large population.91 Like other English travellers of the period, Norris paid much attention to matters of trade, noting that Beed was a significant centre of commerce and particularly important for providing cloth for the tents of the imperial army. Norris also visited a graveyard outside the town, where he saw numerous fine monuments, though it is unclear whether this was one of the (p. 189) shrines of the city’s Sufis. Throughout the reigns of Aurangzeb and the early Asaf Jahs, Beed remained a significant strategic centre, being claimed at different times by various Mughal/Asaf Jah and Maratha contingents. The town’s role in these ongoing skirmishes was reflected in another anecdote in the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya in which a soldier in the service of Aurangzeb’s son, Muhammad Kambakhsh, joined his regiment in Beed, only to then fall into a boozy gathering with his companions-in-arms. Troubled by his conscience, that night the young soldier dreamed of Shah Musafir of Aurangabad coming to whip him for his bibulous misdemeanours.92 Like Jalna, Beed benefited from its proximity to Aurangabad during the years of the latter’s seventeenth- and eighteenth-century preeminence and received much trade as well as patronage. Early in the reign of Aurangzeb, Beed’s Friday mosque was renovated in 1661 by the Mughal governor of the town, Sardar Khan Fawjdar, while a finely built suburb called Ma‘murpura was constructed by the Mughal notable Khan Dawran (d. 1666).93 Another governor appointed by Aurangzeb, Muhammad Sadar Shah, made numerous civic improvements, though Beed’s largest Mughal-era monument was the Rajuri mosque, completed in 1722. The two major Sufi shrines in the town reflect the wider currents of shrinebuilding in the region, both during the medieval period of Muslim settlement and the Mughal period’s attempts to claim this sacred geography as local roots for the new-coming empire. As in Jalna and Khuldabad, the oldest of these earlier shrines belonged to a saint associated with the Sufis who arrived in the Deccan under the Tughluqs. Current oral tradition at the shrine holds that Shah Abu alFayz Shahanshah Wali (known earlier as Shah Kuchak Wali) was a disciple of Khwaja Majzub al-Din from the nearby town of Khij and a member of a Chishti lineage who settled in Beed in the reign of Muhammad bin Tughluq (r. 1325–51). The visual evidence of his gargantuan stone shrine on the edge of Beed seems to confirm its Tughluq or possibly early Bahmani origins. The shrine was positioned on a lofty stone (p.190) platform reached by a flight of processional steps, though, as evidenced by the number of late Mughal tomb enclosures in its surrounding grounds and an inscription relating to the construction of the Page 29 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan shrine’s mosque dating to 1706, Mughal notables later established connections to the shrine.94 An inscription described the patron of the shrine’s mosque as Hajji Sadr Shah, the deputy of one of Aurangzeb’s governors of Beed, the great Turani general Ghazi al-Din Khan Firuz Jang (d. 1710). As well as being the father of the founder of the Asaf Jah dynasty, Ghazi al-Din was closely linked to the Naqshbandi Sufis of Aurangabad, whose shrine we have seen being patronized by several of his other protégés. In an echo of the elaborate spatial rituals of the ‘urs that Mughal elites patronized, a naqqarakhana was built at the shrine around the same period. The mosque was later rebuilt by the Asaf Jah notable Amir Nawaz Jang in 1839.95 Of special interest at Shahanshah Wali’s shrine are a number of inscriptions relating to its Hindu patrons. At the bottom of the steps leading up to the shrine is a baoli step-well, which bore an inscription describing its patron as an unnamed Hindu woman (‘the mother of Inni Rai … Khattari by caste and Bath by family’) from Khushab in Punjab who stopped at the shrine in 1710.96 The patronage of such step-wells was considered an important act of piety around Sufi shrines, as it was in relation to Hindu religious institutions in the region, particularly when located away from urban centres. Another step-well in the countryside around Beed at the shrine of Sayyid Achpal Husayni at Georai bore an inscription relating its construction in 1693 by the same Sufi who was later buried at the shrine.97 Sayyid Achpal Husayni was the son of the Irani notable Ma’mur Khan, who served for a period as Aurangzeb’s governor of Aurangabad. Here we see a reflection of the patronage of the shrine of Shah Nur at Aurangabad, which was built by another migrant Irani notable in the imperial administration, Diyanat Khan. The presence in Beed of Shahanshah Wali’s (p. 191) Punjabi Hindu patron (and presumably of her family) was a reflection of the Deccan’s integration into the Mughal geography of northern India that brought Hindu as well as Muslim migrants southwards in considerable number. Another Persian inscription at the shrine was related to a Hindu patron of more local Maratha provenance. This inscription describes the construction in 1769 of the hujra retreat of Shahanshah Wali ‘with a sincere heart’ (az sidiq-e dili) by a patron called Itthal (Marathi: Vitthal).98 This act of patronage is of especial interest in that it related to one of the central religious (if not, like the mosque, explicitly Islamic) buildings at the shrine. Despite the emergence of the Maratha states during this period and the subsequent projection onto them of a sharply defined ‘Hindu’ consciousness, such Maratha connections with the Beed shrine were also borne out in the large number of stone and plaster lamp columns placed before the tomb of Shahanshah Wali, which reflect local Marathi forms of syncretistic worship. Their construction may have been a result of the wider programme of Maratha patronage in Beed during the second half of the eighteenth century.

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan This was also seen at Beed’s other major shrine to be patronized in the eighteenth century, that of Mansur ‘Ali Shah (d. after 1720?). This ornate shrine bore all of the characteristics of the late Mughal and early Asaf Jah style familiar from the shrines of Aurangabad. Its architectural components included a large naqqarakhana gateway; a drooping bangala-style chhatri dome above the saint’s tomb; and a wooden-pillared dalan (verandah)with the finely-rendered chinikhana decoration familiar from Panchakki in Aurangabad. It also contained the usual mosque and residential female zanana quarters. What was most remarkable about the shrine was that its patronage seems to have been associated with members of either the Mughal or Asaf Jah dynasty, but with the Maratha rulers of Gwalior. According to local oral tradition at least, the shrine was constructed by Ranoji Rao Shinde (r. 1726–45) after Mansur ‘Ali Shah predicted his future greatness, a narrative of supernatural king-making that we will encounter again in the ethno-historical memories discussed in (p.192) Chapter 8.99 The Shinde dynasty certainly had connections with Beed, and at the peak of Maratha power in the late eighteenth century made demands on Nizam ‘Ali Khan to cede the town to them. These Maratha connections may explain the presence of around half a dozen stone lamp columns positioned in front of Mansur ‘Ali Shah’s tomb. Similar lamp columns are also found at the shrines of Gesu Daraz at Gulbarga and Sayyid Sa‘dat at Paithan, closely resembling the dipmala lamp columns found in Maratha temples of the same period. Four of these stand in front of the main shrine at the Maratha-patronized temple to Khandoba built around 1770 at Jejuri in the western Deccan. In Beed itself, Ranoji Rao Shinde’s son and successor, Mahadaji Shinde (r. 1761–94), was responsible for constructing a temple to Khandoba which featured two colossal dipmalas at its entrance.100 Mahadaji may also have been involved in the embellishment of the shrine of Mansur ‘Ali in the same town, and he was certainly careful to maintain the titles of amir al-umara and na’ib waqa‘i-ye mutlaq that were bestowed on him by the late Mughal emperor Shah ‘Alam. Against this background, his family’s apparent patronage of the shrine of Mansur ‘Ali Shah reflects this imitation of Mughal imperial norms and patterns of patronage. This picture of Maratha patronage of Sufi shrines was far from unique and Aurangabad’s Panchakki and numerous other Deccan Sufi shrines received patronage from different Maratha rulers during the heyday of the Maratha kingdoms.101 At the shrine of the Sufi Pir Shah Ramazan at Madhi near Ahmadnagar, several inscriptions referred to the construction and later restoration of the shrine by three Maratha patrons during the first decades of the eighteenth century.102 Described in one of the inscriptions in classic Persianate devotional terminology as the ‘foot-kissing’ ‘slaves of the shrine’, two of these figures—Khandi Rao Dabhar (p.193) (d. 1720) and Pilaji Gaekwar (d. 1732)—were prominent figures in the politics and administration of the region.103 Their political opposition to Mughal (northern?) rule at the hands of Aurangzeb and Nizam al-Mulk clearly did not prevent them from considering themselves as devotees of a Sufi saint. Elsewhere in Beed, an inscription at the Page 31 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan shrine of Pir Bala Shah referred to the patronage of its mosque by the Asaf Jah governor of the town, Sharaf al-Dawla, in 1778.104 Other Sufi institutions seem to have been patronized in smaller towns and villages of the region during the period in question, adding further reference points to the Muslim geography of the sacred that was so effectively augmented under Mughal, Asaf Jah,and even Maratha rule. The shrine of Mahmud Siddiqi Ansari in the village of Pathrur is one example of these semi-rural shrines. In reflection of the patronage of the mosque at the shrine of Shahanshah Wali, a mosque was added to Mahmud Siddiqi’s shrine three years earlier in 1703 by an official working for the brother of Aurangzeb’s great Turani general, Ghazi al-Din Khan Firuz Jang.105 In such ways, through the provincial settling of itinerant Sufis, the Mughals’ attempt to attach themselves to the Muslim geography of the Deccan was able to reach deep into the country. Some sixty-five kilometres west of the erstwhile imperial capital at Aurangabad, a pre-Mughal shrine in the town of Vaizapur (Baizapur) demonstrates again the Mughals’ interaction with a pre-existing sacred geography that in many cases attracted both Muslim and Hindu devotees (see Fig. 5.4). The town of Vaizapur contains a number of Muslim monuments, including a Friday mosque (undated, though possibly from the time of Malik ‘Ambar) and an ‘idgah built in 1787 by Sayyid Ja‘far Khan. However, the town’s most interesting feature is the shrine of Sayyid Rukn al-Din, most of the buildings of which appear to date from the late Mughal or Asaf Jah period, albeit built over an earlier burial site. Rukn al-Din belonged to a category of semi-legendary saints known as no-gazi babas (‘nine yard masters’) due to the exceptional length of their tomb cenotaphs, with the name deriving from the Persian ‘nine yards’ (no (p.194)

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan gaz).106 Several such shrines were located in northern India, and their lengthy form almost certainly emerged from awareness of an older trans-regional Muslim geography of gargantuan tombs belonging to such early Arabian prophets as Hud in the Hadhramaut region of Yemen. As at other such sites, the name of the Vaizapur shrine was contested, such that the saint’s popular name of No-Gazi Baba was sometimes interpreted as meaning that the tomb was instead that of ‘nine Muslim warriors’ (no-ghazi). While this partly represented a rationalization of the tomb’s exceptional length, it also bore echoes of the mixed imagery of the warrior and the saint that often recurred in (p.195) the popular traditions of the Indian south.107 Folk tradition has often echoed these martial themes. Thus a Sufi shrine outside Bijapur from the time of Aurangzeb is recorded, whose saint was believed to have been born fully-grown, wearing

Fig. 5.4 The Body as Nine Yards: Cenotaph of No-Gazi Baba, Vaizapur Courtesy of Nile Green

armour and bearing weapons after two years in the womb.108 Aside from its archaic length, other factors point to the Vaizapur shrine’s foundation during the medieval period of Sufi settlement in the Deccan, the most significant of which is the shrine’s association with the conversion of a Hindu princess. This narrative and architectural motif was linked to other medieval shrines of the region, such as those of Mu’min ‘Arif (d. c. 1200) at Daulatabad and Muntajib al-Din Zar Bakhsh (d. 1309) at Khuldabad, which were associated with the devotion and subsequent conversions of Hindu ‘princesses’ called Durga Devi (also known as Jamal Ara Begam) and Sona Ba’i respectively. Their purported tombs, in a linking of space and narrative, were similarly present at the shrines.109 As at the shrine of Mu’min ‘Arif, that of Rukn al-Din at Vaizapur contained the purported tomb of the princess, whose name of Vaiza Rani was said to lend the town its name, so connecting shrine narratives to the historical memory of the town as a whole.110 Whatever the historical validity of this etymology, the widespread belief that the town was named after a figure buried in a saintly shrine reflects the importance of these institutions in the cultural imaginations that gave meaning to the Deccan’s human geography. It is fitting that what was already a local pilgrimage centre by the time of the Mughal conquests seems to have been patronized not only during the reign of Aurangzeb, but also to have been sent embroidered silk tomb covers by the later Maratha rulers of Pune and Indore.111

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan Some fifty kilometres south of Aurangabad, the riverside town of Paithan revealed a different side of Muslim and Hindu (p.196) interaction at such sacred spaces.112 To a large extent the history of Paithan resembled that of Deogiri/Daulatabad, in that Paithan had been an important commercial and religious centre prior to the conquests of the Delhi sultans, so leading to the kind of physical and narrative overlapping of geographies explored in Chapter 7 at Deogiri/Daulatabad. For a provincial town, Paithan’s architecture was remarkably rich, particularly with regard to Muslim religious architecture. The most impressive shrine in the town, that of Sayyid Mawlana Mu‘iz al-Din Abposh (fl.1350?), appears to belong to the period following the Tughluq conquests, its massive stone construction and prominence above the town reflecting the shrine of Shahanshah Wali at Beed. However, the mausoleum of the shrine was reconstructed at a later period, its trefoils, perfume-bottle (‘atrdan) motifs, and crenelated arches suggesting a provenance during the reign of Aurangzeb or the early Asaf Jahs. The prominence and proximity of Aurangabad during its Mughal heyday led to other architectural additions to Paithan’s townscape, such as the construction of the Koti mosque in 1660. Judging by a short inscription dated 1708, another of the city’s pre-Mughal shrines was also added to during the reign of Aurangzeb’s son, Muhammad Kam Bakhsh, whom we have seen eventually being buried himself in one of the shrines of Khuldabad. This was the shrine of Sayyid Sa’dat, also known as Nizam al-Din Chishti, where a large brickdomed mausoleum covered a single tomb, with finely executed Quranic inscriptions decorating the surrounding walls. The architectural style of the shrine’s courtyard galleries places these additions in the late Mughal or Asaf Jah period, once more suggesting patronage of an earlier sacred geography that first emerged under the medieval Tughluq or Bahmani sultans.

Shrine Patronage in Other Deccani Successor States As the Deccan territories of the Mughal Empire gradually splintered after the death of Aurangzeb, other successor states (p.197) emerged in the southern Deccan in the same way that Nizam al-Mulk carved out his state in the northern and central Deccan from Aurangabad. The same patterns of shrine patronage were repeated in these other Mughal successor states as new dynasties sought deeper connections with their recently-won territories. The early nawwabs of the Karnatik proved themselves keen patrons of living Sufis, as attested by the subsequent construction of shrines in their new capital of Arcot. Reflecting the development of Sufi institutions in Aurangabad, the shrines of Arcot were constructed as the spiritualized counterpoint to the secular building projects that accompanied Arcot’s transition into the political centre of a new regional power. As at Aurangabad half-a-century earlier, the rise of Arcot attracted migrant Sufis from such earlier centres as Bijapur. Shrines were subsequently patronized at Arcot and Vellore for the migrant Sufis Tipu Mastan Awliya (d. 1725) and Sayyid ‘Abd al-Latif (d. c. 1736). Tipu Mastan Awliya had migrated to Arcot in the years following its conquest by the Mughals, and it was there in Page 34 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan 1729 that a shrine was built for him by the ruler of Arcot, Nawwab Sa‘dat Allah Khan. The Hazrat Makan, as the shrine at Vellore of Sayyid ‘Abd al-Latif (d. c. 1736) became known, was patronized by almost all of Sa‘dat Allah Khan’s successors. Later, upon the relocation of Arcot’s Wala Jah rulers to Madras, around 1789 the body of another Bijapuri Sufi migrant, Shaykh Makhdum ‘Abd al-Haqq (d. c. 1751), was disinterred from Rahmatabad and re-buried in a new shrine constructed for his blessed body in Madras by the Wala Jah ruler Muhammad Shah.113 Reflecting Mughal and Asaf Jah patronage, the Wala Jahs also poured patronage upon the pre-existing sacred geography of medieval Sufi shrines in their territories, particularly those at the great southern pilgrimage town of Trichy. However, after the Asaf Jah realm, it is the kingdom of Mysore that provides the most vivid examples of such patronage. Mysore’s second and most famous ruler, Tipu Sultan (d. 1799), was even himself named after the Sufi Tipu Mastan Awliya, at whose shrine in Arcot his parents were said to have prayed for a son. Despite the familiar ring of the narrative, we should bear in mind Tipu’s close ancestral connections with the sajjada nashins of (p.198) the shrines of Gulbarga and Sira. The chronicler Mir Husayn ‘Ali Kirmani recorded that both Haydar ‘Ali and his son Tipu Sultan were associated with another Sufi, Khaki Shah Wali (d. c. 1770). Kirmani added that they constructed a shrine for Khaki Shah at Nimbkainahalli and granted jagirs to the shrine of the semilegendary saint, Baba Budhan, outside Chikmagalur. Following Mughal and Asaf Jah practice, Tipu Sultan had one of his wives buried in a Sufi shrine at Yadavapuri. Smaller successor states reflected these spatial patronage practices. During the mid-eighteenth century in Karnul, the Sufi Shah Mastan was involved in the political affairs of his Afghan patron and devotee, Nawwab Munawwar Khan (d. 1792), so continuing the Afghan diasporic interaction with the Sufis of India that we saw in Chapter 3. Earlier, the Naqshbandi Sufi Mir Mahmud, one of the deputies (khalifas) of Shah Musafir of Aurangabad, had been martyred in Karnul while accompanying the Mughal commander Khwajim Quli Khan in 1708.114 His tomb in Karnul became well known in the following decades, though no details of its patronage are known. Reflecting the burst of shrine patronage seen in Aurangabad during the early eighteenth century, the years in which Karnul emerged as a successor state saw the construction of several other shrines. In 1738, a mosque was built at the shrine of the somewhat earlier Mughal Sufi, Shah Yahu (d. 1679), while elsewhere in Karnul two new shrines were constructed in 1745 to Shah Amin Wali (d. 1744) and Shah Asad Allah Husayni (d. 1629–30).115 This picture of successor state patronage of local Sufi-based sacred geographies within their territories was finally reflected by the nawwabs of Cuddapah, who similarly invited Sufis to set up takiyyas in their small Deccan state. The same practices trickled down to local elites, such as the jagirdar of Adoni, Basilat Jang, who gave numerous grants to dargahs during the 1770s.116 There were few regions of the early modern Deccan in which the fleeting Page 35 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan presence of Sufi blessed men was not permanently built into the landscape by the patronage of shrines.

(p.199) Making Geography, Anchoring Memory Ever since the medieval conquests of the Delhi sultans and the development of the earliest Sufi spaces in the Deccan, the ruling Muslim dynasties of the region had been associated with the patronage of Sufis and their shrines. As a result, by the time of the Mughal conquests of the late seventeenth century, the Deccan already possessed a Muslim geography of belonging that was made sacred by the memory of hallowed saintly Muslims of earlier times. While the Mughals introduced many political and cultural changes to the Deccan, their new ruling classes were keen to connect themselves to the power places of the saints, whose rewards came through the supernatural currency of miracles as much as the political coinage of legitimacy. This the patrons achieved through grants of revenue or cash; through the construction of new buildings; through the funding of elaborate commemorative ‘urs rituals; or through their own burial in the dargahs or ‘royal courts’ of the saints. Given the regal nomenclature lent to these Sufi spaces, by way of finality we should register the luxuriousness with which their interiors were often decorated. If material evidence for this decor is all too often lacking, textual evidence lends traces of the princely splendour with which the sajjada nashin sons of the saints were surrounded. While relating to the shrine of Shaykh Muthi Kansi in Punjab, the following description by Ni‘mat Allah ibn Habib Allah (d. 1615) of the interior décor of a Mughal shrine was at least composed in the Deccan and so leads us, however vicariously, into the physical spaces of the Sufis: [The shrine’s] guest-house (mehmankhana) was so elegant that even the gatherings of the worldly are never prepared with such grace and delicacy. The ceiling, walls and columns each matched one another in décor, fitted out with velvet, gold brocade and clothes hangers; then there were the costly Afghan (wilayati) carpets and kilims. There were the finest watervessels and royal awnings; elegant cushions, silver bedsteads and fine bedsheets were spread out; marquetry chairs with coverlets were placed opposite. It was such a place that neither the eyes of the sky had seen such a thing, nor the ears of the heavens heard of it. It was always kept clean and tidy. And as for incense (khushbu’i), every day such a great amount was spent on it that even the mathematicians (p.200) of conjecture and imagination are unable to comprehend its quantity and quality.117 Such wealth and luxury inevitably carried political claims. For the Mughal and Asaf Jah patronage of pre-existing Sufi spaces and their living lineages of sajjada nashins was only one aspect of a policy intended to draw on the symbolic and supernatural capital of the saints. The other no less important aspect was the creation of entirely new shrines dedicated in many cases to migrant saints who had journeyed from the north in the wake of the Deccan’s new rulers. The scale, Page 36 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan abundance, and splendour of these shrines reflected the importance of Sufi blessed men and their immortalizing burial places to the making of urban life in these early modern mobile geographies of empire. Imperially cosmopolitan as well as exclusively Islamic, the varied sources of patronage that at times drew on the resources of Hindu as well as Muslim notables point to important modes of cultural interpenetration that sustained the co-existence of different peoples on a landscape that was both Islamicate and Islamic. In such ways, Mughal and Asaf Jah patronage of both existing and new saintly spaces played a central and lasting role in the political and cultural as much as the narrowly architectural history of the Indian south. The patronage of new shrines left a permanent imprint on the landscape that tied future generations into the bonds of devotion and the rituals of pilgrimage that were among the most enduring legacies of the age. While many other monuments of the period have disappeared, the shrines patronized by the Mughals and their eighteenth-century successors still survive as some of the most significant buildings of the early modern era. As we will see in Chapters 7 and 8, the shrines were for this reason enduring spaces of memory that through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries continued to act as weighty anchors of belonging. Notes:

(1) See also Eaton (2004). (2) On pre-Mughal patronage of Sufi institutions in India, see Digby (2004) and Nizami (1995), vol. 1. (3) Zain Khan (1982), p. 92. (4) R. Bilgrami (1978) and Tirmizi, ‘Mughal Documents Relating to the Dargah of Khwaja Mu’inuddin Chishti’, in Troll (1989). (5) J. Mohammed (2002), pp. 87–90, 71–3. (6) Cf. Richards (1993), pp. 171–5. (7) On the historicization of the notion of ‘orthodoxy’, see Eaton (2003). (8) On this pattern in the pre-Mughal Deccan, see Eaton (1973). (9) On the military and administrative dimensions of this Deccan policy, see Richards (1993), Chapter 11. On the institutional Sufi links of the Deccan sultans, see Naqvi (1993), pp. 113–57, and Siddiqi (2009). (10) Clayer (1992), Geoffroy (1995), pp. 128–35, Layish (1987), and Yürekli (2003).

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan (11) For earlier accounts of Mughal architecture in the Deccan, see Desai, ‘Mughal Architecture of the Deccan’, in Sherwani and Joshi (1973–4) and Michell and Zebrowski (1999). (12) Saqi Must‘ad Khan, (1990). (13) Bhimsen, Memoirs of Bhimsen Relating to Aurangzib’s Deccan Campaigns, trans. Sarkar (1972), p. 159, and Saqi Must‘ad Khan (1990), p. 188. (14) Saqi Must’ad Khan (1990), pp. 196–7. (15) Ibid., pp. 196 and 287. (16) I am grateful to Helen Philon for bringing these paintings to my attention and for her advice on their age. (17) Bhimsen (1972), pp. 115–16. (18) Ibid., 156–8. (19) Eaton (1978). (20) Ibid. (21) Rao (1963). (22) Cousens (1916), p. 115. (23) S.H. Bilgrami and Willmott (1883–4), vol. 2, p. 572, and Prasad (1969), pp. 11–12. (24) S.A.A. Bilgrami (1927), pp. 23–4. (25) Ibid., pp. 12–13. (26) ‘Abd al-Jabbar Khan Malkapūri (1912), pp. 337–9 (Urdu). (27) S.A.A. Bilgrami (1927), p. 75. (28) Hādī Naqshbandī (1996), pp. 12–25 (Urdu). (29) The life of this Abu al-Muzaffar is also briefly described in Bashīr Muhammad Khān (1997), vol. 2, p. 35 (Urdu). (30) Hādī Naqshbandī (1996), p. 20. With regard to these familial Naqshbandi connections, it is worth noting that Ahmad Sirhindi had earlier addressed letters to the Khan-e Khanan. On the Khan-e Khanan’s own patronage, see Schimmel, ‘A Dervish in the Guise of a Prince: Khān-i Khānān ‘Abdur Rahīm as a Patron’, in Stoler-Miller (1992). Page 38 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan (31) Haig (1907–10), pp. 18–19. Unfortunately, Haig’s brief survey of inscriptions in the Berar region does not address the shrine of ‘Inayat Allah at Balapur. (32) Asher, ‘Piety, Religion and the Old Social Order in the Architecture of the Later Mughals and their Contemporaries’, in Barnett (2002), pp. 203–4. (33) ‘Abd al-Jabbar Khan Malkapūri (1912), pp. 864–72, 906–14, and 931–49. (34) Quddusi (1975). (35) R. Bilgrami and Willmott (1883–4), vol. 2, p. 383. (36) Yazdani (1995), pp. 113 and 193–5. (37) Ibid. (38) Yazdani (1995). (39) Yazdani (1995), pp. 187–8. (40) Ibid., pp. 17–18. (41) Prefiguring the later links of this family with the Asaf Jah rulers of Hyderabad, another member of this lineage in Bidar, Makhdum-ji Shaykh Muhammad Ibrahim (d. 1565), is described by Malkapuri in connection with the ruler of Golkonda, Ibrahim Qutb Shah. See ‘Abd al-Jabbār Khān Malkapūri (1912), pp. 842–4. (42) Yazdani (1995), pp. 185–6 . (43) Ernst, ‘Royal Policy and Patronage of Sufi Shrines in Mughal Revenue Documents from Khuldabad’, in Kulkarni, Nayeem, and Souza (1996). Fifteen such documents have been studied by Ernst, while copies of ten others are presented as an appendix to Ansari (1983). (44) The farmans are reproduced in Ansari (1983). (45) Y.H. Khan (1963), pp. 238–40. (46) The shrine of Imam Reza at Mashhad in Iran also possessed such a naqqarakhana. See Marefat (1991). (47) Taylor (1837). (48) On the longer history of Awrangabad’s shrines, see Green (2006b). (49) Parodi (1998), pp. 3–4. (50) Shah Nawaz Khan (1911–52), p. 476. Page 39 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan (51) On the Samarqand shrines, see Marefat (1991). (52) Khāksār Sabzawārī, Sawanih, f. 37r [Persian]. (53) Magrabi (1981). (54) On spatial narratives relating to Shah Nur and his shrine’s relationship with these Hindus, see Green (2004c). (55) Lawrence, ‘The Diffusion of Hindu/Muslim Boundaries in South Asia: Contrasting Evidence from the Literature and the Tomb Cults of Selected IndoMuslim Shaykhs’, in Gaeffke and Utz (1984). (56) Shah Nawaz Khan (1911–52), p. 25. (57) Ibid., p. 226. (58) Author’s own reading. (59) M. Nazim (1933–4), p. 19. (60) Ghulām ‘Alī Āzād Bilgrāmī (1871), pp. 454–5. (61) Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābādī (1939). Details of the architectural history of the shrine are also found in Raf ‘at (1957). (62) Rao (1963), p. 18. (63) Panchakki Collection, document L (copy in author’s possession). (64) Ramzan (1982), pp. 296–302. (65) Ibid. pp. 298–9, with copies of documents in Appendix A. For a wider discussion of the role of such ‘transcultural’ elite activity in the Deccan, see Wagoner, ‘Fortuituous Convergences and Essential Ambiguities: Transcultural Political Elites in the Medieval Deccan’, in Mittal (2003). (66) Sen (1949), p. 103. (67) Khāksār Sabzawārī, f. 32v–33r. (68) Gill and Fergusson (1864), p. 73. (69) Cf. Michell and Zebrowski (1999), pp. 133–4. (70) I am grateful to Helen Philon for information and advice on this structure. (71) Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābadī (1939), p. 111. On Jamil Beg as a close companion of Nizam al-Mulk, see the translations from Nizam al-Mulk’s biographer Mansaram in Rao (1963), especially p. 92. Page 40 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan (72) Meredith-Owens (1973), plate xxi. (73) Saqi Must’ad Khan (1990), pp. 82–3. On hydraulic technology at the socalled Wah Garden (Bagh-e Wah) near Hasan Abdal, see Rajput, ‘The Mughal Garden “Wah” near Hasanabdal: Source Material, Report of Excavations of 1993–94 and New Discoveries’, in Hussain, Rehman, and Wescoat (1996). I am grateful to Elizabeth Lambourn for bringing this article to my attention. (74) ‘Abd al-Jabbār Khan Malkapūrī (1912), p. 1109. (75) Khāksār Sabzawārī, f. 35v. (76) Aurangabad District Gazetteer (1977), p. 948. (77) Michell and Zebrowski (1999), p. 112. (78) Aurangabad District Gazetteer (1977), pp. 332–3. (79) Ibid., p. 333. (80) Rao (1963), p. 81. (81) I am grateful to Sayyid Taqiuddin Nehri and Sayyid Riyazuddin Nehri for showing me original documents related to the history of the chhota takiyya and for informing me about their family history. (82) This inscription, which does not appear in any of the secondary literature I have discovered, runs: ihbihnām-e masjid-e ‘ālī zīst sarūr/hazār yak sad ū panjah shod mazhar (By the name of ‘excellent mosque’ it lived bringing gladness/And appeared in one thousand one hundred and fifty). (83) Ghulām ‘Alī Āzād Bilgrāmī (1871), pp. 455–6. (84) Nehri Collection, document 4, dated 1811 (copy in author’s possession). (85) These dates are recorded on a later commemorative headstone facing the mausoleum. The shrine is also briefly mentioned in Cousens (1900), p. 13. (86) Khafi Khan (1975). (87) Due to ongoing litigation regarding these grants, I was only able to consult the second document which bears the seal of Shah ‘Alam and the date 11 Shawwal 1121/14 December 1709. Jan Allah is also sometimes known as Jan Muhammad. (88) Khafi Khan (1975), pp. 274–5. (89) Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābādī (1939), p. 100.

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan (90) Bhir District Gazetteer (1969). (91) Das (1959), p. 251. (92) Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābādī (1939), p. 83. (93) Yazdani (1921–2), pp. 16–18. (94) Ibid., pp. 23–4. (95) Ibid., p. 25. (96) Ibid., p. 26. (97) Hussein (1977), pp. 97–8. (98) Yazdani (1921–2), p. 27. (99) On the Shinde family’s early devotion to Sufi saints, see Price (1839), p. 314. The family apparently maintained its connections with the shrine into recent times. (100) Michell and Zebrowski (1999), p. 261. (101) Gordon, ‘Maratha Patronage of Muslim Institutions in Burhanpur and Khandesh’, in Gilmartin and Lawrence (2000). (102) Nazim (1933–4), pp. 16–17. (103) Duff (1921), vol. 1, pp. 278–82, 335–7, 363–6, and 374–8. (104) Yazdani (1921–2), p. 28. (105) Hussein (1977), pp. 102–5. (106) In Urdu/Hindi, the term for this measurement may also be vocalized and written as gaj. (107) Bayly, ‘Cult Saints, Heroes, and Warrior Kings: South Asian Islam in the Making’, in Yandell and Paul (2000). Eaton (1978) presents the most forthright presentation of the warrior saint thesis with regard to the Deccan. (108) Crawford (1987), p. 177. (109) Ansari (1983), pp. 251–2 and Ernst (1992), pp. 237–8. (110) The tomb of Durga Devi (also known as Jamal Ara Begam) is in fact just outside the shrine of Mu’min ‘Arif at Dawlatabad. (111) Cousens (1900). Page 42 of 43

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The Patronage of Saintly Space in the Early Modern Deccan (112) On Paithan’s Hindu legacy, see Morwanchikar (1985). On Hindu–Muslim cultic interactions in Paithan, see Van Skyhawk (1993). (113) Bayly (1989), p. 180. (114) Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābādī (1939). (115) Desai (1951–2), pp. 48–53. (116) Chander (1987), pp. 27–8. (117) Ni‘mat Allah (1962), vol. 2, p. 747.

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya

Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya Nile Green

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.003.0027

Abstract and Keywords This chapter links text and territory together to ask how books were used by early modern Muslims. Providing a case study of the reading habits of Muslims resident in a religious lodge or takiyya, it provides a model of knowledge as being conceptually seen to reside in persons not texts. By pursuing the implications of the reading habits at the takiyya, the chapter addresses the important historical problem of why printing was not adapted in India until the nineteenth century. Keywords:   Islam, Sufism, Muslims, reading, manuscripts, printing, takiyya, teaching, education, literacy

Before Typographic Man Among many of the Muslim religious circles which constituted some of the most important potential markets for books in early modern India, in practical as well as conceptual terms, knowledge was located primarily in persons rather than books. Books were considered less as independent sources of knowledge than as appendages to the personal pedagogical relationships through which knowledge was transferred and within which writing served to provide only one dimension of the knowledge being transferred. Even where books were used for religious learning, this occurred under the personal instruction of a master, who closely directed his students’ reading and placed it within larger non-textual programmes of acquiring knowledge through prayer, dreaming, ritual performance, ascetic discipline, and the obedience rendered by the student as apprentice. Books worked in the service of an anthropocentric mode of knowledge, as mnemonic aids and adjuncts to the bodily incorporation of words Page 1 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya in the person of the authoritative master and through him to his students. Correspondingly, those in search of knowledge looked for a master rather than a bookshop or library, with libraries in any case being private collections accessed through personal affiliation to a teacher. While books render knowledge transportable across space, this conceptual location of knowledge in persons required humans to travel alongside or even in preference to books, adding both students and teachers to the patterns of Muslim migration we have seen in earlier chapters. Since many of the most recognized persons to embody such knowledge were Sufi blessed men, this co-dependent mobility of books and bodies echoes the patterns we have traced in Chapter 2 with regard to the migration of rituals. (p.202) In the Sufi circles under discussion in the following pages, as social capital knowledge was transferred through pedagogical relationships within which books were used but independent of which their perusal had little formal status. Even in the book-intensive circles of Muslim legal study, ijaza educational certificates were not testaments of the simple reading of books, but of having gained the understanding of them that could only come through having their ‘correct’ meanings explained by a master. Among the Sufi circles that included ‘ulama as well as other professional groups such as bureaucrats and soldiers, the epistemological value of books was lesser still, even as these circles produced and used books as part of larger learning programmes of obedience, ritual, and meditation. In an epistemological tradition inherited from the medieval period in which a person could not access or possess knowledge by the mere purchase and self-study of books, there was a correspondingly lesser incentive for individuals to buy them. This limited demand in turn helped constitute the smaller book market that acted as a disincentive to the development of printing in early modern India. This left instead an economy of bazaar copyists and private scriptoria sufficient to supply the men who possessed and passed on knowledge through practices of shared reading and ‘incorporative’ book use. This approach helps us explicate the problem of how to explain the ‘failure’ of printing to spread in early modern India when the technology was already known in some Indian circles in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. With both the technology and personnel of printing already present on Indian soil as early as the sixteenth century, there is no obvious reason why Europeans should not have been recruited to serve Indians as printers in the same way that they served the Mughals and Asaf Jahs as cannon-makers and artillery-men.1 In the 1670s, this is precisely what did happen in the case of one Indian entrepreneur, Bhimji Parekh, (p.203) and his hired English hand, Henry Hills, but their experiment did not last and is not known to have been imitated during the next century.2 The argument that the spread of printing was delayed by the hold of bazaar copyists over the book market and the relative cheapness of their product compared to the initial capital required to set up a printing press and Page 2 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya sell a large enough number of copies to turn the enterprise to profit, holds some merit for the period before 1800. This, after all, seems to have been the reason for the abandonment of Parekh’s Devanagari press. When indigenous printing did eventually develop in Indian and other Islamic settings, in economic terms the key (if long unrecognized) enabling factor was the invention in 1800 of the mass-produced iron hand press.3 Even so, the late development of printing in India was not only a question of the mechanical and economic aspects of the supply of presses. It also related to the cultural aspects of the demand for books and through this to the uses of books examined in this chapter during the period of ‘print absence’. For in order to assess the factors shaping the demand for books requires us to explore what work books did in early modern India. As a contribution towards answering this question, this chapter uses accounts of book-use in a Sufi takiyya or shrine to reconstruct the relationship between books and the social capital of knowledge in the later Mughal era. By seeing how books were made use of in this particular architectural space, we will not only witness again the interplay of text and territory, but also the crucial role played by the living blessed man in mediating access to both the physical spaces of book collections and the understanding of their contents.

Incorporating Books: Text and the Blessed Man This conceptual location of knowledge in authoritative persons becomes apparent when we begin to examine the ways in which books were used through traditional patterns of Muslim learning that entered India in the medieval period. Pedagogical methods (p.204) of Quran and Hadith learning had long placed emphasis on the memorization of text by a small ‘literate’ class.4 Such ‘literacy’ was in many cases only a tool to mnemonically master—to interiorize— the Quran and a few other basic texts. As we will see later, by the early eighteenth century, literacy as such came increasingly to have more value for the bureaucratic purposes of gathering ‘information’ than of acquiring ‘knowledge’. The wider social reach of Muslim scriptural texts came not through widespread book use among the general population, but through the texts’ mnemonic internalization and spoken performance by learned living remembrancers or huffaz. In medieval and early modern India, the Quran was rarely experienced as an entire ‘book’ but rather as fragmented pieces of text reproduced orally from the embodied human depositories of memory. As its very name designated, the Quran was a text ‘recited’ in speech, preferably from memory, and the learning habits that surrounded its prestigious model affected wider attitudes towards book learning.5 The self-replicating methods of Quran learners were extremely influential—not least since the Quran lesson was frequently the first introduction to both written text and formal learning— inculcating attitudes among the religious classes that valued internalizing books over owning them. This was not unique to India. Inventories of Damascene book collections show that even by the nineteenth century, surprisingly few ‘ulama possessed copies of the Quran, carrying its words instead within their own Page 3 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya persons.6 The Hadith were similarly committed to memory, their ‘sound’ (sahih) authority founded on a ‘science of men’ (‘ilm alrijal) that developed through a corresponding epistemological faith in truthful persons rather than documentary written evidence, though the former at times came to practically rely on the latter. In the context of jurisprudence, the Quran and the Hadith were certainly sometimes supplemented by written compendia of sound (p.205) judgements (fatawa), but here too judicial authority remained in the person of the human faqih (jurisconsult) who had absorbed the texts.7 Knowledge was that which was committed to memory, which books served to aid and supplement, but not to correct.8 These learning methods were both long-lasting and widespread: when a ‘standard’ printed edition of the Quran was issued in Egypt in the early twentieth century, its accuracy was checked not against written codicological evidence but against internalized human memory.9 Throughout the medieval period, the ‘ulama (who were often the same persons as the Sufis) and their modes of knowledge loomed large in literate learning. Their institutions provided the basis for bureaucratic no less than clerical training as it emerged in the Turkish sultanates of Iran, Central Asia, and north India.10 As a consequence, ‘ulama modes of book-use influenced the development of other fields of written learning. Among these other fields were the major genres of medieval and early modern Persian writing in India. The most obvious example is the biographical or literary tazkira, quite literally the book of ‘memory’ (zakira), the purpose of which was to supplement or correct the failing recollection of its users.11 As the hardware of cultural memory, a tazkira text might contain the lives of royal and saintly heroes or otherwise the anthologized verses of poets, typically more obscure poets lacking a diwan compendium of their own. In such tazkira books, the written form of stories or verses served as aides mémoire: what was deemed important would be committed to the reader’s memory. From there it would reach its larger and main audience through spoken performance, for as the theorist Walter Ong has noted, ‘written texts all have to be related somehow to the world of sound, (p. 206)

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya the natural habit of language, to yield their meanings’.12 This mnemonic function could also be observed in a range of other Persian genres in early modern India. Historiography or tarikh texts had the purpose of recording the ‘dates’ that the name tarikh suggests. They played a key part in the commemorative enterprise of the making and shaping of memory (and thence identity and loyalty) that made historiography so central to book-writing for court and (p.207) state. These functions became particularly important to the great burst in the sponsorship of historiography at the Mughal court, in which as we saw in Chapter 3 Afghan, Mughal, Rajput, and other diasporic elites seeking to record collective memory as it dwindled under the effect of movement, dislocation, and language change. Other genres of biographical or tabaqat texts provided performative moral models of emulation for the pious; poetic diwans provided a choice of Fig. 6.1 Blessed Names as Textual Body: verses for the dandy to memorize Muhyi al-Din of Bukhara’s Caligraphic and reproduce from their own Microcosm, Aurangabad (1759) persons. The more widespread Courtesy of Salar Jang Museum, genres of the courtly or religious Hyderabad etiquette (adab) text involved even more patently physical modes of memory, knowledge of which was testified not through recitation or quotation but through the public modification of bodily habits and comportment. This was particularly true of the Sufi handbooks such as the early Kashf almahjub which we saw in Chapter 1 being the earliest Persian Sufi text to be written in India. This was a text whose behavioral and moral teachings were to be internalized in body and soul through a physiology of learning in which not the brain but the heart (qalb, fu’ad) played the central part.

Here we might hesitate before pursuing Mary Carruthers’ model of the ‘book of memory’, because while her notion of memory may be useful up to a point, we should be wary about projecting European psychological models of memory as a part of the individual ‘mind’ back into Asian time.13 Certainly, memory—hafz or zakira—was recognized by early modern Muslims as an important human ability, but to substantiate memory as a part of the brain or even mind may not only be Page 5 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya anachronistic but may also be to miss the trick of what such acts of socialized and physicalized memory were seen as doing.14 For in the contexts we are dealing with, to commit knowledge to memory was not merely to store it in one’s mind in a mentally internalized ‘book of memory’ after Carruthers’ model. It was rather to incorporate it into one’s whole person, moral, metaphysical, and social (see Fig. 6.1). To return to our focus on authoritative religious knowledge, it is in this sense that (p.208) we should understand the various things that Indian Muslim readers did with the words they read: they ingested words written on paper or breathed on water; they inhaled words that accompanied the chanting exercises of zikr; they inscribed words on their internal organs through techniques of visualization; they wore words as talismanic shirts and amulets for protection.15 Words—indeed writing as such—had diverse locations, the most authoritative of which were not those on paper (which few could in any case access or read), but those incorporated into persons through these mnemonic and incorporative means. Before the mass proliferation of books with the spread of printing, the handwritten ‘book’ was thus only one of a range of locations for the written word and its individual purchase and reading in the form of a book was only one of the uses of writing.16 If this has sketched a general model of how knowledge and the authority it bestowed were situated primarily in the person rather than the book, it is now time to present evidence for its existence in the early modern period of ‘print absence’ with which this chapter is primarily concerned. Since the intention here is not to present static models of ‘Islamic’ reading habits, we will suggest ways in which this one mode of book praxis was challenged and arguably displaced by the later Mughal era. The particular time and place dealt with here is the opening decades of the eighteenth century, when at the same time that Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg was printing Tamil books in Tranquebar, in his takiyya on the other side of the Deccan in the erstwhile Mughal capital of Aurangabad, the blessed man Shah Muhammad Musafir was using his Persian books in this distinctly anthropocentric mode.17

(p.209) The Uses of Books in the Aurangabad Takiyya As we saw in Chapter 5, in testament to the patronage it received when Aurangabad was briefly capital of the Mughal Empire and subsequent founding capital of the Nizams, the takiyya or shrine of Shah Musafir became one of the most notable examples of late Mughal architecture. At its centre lay the tombs of two Central Asian migrants, Shah Sa‘id Palangposh (d. 1699) and Shah Muhammad Musafir (d. 1715), members of a Naqshbandi lineage of Sufis who attracted a large following among Aurangabad’s mobile imperial elite.18 Reflecting the ethnic as much as the religious affiliation of its followers, the takiyya was chiefly associated with Central Asian—Turani, Moghol—soldiers and bureaucrats in the service of Ghazi al-Din Khan Firoz Jang (d. 1710) and later his son, Nizam al-Mulk (d. 1748), the first Nizam and founder of Hyderabad State. Shah Musafir’s affiliations with these itinerant servants of empire brought Page 6 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya fruitful reward in the construction of his shrine complex. This built space of learning comprised a mosque, khanaqah, mausoleum, and residential quarter, as well as a book collection into which fell more than one work from the imperial library.19 It was here that Shah Musafir’s first successor, Shah Mahmud (d. 1762), wrote the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya in commemoration of Shah Musafir and the takiyya’s activities in his lifetime.20 In this work we find a series of detailed accounts of the uses to which the takiyya’s books were put in Shah Musafir’s circle. Lest it be suggested that this was an unlearned or bookdespising place, and so a poor choice (p.210) of case study, it is important to state that if anything the takiyya was an uncommonly bookish place. Its library attracted the major literary figures of the region, including the foremost literato of the age, Ghulam ‘Ali Azad Bilgrami (d. 1786), who in the 1740s spent seven years living there. Given that Bilgrami’s chief contribution to Indian letters was the compilation of anthologies of poetic biography and verse, the texts produced by literati no less than Sufis point to the links between writing and embodied memory.21 As we will see in more detail later, even in what was in its period a usually book-familiar circle, the uses of other books were similarly constrained by the model of learning as incorporation. Amid the cache of circumstantial detail preserved in the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya, we find much evidence that in this way the use of books in this way was limited in the circle of the takiyya’s founder, Shah Muhammad Musafir. In a sense, this is surprising. Shah Musafir had attended a maktab school as a boy in Central Asia before spending several years as a teacher in Ghuri (in present-day Afghanistan) during his early manhood, so we know that he was fully literate before he came to settle in Aurangabad.22 But the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya’s description of his subsequent Sufi apprenticeship under his own master Shah Palangposh points towards a mode of acquiring knowledge or ma‘rifat that had no place for any kind of book-learning at all and drew by contrast on a physical programme of self-abnegation reached through destitution and servitude.23 It was mastery of body and soul, rather than of books, that gave access to knowledge. However, when in Aurangabad Shah Musafir came to teach apprentices himself, his own mode of instruction did include a role for books. His use of books, though, was closely circumscribed and they were only introduced into his curriculum within a context of oral and face-to-face tuition.24 One revealing (p.211)

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya anecdote from the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya describes him reading to his students from a biographical compendium of saintly lives, the Tazkirat al-awliya, during which he was interrupted by an argument between his students over the meaning of the segment under scrutiny.25 Here emerge several characteristics of book-use that deserve our attention. First is the oral context within which the book was used, such that written texts were woven into ex tempore commentaries and discussions that situated authority in the living (p.212) blessed man who guided and controlled the reading session and the physical text (see Fig. 6.2). There was no independent transfer of knowledge between author and reader. Second, the book in question was a collection of the sayings and deeds of the saints and as such a medium of exemplary behaviour, concerned like the Hadith with embodied actions more than abstract principles. It was a book that served the authority of men worthy of emulation rather than of ideas or even other books at some abstract level. We also witness in

Fig. 6.2 The Book as Object: Wooden Quran Sura from Shrine of Jan Allah Shah, Jalna Courtesy of Nile Green

the account of the reading group the operation of a tripartite model of book use.26 For when the argument broke out, after some debate among the apprentices themselves it was the master Shah Musafir who intervened to provide the authoritative answer to the issue in dispute. Book knowledge was in this way transmitted through a continuum of the author’s voice, readerly opinion, and the final but decisive interpretation of the blessed man who had direct contact with the higher authority of God. Textual authority —even an author’s control over his own words—was thus relegated to the authority of the master in and as person.

Books were no more easily accessible and open to unguided reading in other spheres of religious learning, where access to books was itself controlled through social mechanisms made possible by the limited availability of books in the private libraries of the manuscript ecumene rather than the later free market of print.27 In such contexts, book knowledge was mediated through the authority of the person, who was able to decide at which point his students were Page 8 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya ready to access a particular book. And these were books which in the case of libraries such as that at the takiyya could be accessed only with the shaykh’s permission.28 Texts belonged to and could only be accessed in man-made territories to which access was controlled by hierarchical social relationships. Group reading strategies thus controlled the written word in much the same way that a master decided when or whether to transfer (p.213) knowledge through the spoken word. Books—and their readers—were not considered autonomous and the master remained at the centre of his particular ‘field’ of knowledge, not least by deciding who could access the spatialized domain of books at his takiyya.29 This was not an age of public libraries. The Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya provides little evidence of reading activity that was not organized by means of such directed reading groups. Moreover there are also many references to such group readings in another Sufi text from Aurangabad, the Ahsan al-Shama’il, that details life in the circle of Shah Musafir’s local contemporary, Nizam al-Din Awrangabadi (d. 1729).30 For reading was a socialized activity, and its sonorous and collectively intensified performance lent it correspondingly powerful results. A shared recitation at the takiyya of the poetic Masnawi of Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273) led one participant to fall into raving ecstasy (hal). Here the physical and socially administered act of reading aloud summoned a psycho-physical state in which knowledge was received into the person directly from God rather than through the mediation of writing as such.31 The book of verse did not contain knowledge as such but was an instrument for provoking the psychological conditions in which knowledge could be received from beyond its pages. Ironically, the book of the Masnawi therefore functioned not as a source of knowledge in itself but as an instrumental technology that rendered itself and other books epistemologically obsolete. When other books were mentioned in the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya as being used by the takiyya’s residents and visitors, they consisted mainly of what was by the early 1700s a canon of classical Persian poetry and Naqshbandi sacred biography.32 Epistemological anthropocentrism also underwrote the construction of these biographies. Their sources frequently quoted persons (p.214) in preference to books, echoing the older perceptions we have seen that while the reliability of a human informant might be reasonably assessed, written knowledge had a propensity towards dissimulation and forgery. Like similar works of its genre, the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya (a hagiographical tazkira in spite of its title) thus presented itself as a repository of spoken knowledge, providing the names and biographies of its ‘trustworthy’ informants before recording the details of what they remembered about Shah Musafir’s life.33 Even in the 1730s when the text was composed, books still in such ways attempted to capture the reliability of direct spoken communication, the importance of which was itself a reflection of an anthropocentric model of knowledge. Nor was this a peculiarly Sufi attitude, for among ‘ulama book users in the Central Asian circles Page 9 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya from which so much Indo-Islamic scholarship descended, the ‘hearing’ (masmu‘at) method of mastering books was considered superior to the ‘reciting’ (maqru’at).34 While the doctrinal risala text did enjoy some success in Mughal India, the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya also suggests that such treatises were by no means a staple of every library. It is not clear by whom and in what circumstances such books of abstract and theoretical learning were employed.35 Arguably, not only were they read rather less than many scholars have imagined, but such texts can ever be seen within the same epistemological nexus as providing ideological armour to protect the magisterial person as the locus of knowledge. It is after all in such doctrinal works that we find the fullest elaboration of the ideology of ‘friendship’ (wilayat) and ‘proximity’ (qurbat) to God that championed the knowledge of such blessed men over the uncertain ‘acquired knowledge’ (‘ilm-e husuli) gained from mere reading. Although numerous books were mentioned in the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya as being present at the takiyya in Aurangabad, there was a clear sense of poetry as being the paragon of letters, (p.215) especially the Masnawi of Rumi and the lyrics of Hafiz. But again, poems were not conceived nor even in most cases received as written texts. Writing was only one stage in the social life of the poem, the stage before it was committed to memory and then circulated, performed, and appreciated through spoken or sung recitation.36 Writing was not only tangential to the human location of poetic speech, it was also comparatively expensive. In the manuscript era, memorizing borrowed or recited books was inevitably cheaper than buying them and potentially more efficient than copying them. This relationship that arguably did not change until the nineteenth century age of printing when time (spent memorizing) gained a greater financial value than the (by then printed) book in question. At several points the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya did draw attention to the financial value of books, for example when the takiyya’s library was hidden during a raid by the Marathas and on another occasion when a form of arrow-spinning divination was used to discover the thief of an especially valuable book.37 So to claim that knowledge was not seen as independently located in books—was not ‘bibliocentric’—is not to say that early modern books did not have value as commodities (though we certainly should not simply assume that book markets existed in this period). Yet, here too the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya points to the variant status of different genres: when a handler of stolen manuscripts was punished by having his loot strangely turned to dust, only the Masnawi-ye Ma‘nawi, Tazkirat al-Awliya, and Nafahat al-Uns remained intact.38 From the readers at the Aurangabad takiyya at least, we hear in this a supernatural iteration of the relative value of different books: poetry and saintly biography— the most anthropocentric of books—were the most esteemed. (p.216)

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya This sense of poetry as the most valued element of Persian literary culture was more widely shared and the ways in which this was manifested shows how the incorporative attitudes in question did not solely pertain to religious knowledge. After all, a Mughal gentleman was not judged on the futile measure of how many poems he had perused, but on how many verses (or, for other kinds of ‘book’ specialists, legal rulings or hadith) he had committed to memory and so absorbed into his person (see Fig. 6.3). In numerous other settings beyond Aurangabad,

Fig. 6.3 The Embodiment of Written Memory: A Sajjada Nashin Reads from his

(p.217) it was books of poetry that were given greatest value

Library

by more patently financial means than the supernatural

Courtesy of Nile Green

valuations given at the takiyya. More than any other type of book in early modern India, it was poetic works that were copied out by the finest calligraphers and bound between the finest decorated covers.39 As a result, among the diverse holdings of the Mughal imperial library, it was books of poetry that were reckoned in the period to have the greatest financial value.40 It is not, however, the intention here to present the relationship between books and their users in terms of fixed modalities and unchanging attitudes. If, in the 1730s, the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya showed the continued elevation of persons over books as the locations of knowledge, other texts from Mughal Aurangabad already pointed towards more nuanced and perhaps transitional attitudes. Examples can be seen in the circle of Shah Musafir’s contemporary, the Chishti blessed man Nizam al-Din Awrangabadi, whose khanaqah in Aurangabad served as no less a space for book use. In Nizam al-Din’s malfuzat we also find expressions of controlled access to knowledge. His ‘recorded conversations’ described not only parallel group readings to those seen at the Naqshbandi takiyya but the same awareness of the embodied locus of authoritative knowledge in the text’s attempt as a malfuzat to use writing to recreate the verbal presence of the blessed man.41 As Nizam al-Din’s own teacher Kalim Allah Dihlawi (d. 1728) had taught him, the instruction of a living master provides ‘an

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya assistance impossible to get by the mere reading of books’.42 Paradoxically, though, this advice had been made in a written letter. Here we see a tension emerging from the increasingly geographically dispersed relationships between teachers and their disciples, relationships which were conceived as being face-to-face but which as a result of increasing individual movement (in Nizam al-Din’s case as a result of imperial expansion into the Deccan and the shift of the capital to Aurangabad) needed to be (p.218) vicariously recreated through the exchange of letters. Paper—and the personal paper of the intimate letter—thus affected a geographical repositioning of the master’s voice and in Nizam al-Din’s case this was done through letters carried from Delhi by the imperial postal dak.43 The interplay of text and territory thus shaped the genre and content of the text being produced in any given circumstance. Little surprise, then, that the mobile early modern era became the heyday of the Indo-Persian maktubat and insha’ letter-collection text. Nizam al-Din’s own book, the Nizam al-Qulub (‘Order of the Hearts’), was a no less unusual kind of text, which struggled to describe in words the peculiar vocal sounds and bodily practices appropriate to different forms of meditation.44 In Jack Goody’s sense, it was a characteristically bookish book, an attempt to catalogue, classify, and codify all of the physical breathing, chanting, and prostrating practices its author had ever heard and seen.45 The Nizam al-Qulub was a testament to the transformation of bodily into bookish knowledge, of corporeal and oral knowledge into the written record. As one of the earliest works to commit to writing meditational practices that had previously been only orally transmitted between master and disciple directly, its very composition in the early eighteenth century was a sign of changing times. Like other innovators, Nizam al-Din was only a few paces ahead of his time. Nonetheless, other Muslim knowledge masters were also reformulating the relationship between knowledge and writing elsewhere at this time. One such figure was Nizam al-Din’s Syrian contemporary, ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1731). In several of his writings, notably the Takmil al-Nu‘ut fi Luzum al-Buyut (‘Perfecting the Attributes in Remaining at Home’), ‘Abd al-Ghani wrote of the superiority of the books of the dead against the words of the living as a source of knowledge, a position which stood in juxtaposition to the epistemological tradition of fellow (p.219) Naqshbandis like Shah Musafir.46 While it has to be said that the context of Ottoman Syria was very different from that of the Mughal Deccan, in that by ‘Abd al-Ghani’s period there already existed a highly bureaucratized and centralized system of religious learning in which the authority of paper documents had made much more headway than in India, ‘Abd al-Ghani was still forced to defend his position against contemporaries who claimed that at a certain point of the epistemological journey, book knowledge had to be abandoned.47 In India itself, probably the most obvious comparative example of such a ‘bibliocentric’ shift to locating knowledge in books was Guru Page 12 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya Gobind Singh’s substitution of the living guru for the book of the dead gurus’ words after 1708. Over the following decades, under the designation Guru Granth Sahib, the book came to be regarded—seated, treated, even termed—in the manner of a living master: the book had replaced the person. There remains the possibility, then, that comparative research will detect larger shifts towards a growing faith in books over persons that preceded and culturally paved the way for the shorter technological moment that was the birth of Indian and Islamic printing around 1820.48

From Books to Bureaucracies: Knowledge as Information If we are to detect such an ideological shift in the location of knowledge in early modern India—from persons to books, from voices to charters—it may be towards the governmental sphere that we should look for its chief sponsors.49 Here this chapter suggests (p.220) that we consider the spread and increasing valorization of written learning (and hence of literacy more generally) within the context of the growth of an imperial bureaucracy comparable with that of other early modern polities in Asia. This points us, then, to the realm of government and statehood, which was in any case never more than a short step from the circles of India’s Sufis. It is significant here that the period of Shah Musafir and Nizam al-Din also saw the centralizing attempts of the Mughal state to depersonalize and thence control Islamic legal knowledge. The Fatawa-ye ‘Alamgiri, the ‘standardized’ handbook to Hanafi juridical practice sponsored during Shah Musafir’s lifetime by the emperor Aurangzeb, was compiled to diminish the role of personal legal reasoning (ijtihad) in favour of written juridical precedent.50 While the text has often been seen as a symptom of the emperor’s personal piety, it makes more sense to view it as a response to the great expansion of the empire’s geography and personnel in Aurangzeb’s reign. This bureaucratic push towards a bibliocentric or ‘bookish’ relocation of knowledge was seen in Shah Musafir’s own takiyya, where outside of the direct circle of his own disciples the main function of book learning at the takiyya was to train civil servants in the more practical skills of literacy. Thus, while Shah Musafir gave his followers access to knowledge conceived as ma‘rifat in which books played a very limited part, in the same takiyya the resident teacher Mir Muhammad Yusuf taught the many resident orphans of the Mughal armies to read and write and so be equipped to manage the paper government of imperial bureaucracy. Many of the orphans apparently did find such jobs, one becoming secretary to the new state founder, Nizam al-Mulk.51 Yet it would be more correct to view the orphans’ literate education in terms of the learning of a marketable skill or trade rather than the acquisition of authoritative ‘knowledge’. Here we are clearly dealing with a different kind of social capital, a mode of knowledge used by a different social group for a different purpose. While the Sufi and ‘alim sought the social power of unquestionable truth (p. 221) (haqq), the state sponsors of the munshi instead sought the more malleable category of information or the ‘happening’ (waq‘a). The religious and Page 13 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya bureaucratic apprentice thus had different purposes in his book use and correspondingly different attitudes to books as a result. Rather than seeing these attitudes as constituting parallel separate modes of knowledge, we might ask whether they were beginning to converge during the eighteenth century in which Shah Musafir’s takiyya flourished. The career of the shrine’s greatest book producer, Azad Bilgrami, points towards such a convergence, for while posterity remembers him as a prolific man of letters, he in fact spent much of his career in the civil service of Nizam al-Mulk. At the Aurangabad takiyya as elsewhere, the general promotion of literacy was achieved as part of the expansion of bureaucracy rather than as part of an alternative praxis linking writing with access to knowledge per se. Knowledge, especially in the higher sense of ma‘rifa, was controlled through the social mechanisms of initiation (bay‘at) at the hands of a living master. In this way the controlled pursuit of book learning was part of a larger pedagogical programme of ascesis, prayer, and service. Clearly, such comprehensive programmes were unnecessary, even counter-productive, to the bureaucratic purposes of empire and so, as in the madrasas of the Saljuq Empire, we find the Mughal takiyya also providing a stripped-down programme of more basic instruction in functional literacy. We should not be surprised, for the spatial expansion of Mughal governance saw the development of the largest and most complex bureaucratic entity in India’s pre-colonial history, a development that required a larger and more sophisticated system of bureaucracy than had ever previously existed. It is therefore in the bureaucratic sphere of information rather than the epistemological sphere of knowledge that we should seek the emphasis and demand for writing and thence for literacy. If such more efficient modes of pedagogy had the danger of compromising the moral education from which the larger anthropocentric mode was inseparable, then in the growing numbers of behavioural adab texts we can see a subsequent attempt to use book-reading as a form of moral self-fashioning in the absence of a master.52 Such a perspective would (p.222) connect the shifts we can observe in Aurangabad to a larger political context of imperial state-building and in turn to the signs of ‘early modernity’, as well as to recent discussions of the connection between bureaucratic expansion and the growth of history-writing.53 This would in turn help explain what appears to be a more general expansion of Persian book production under the Mughals, as testified in the vastly growing number of manuscripts that survive from around 1600 onwards. Persian documentation from the later Mughal period provides further evidence for such changes in modes of knowledge, for this expansive bureaucratic conscience had its own effects on the organization of writing. These ranged from the practice of keeping valuations and inventories of the Mughal imperial library and the development of the governmental news report (akhbar) to the growing obsession with paper learning certificates (ijazat), the growth of epistolary (insha’) manuals, and the appearance of new bureaucratic tropes in a range of Page 14 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya other literary spheres.54 In Aurangabad, Shah Musafir’s contemporary Nizam alDin was thus reported to have given charity to the poor by stamping chits with an official seal lent by the imperial chancery, while the shrine of Shah Nur Hammami (d. 1692) was patronized by members of the Mughal civil service who sought there miraculous solutions to their bureaucratic dilemmas.55 As we will see in more detail in Chapter 8, when Aurangzeb’s minister Diyanat Khan left an important dossier in Agra, Shah Nur was said to have mysteriously transported him to that city to collect the file in good time.56 In this as in many similar miracles recounted in hagiographies from the period, the karama or grace brought by the blessed man’s personal proximity to God was itself seen as serving governmental purposes. From around the seventeenth century, the (p. 223) dispersal of Sufi blessing power or baraka itself increasingly relied on such bureaucratic means, from the written genealogical document (shajaranama) to the dispersal of Sufi lodges along the tracks of state representatives. It is no coincidence that the main patrons and many of the followers of Aurangabad’s major Sufis were imperial servants, whose ranks included men like Azad Bilgrami and the recorder of Nizam al-Din’s conversations, Kamgar Khan, who committed their masters’ lives and words to writing.57 In such ways, imperial civil servants repaid their dues to their miraculous and moral benefactors. It is fitting, then, that Baha’ al-Din Hasan ‘Uruj (d. c. 1814), the main biographer of the Aurangabad shaykhs at the end of the eighteenth century, earned his living as a teacher of the art of official letter-writing or insha’.58 In the bigger picture of Persian and thence Urdu book culture, this explosion of bureaucratic writing would also manifest itself in the production of ever-longer commemorative tazkirat. Often written by civil servants like ‘Uruj, in the eighteenth century these commemorative works flourished on an unprecedented scale, cataloguing the saints, scholars, and poets—as it were, the religious and cultural resources—of a given town or region in a manner that drew on the bookkeeping habits of the state.59 An early example of these literary adaptations of the language of bureaucracy was the Dabistan-e Mazahib (1657), the great early modern typology of India’s religious groups which took as its organizing trope the model of the munshi’s ‘school’ (dabistan, contraction of dabiristan). Moving beyond such medieval models as Dawlat Shah Samarqandi’s Tazkirat al-Shu‘ara, these distinctly early modern Persian texts also drew on such Mughal imperial gazetteers as A’in-e Akbari and began to fill multiple volumes of encyclopaedic scope. In an echo of their provenance, many books—including literary and Sufi texts—bore titles that reflected an increasingly bureaucratic mentality, with names designating their contents a ‘treasury’ (khazina), ‘storehouse’ (makhzan), or ‘market’ (ganj) of knowledge. (p.224) As the Mughal and successor states created increasing numbers of Persian-writing literati in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there arguably emerged what we might see as a literary culture of ‘accounting’ in Page 15 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya which the bureaucratic organization of knowledge seeped into numerous fields of writing. The process may also be observed beyond the direct reach of Persian in the development of the Marathi historiographical genre of the bakhar, in which the Maratha past was lent shape under the influence of the Mughal news report or khabar that gave the Marathi genre its name.60 In some respects, these developments were reflected in other parts of Asia. It has been argued that the huge expansion of writing (in this case, in print) in Tokugawa Japan was part of a new culture of ‘classification’, seeing knowledge broken down into manageable components that could be organized in new written formats for the recording of information.61 As Mary Elizabeth Berry has written in connection with the rapid rise of the urban ‘gazetteer’ in early modern Japan, such writings formed an attempt ‘to examine and order the verifiable facts of contemporary experience for an open audience of consumers’.62 If in Mughal India there was still no printed ‘open audience of consumers’, we may still be able to observe a relocation of knowledge by a series of bureaucratic increments: from the person to the archive, from flesh into paper. The pressure of civil service examinations in Ming China similarly served to transform knowledge into digestible portions of information. Until the emergence of the alternative literary culture of the shishang (‘merchant-literato’) with the massive rise of printing under the late Ming, bureaucracy ‘structured the economy of linguistic exchange, reproducing the power relations among the users of linguistic systems by privileging the “language of the officia” (guanhua)’.63 It seems possible that the increasing scale of the (p.225) Mughal bureaucracy—at its peak in the years of Shah Musafir’s and Nizam al-Din’s teaching in Aurangabad—encouraged a conceptual relocation of knowledge from persons to written documents. That is, knowledge was moved from larger programmes of textual and non-textual learning under the close guidance of a blessed man to the more autonomous and bibliocentric patterns of education epitomized by the private reading, and copying, of the epistolary manual of the bureaucrat. Such a shift need not therefore be identified with the rise of either writing or printing as such, but rather in the particular ways in which written (in this case, hand-written) documents were used in a period seeing the development of a large-scale manuscript bureaucracy and its axiomatic tendency towards locating knowledge in writing and identifying knowledge with information. Locating the beginnings of this shift of epistemological paradigms in the period of late Mughal and successor state rule makes greater sense of the notion of an early modernity in India that is not dependent on the arrival of print as it was in Europe, China, and Japan. Bureaucracy and governmentality in general now begin to take centre stage in this picture of the reconfiguration of knowledge and its gradual seepage into the religious no less than governmental spheres of writing. If this nexus was by no means entirely new to India by 1700, it does seem that the scale of the infiltration of bureaucratic into religious book use was new. One thing that this suggests is the analytical limitations of conceiving of Page 16 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya discretely ‘religious’ and ‘political’ spheres of book use as opposed to a more unified field of textual and linguistic operations.64 But it also helps us to lay the ground for answering our initial question concerning the absence of print by moving away from a framework of momentous epistemic breaks towards one of gradual epistemological collusions and convergences. The emergence of ‘modern’ attitudes to book use in India therefore becomes less a question of revolutionary moments (‘When was the first book printed in India?’) than of the gradual adoption of new epistemologies, reading practices and learning methods that instigated new attitudes towards the uses of books. (p.226) In the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a related transition was made with the passage of the Deccan’s vernacular languages into writing.65 But the larger transition we have identified by which books replaced persons as the conceptual and practical locations of knowledge was a much slower process, and no such tipping point would be reached until perhaps the early or mid-1800s. For what seems clear is that by the great age of the Indian madrasa in the second half of the nineteenth century, religious no less than secular learning was being practised through a ‘bibliocentric’ mode favouring fixed curricula, examinations and the intensive mastery of books.66 If, like the printing press, these were also ‘colonial’ adaptations, then what we have seen would suggest that these changes in learning practices had pre-colonial roots too. There are also, of course, possibilities of more materialist interpretations, but at present it is difficult to assess the degree to which these developments can be connected to the price and availability of paper or to the possibility of easier access to it by civil servants.67 With regard to Aurangabad at least, we know of the existence of a papermaking industry around ten miles away in the village of Kaghazipura (literally ‘Paperville’). This paper industry owed its original existence to the brief relocation of the Delhi sultanate to nearby Daulatabad, again placing bureaucracy as a promoter of paper-based knowledge and production that seems to have continued under the Mughals.68 Yet in Kaghazipura too, it was the end of the eighteenth century that saw the great expansion of its existing paper industry, when the vast demands of the Peshwa daftar bureaucracy arranged for the founding there of forty new factories.69 Only further research on the pre-colonial paper industry can equip us to address the question of the rise of bureaucracy and its relationship with written knowledge in India before printing. In this chapter, as in other (p.227) studies of pre-colonial literary culture, paper and other physical media remain the material missing link.

From Knowledge to Information The main drive of the chapter has been to excavate possible changes in modes of knowledge (anthropocentric, bibliocentric) that accompanied or even predated changes in means of knowledge (bureaucracy, printing). To point to the Page 17 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya incremental character of such transformations is to suggest that changes to both modes and means of knowledge occurred in some kind of symbiosis. We have argued that medieval and (till the eighteenth century at least) early modern modes of Indo-Muslim religious knowledge were predominantly anthropocentric, placing knowledge and the authority from which it was inseparable in living persons (blessed men especially) and their incorporative textual and supratextual learning techniques. While this older mode of epistemology was still an influential one among such prominent book-using groups as the takiyya visitors of Mughal Aurangabad, we have suggested that the intensification and expansion of bureaucratic forms of writing contributed to the detachment of book-learning from its wider pedagogical contexts and so to a gradual relocation and identification of knowledge in and with books. Under imperial-bureaucratic pressures an anthropocentric mode of learning thus fell into the shadow of an increasingly dominant and more effectively reproducible mode of bibliocentric learning. The extent to which the shifts or realignments between modes of knowledge and practices of learning that are observable in Aurangabad signify a larger incipient ‘modernity’ demands further inspection. However, if what we have suggested was the case, then when print did successfully spread through India in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, its success was partly enabled by an earlier transformation of ways of knowing in which the conceptual location of knowledge in the person was being displaced by the freely readable book. Of course, this transformation would have been patchy as well as gradual, but if we are correct then in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was already preparing attitudes that would be transformed into market demand for (p.228) books with the spread of cheap lithography in the 1830s. To put the matter differently, what we have seen was an abstraction and institutionalization of knowledge reconceived as information. Perhaps these changes can be linked to what we might broadly term the emergence of ‘constitutionalism’, of a model of authority residing in the unerring writ of paper documentation invested with the symbolic authority to resist the caprices of individual men, blessed or otherwise. Notes:

(1) On early printing in India, see Boxer (1956) (note that these Goan texts relied on the Romanization of Indian languages) and Ternaux-Compans (1841). For evidence of Mughal awareness of printed books in the geographical context explored in this chapter, see Seyller (1995), p. 339. (2) Primrose (1939). (3) Green (2009) and (2010). (4) On the historical origins of the Islamic promotion of the spoken word, see Cook (1997). Page 18 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya (5) On early Quranic reading strategies and perceptions of the oral or bookish quality of the revelation, see Afsaruddin (2002). (6) Hudson (2004), p. 44. (7) On fiqh in the historical settings of the personal legal opinion, see Masud, Messick, and Powers (1996). (8) Heck (2002). (9) Graham, ‘Qur’ān as Spoken Word: An Islamic Contribution to the Understanding of Scripture’, in Martin (1985). (10) Kumar (2007), Chapter 4, and Safi (2006). (11) Hermansen and Lawrence, ‘Indo-Persian Tazkiras as Memorative Communications’, in Gilmartin and Lawrence (2000). (12) Ong (1988), p. 8. (13) Carruthers (1990). (14) On medieval Muslim formal conceptions of the self, see Rahman (1952). (15) On the Muslim ‘incorporation’ of writing more generally, see Kugle (2007). On the uses of writing in the production of the talisman (ta‘wīz) see Donaldson (1937) and Marsden (2006). For Quranic writing on clothing, see Dernonsablon (1986) and Rezvan and Rezvan (2006). We know as yet too little to say to what extent words were also written on the flesh as tattoos. However, for discussion of the relationship between words and body in a tantric context, see Flood (2005). (16) For a theoretical reconsideration of public epigraphy, see Bierman (1998), pp. 1–59. (17) Rosenkilde (1949). (18) Note that the circle was not affiliated to the ‘renewed’ Naqshbandī tradition of Ahmad Sirhindī. (19) For an inventory of the shrine’s much-diminished library before its dispersion, see Hamidullah (1942). For an overview of the library contents of another late Mughal Sufi lodge in the Deccan discussed in Chapter 5, see Naqshbandi (1997). For the fullest account of the contents of a south Indian Muslim library of the period, see Stewart (1809), which inter alia includes extensive details of Sufi writings.

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya (20) Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābādī (1939). The text has also been translated by Simon Digby as Sufis and Soldiers in Aurangzeb’s Deccan (2001). All references in this chapter refer to the Persian text. (21) On Bilgrāmī’s works, see Hasan ‘Abbās (2005). For studies of specific Arabic works, see Ernst (forthcoming) and Toorawa (2008). (22) Digby (1998). (23) Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābādī (1939), pp. 9, 47–50. On book history and orality in the Aurangabad shaykhs’ homelands, see Akimushkin et al. (1979), Béller-Hann (2000), and Dor (1995). (24) On traditional forms of Islamic textual pedagogy, see Berkey (1992) and Eickelman (1985). For a generalized consideration of these issues, see Nasr (1992). (25) Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābādī (1939), p. 117. (26) Ibid. (27) Brenner (2001). On governmentality and manuscript culture in late Ottoman Yemen, see Messick (1993). (28) On the continuity of such pedagogical forms in Moroccan and Iranian madrasas, see Eickelman (1985) and Fisher (1980). (29) On the model of the ‘field’ in the study of knowledge circulation, see Chow (2004), Introduction. (30) Kāmgār Khān, Ahsān al-Shamā’il (ms, shrine library of Hazrat Sulaymān Tawnsawī, Taunsa Sharif, Pakistan, henceforth AS), pp. 53, 89, 117. The text is discussed more fully in Green (2006b), Chapter 1. (31) Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābādī (1939), p. 84. (32) For example, ibid. (33) For another Naqshbandī tazkira text contemporary with the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya that also relied on oral informants, see Akimushkin (2001). (34) Vajda (1975). (35) However, on the manuscript proliferation of Ibn ‘Arabī’s works in India, see Chittick (1992). (36) On the physical settings of the recitation of classical Persian poetry, see Brookshaw (2003).

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya (37) Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābādī (1939), pp. 67, 118. (38) Ibid, pp. 73–4. The home of the latter text in the Herat of Jāmī has received more sustained reflection on its literary circles and modes of circulation than any other city in the Mughals’ cultural sphere. For the most useful results of this work, see Golombek, ‘Discourses of an Imaginary Arts Council in FifteenthCentury Iran’, in Golombek and Subtelny (1992), Subtelny (1988), and Szuppe (1996). (39) Aslanapa (1979). (40) Seyller (1997). (41) On the construction of such ‘recorded conversation’ texts, see Ernst, ‘The Textual Formation of Oral Teachings in Early Chishtī Sufism’, in Timm (1992a) and Green, ‘Translating the Spoken Words of the Saints: Oral Literature and the Sufis of Aurangabad’, in Long (2005). (42) Kalīm Allāh Jahānābādī (1897), 4.19, p. 95. As one Tantric text expressed the same sentiment, ‘The fool who, overpowered by greed, acts after having looked up [the matter] in a written book, without having obtained it from the guru’s mouth, he also will be certainly destroyed.’ Cited in Heehs (2002), p. 194. (43) On the operation of the Mughal postal service, see Alavi (1977). (44) Here too, lithography—and its possibility of printing illustrations as well as words—was to perform a much better service than manuscript technology. On such later meditation texts, see Green (2008b). (45) Goody (1986). (46) Akkach (2007). (47) Ibid., pp. 46–7, notes that these disputes may have reflected ‘the changing role of the text during his time’, while ‘Abd al-Ghānī’s commentaries on ‘classical’ texts should correspondingly be seen as ‘creative attempts to recultivate classical literature within a new culture of reading’. (48) Green (2009, 2010). (49) For overviews, see Mishra (1989), Misra (1977), and Richards (1975). For a reconstruction of a Mughal munshī’s education, see Alam and Subrahmanyam (2004). (50) Guenther, ‘Hanafi Fiqh in Mughal India: The Fatāwā-i ‘Ālamgīrī’ in Eaton (2003), especially p. 220. (51) Shāh Mahmūd Awrangābādī (1939), pp. 81, 143. Cf. Faroqhi (1988). Page 21 of 22

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The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya (52) On the history of adab texts, see Metcalf (1984). (53) Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam (2003). (54) On the imperial library, see Seyller (1997). On changes in early modern news writing, see Fisher (1993). On more extensive early modern use of ijāzāt, see Schmidtke, ‘The Ijāza from ’Abd Allāh b. Sālih al-Samāhījī to Nāsir al-Jārūdī al-Qatīfī: A Source for the Twelver Shi’i Scholarly Tradition of Bahrayn’, in Daftary and Meri (2003), and for an earlier period, Subtelny and Khalidov (1995). (55) ‘Abd al-Jabbār Khān Malkāpūrī (1912), p. 1099. (56) On this and other miracle narratives, see Chapter 8 of this volume. (57) Green (2006b). (58) On ‘Urūj’s own career, see ‘Abd al-Jabbār Khān Malkapūrī (1909), p. 837. (59) Green (2006b), pp. 64–81. (60) On the development of the bakhar, see Deshpande (2007) and Ota, ‘Beda Nāyakas and their Historical Narratives in Karnataka during the PostVijayanagara Period’, in Karashima (1999). (61) Berry (2006), p. 23 et passim. (62) Ibid., p. 15. (63) Chow (2004), p. 91. On the role of civil service examinations in the shaping of Chinese literary culture, see idem., pp. 90–109. (64) Green and Searle-Chatterjee (2008). (65) On this topic, see Guha (2004). (66) Lelyfeld (1982) and Metcalf (2004). (67) For a European case study, see Kwakkel (2003). (68) Soteriou (1999). On the history of Muslim paper use more generally (albeit with limited reference to India), see Bloom (2001). (69) Kirk (1908).

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives

Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives Nile Green

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.003.0031

Abstract and Keywords This chapter places Sufis into a competitive Indian geography of multiple holy men whose shrines and other physical outposts competed for followers in early modern and early colonial India. Developing the concept of a ‘narrative landscape’, the chapter traces how India’s geography was made meaningful through the different (and at times conflicting) stories told about its past, stories which mirrored claims over the land in the present. The chapter focuses on stories told in Marathi and Indo-Persian about the great fortress of Daulatabad and how that symbol of military power was linked to stories of the miraculous powers of Brahmin and Sufi blessed men. Keywords:   Sufism, Brahmin, geography, Marathi, Maharashtra, conflict, narrative landscape, Daulatabad, Indo-Persian, military power

A Fortress of Memory The great fortress of Daulatabad towers over the plains surrounding it to dominate the landscape of the northern Deccan. Centuries ago, to add to its defences, the precipitous rockface that elevates its inner citadel some sixty metres above the surrounding countryside was deliberately shaped into near verticality (see Fig. 7.1).1 Encircling the volcanic escarpment bearing the inner citadel, high walls and gateways were added as its medieval Yadava rulers (1185–1318) succumbed to the subsequent dynasties of Muslim rulers who competed for control of the fortress in the centuries after its conquest by the Delhi sultans in 1296.2 In all, the colossal ruins of Daulatabad are the sum of almost a thousand years of continued residence by the various powers ruling the Page 1 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives northern Deccan, a history whose complexity was signalled in the fortress’s twin denomination as Deogiri (‘hill of the gods’) and Dawlatabad (‘abode of power’). These were names which sought to inscribe different meanings onto the Indian landscape from which the dark basalt fortress seemed to have geomorphically sprung whole. Daulatabad was to Indian fortresses what Mont Saint-Michel was to European churches.3 Beyond the physical resemblance of the two sites, the comparison with Mont Saint-Michel is based on more than mere appearance. For just as Mont Saint-Michel incorporated military architecture into its ecclesiastical structure, (p.230) so did Daulatabad enclose a series of religious sites, both Muslim and Hindu. And as the history and folklore of Mont Saint-Michel record the role of Saint Michael’s holy mount in a variety of military encounters, so in the oral and written histories of the surrounding region was the military history of Daulatabad stratified with distinct layers of religious narrative. In this magnetism between the narrativity and physicality of military and spiritual power, we are confronted with a process that recurs in the history of religions worldwide.

As the guarded gateway to the central Deccan through both the medieval and early modern

Fig. 7.1. A Narrative Landscape: The Great Fort of Deogiri/Daulatabad Courtesy of Nile Green

eras, Daulatabad acted as the key to successfully opening the surrounding area for conquest and settlement from the north. Whoever held Daulatabad ruled the rich volcanic soils of the surrounding countryside and the important trade routes between the Indian north and south. These were (p.231) routes whose longevity ensured the region’s rich and contested history through the importing of narrative no less than military forms of claiming space. While this chapter concentrates on these narrative struggles through which Sufis and Brahmins competed for symbolic control of the fortress in the imaginations of their listeners, it is important to note that both sets of narratives occluded an even earlier Buddhist and Jain presence in the area, not least at the famous Ellora caves a few miles from Daulatabad.4 Brahmins were therefore no more autochthonous sons-of-the-soil than Sufis. Despite the many contours of these histories on a landscape marked by many, one event loomed way above the others in the memory of the surrounding peoples: the conquest of Daulatabad in 1296 by the armies of the Page 2 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives Delhi sultans.5 Problematically read as the defeat of the ‘Hindu’ Yadava rajas by ‘Muslim’ Khalji sultans, the event nonetheless heralded a centuries’ long period of Muslim political rule in the Deccan at large, in the case of Daulatabad until the dissolution of the Nizam’s state of Hyderabad in 1948.6 Visible for many miles over the surrounding plateau, the fortress served as an enduring symbol of power that was claimed in different ways in the narrative imaginaries of local peoples. After the initial conquests of the Delhi sultans, the fortress was governed by various Muslim-ruled dynasties which each incorporated Hindu groups into their military and bureaucratic cadres. Even so, amid this everyday pluralism, Islamicate political power remained more or less unchallenged in the Daulatabad region until the fragmentation of Mughal rule in the Deccan after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. The following decades formed a turning point in the Deccan’s history as both process and memory, seeing the emergence of several new states in the Deccan, including the Maratha kingdom of the Peshwas based at Poona and the Nizam’s state based first at nearby Aurangabad and after 1763 at Hyderabad. By the second half of the eighteenth century, (p.232) new states prioritizing patronage of Brahminical Hinduism were once again a possibility in the Deccan. Through such patronage the eighteenth-century Maratha kingdoms deliberately sought to reinvent a tradition of Hindu kingship that would link them to the medieval kingdoms of the Yadavas and other dynasties that preceded the arrival of the Delhi sultans in 1296.7 This revival of old rituals of kingship, of patronage of Sanskrit learning, and of temple-building formed an important part of the Maratha renaissance. In the same decades, the emergence of Hyderabad State witnessed corresponding attempts to tie the young polity to an earlier Muslim history in the Deccan. Echoing the strategies of the Maratha rulers, as we saw in Chapter 5, this saw Hyderabad’s elites patronize Sufi shrines, as well as compose dynastic histories of the Nizams and maintain the ritualized forms of Mughal court culture. The fortress of Deogiri/ Daulatabad fell in the middle of this bi-partisan struggle to symbolically lay claim to the visible history of an earlier age. For as the towering topographic fact of the landscape of the western Deccan, Deogiri/Daulatabad fort had for centuries been a fertile space in the historical imagination of the inhabitants of surrounding towns and country. Even within the first years after its conquest by the Turkish sultans of Delhi, the fortress was commemorated in Persian verse by the Sufi and court poet, Amir Khusraw (d. 1325). It was in the first of many transformations of this territory into text. Written in 1321, Amir Khusraw’s evocation of the local landscape of conquest spoke in terms of infidelity (kufr) and local gods (deva), as well as the beauty of the flowers (gul), gardens (bustan), and breezes (nasim):8 Bih pusht-e kuh dar bun-e asman girifta buland Girift u hama bar asman bih shakl u nahad, Page 3 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives Za qul-e sabit-e haqq al-habal awtara (p.233) Panah yafta an qal‘a kih ustuwar ustad, Dilan-ish za karamat shod az-e quwwat-e din Kih ustuwar nashasta bih hifz-e-u awtar.9 Behind the mountain, rooted in heaven and standing tall It took over the whole sky with its shape and form, From its troop of archers and bowmen dauntless That straight-standing castle found refuge, It became a fortress of faith’s power by a miracle of their hearts As the bowmen stood firm as its guards.

During the eighteenth century, amid the bifurcation of the region’s political and cultural history different readings of the meaning of this fortress and its surrounding landscape were elaborated in new accounts of the historical and sacred geography of Deogiri/Daulatabad and its hinterland.10 Three such accounts of the fort’s history and geography are examined in this chapter, each of which drew on earlier literary and oral traditions from the region. Two of these ‘geo-histories’ described a clearly Muslim vision of Deogiri/Daulatabad’s past, while the third pictured Deogiri/Daulatabad as part of a landscape writ through with Hindu sacred history. These initial differences were amplified in other ways. The Islamic narratives were literary accounts composed in Persian, the first written in 1748 by one of the Deccan’s leading litterateurs, Ghulam ‘Ali Azad Bilgrami (d. 1786), and the second composed around 1775 by an otherwise unknown Muslim resident of the region known as Khaksar-e Sabzawari.11 The Hindu narrative by contrast was an on-the-spot translation of a Marathi bakhar history of Deogiri/Daulatabad that was recounted by Ganga Ram, an otherwise unknown resident of nearby Aurangabad, to the translator of a British survey party in 1806 and preserved in the latter’s papers. Ganga Ram’s narrative dates from the tail end (p.234) of the period of renascent Maratha rule in the Deccan that was instrumental in forming a new understanding of ‘Hindu’ identity for the region’s geography as much as its inhabitants. Even as we have simplistically cast them as ‘Muslim’ and ‘Hindu’ narratives, these were more accurately stories of a landscape claimed by the blessed persons of Brahmins and Sufis and by implication their latter-day partisans. There were, moreover, important parallels and cross-overs between the accounts. All three placed Deogiri/ Daulatabad into a wider Brahminical or Sufi sacred geography in the region and all three were composed in the neighbouring city of Aurangabad, eight miles from the fortress. This was in itself a result of the changing political and human geography of the region during the early modern period, which by the seventeenth century had seen Aurangabad’s population overtake that of Deogiri/ Daulatabad and the latter serve the practical and imaginative functions as Aurangabad’s guardian fortress and hallowed ancestor. With Deogiri/Daulatabad in this way serving as Aurangabad’s own space of memory, all three of the narratives told by Aurangabad’s inhabitants looked back to the period directly Page 4 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives before or after the Turkish conquest of the Deccan five centuries earlier, formulating histories of one period of cultural change in the midst of another. Despite the considerable overlapping between religious communities and practices in the Deccan, and the emergence there at many levels of society of ‘Islamicate’ idioms owing much to both Hindu and Muslim traditions but belonging fully to neither, the terms ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’, ‘Sufi’ and ‘Brahminical’ are used deliberately in this chapter. Their use aims to reflect something of the sense of the identity and affiliations of the narrators whose stories of Deogiri/Daulatabad we discuss. For all three narrators articulated a clear sense of the religious differences that underlay their respective narrative claims to the fortress. Throughout his many writings in Arabic as well as Persian, Bilgrami showed his affiliation to an expressly Muslim high culture. Indeed, in his years of writing, he attempted to uphold Islam’s connectedness to India as Mughal imperial power evaporated and that of the Marathas ascended. Sabzawari was no less conscious of the existence of formal boundaries between Islam and its others, as seen not least (p.235) in his extensive use of conversion motifs in his geo-history of the Deogiri/Daulatabad region. As Sabzawari’s name suggests, he or his ancestors were immigrants from either of the two towns of Sabzawar in eastern Iran (and now western Afghanistan), while Bilgrami heralded from the north Indian town of Bilgram and was proud of his lineage from the Iraqi town of Wasit. Yet, both writers created narratives of Muslim fixity and longstanding presence in their adoptive southern geography (see Fig. 7.2). For Ganga Ram’s part, like Bilgrami and Sabzawari’s sense of lineage, in his narratives Ganga Ram showed all of the preoccupations of the Brahminical class to which he belonged, emplotting the prestige of Brahmin blessed men and their Fig. 7.2. Medieval Muslim Forebears: powerful rituals at the Bahmani Minaret at Deogiri/Daulatabad geographical core of Deogiri/ Daulatabad. It was this specific Courtesy of Nile Green form of Hinduism that Ganga Ram supported through his narrative ideology of (p.236) empowering Brahmins that echoed the promotion of Brahminical Page 5 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives men and rituals in the region by the legitimacy-weak Marathas. Both of the conceptions of ‘religion’ presented by our sources were therefore tied to embodied representatives of supernatural power and cosmic authority, to Sufis or Brahmins whose remembered acts gave meaning and claim to the landscape. These were, of course, men whose authority had been contested by the plurality of local religious movements concealed within the easy nomenclature of ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Islam’. But amid the turmoil of the Mughal retraction, that authority was reasserted by narrative ‘boosters’ such as Bilgrami and Ganga Ram. Along with the shared reliance on state patronage upon which both Sufis and Brahmins depended in the Deccan, this background of internal competition renders the comparison between these different landscape narratives all the more compelling.

A Landscape of Sufis and Sultans The first account is found in the Persian Rawzat al-awliya (‘Heavenly Garden of Saints’) of Azad Bilgrami.12 Completed in Aurangabad upon the death of the founder of Hyderabad State, Nizam al-Mulk, in 1748, Rawzat al-awliya presented the sacred history of Daulatabad’s neighbouring hilltop town of Khuldabad in which Nizam al-Mulk was buried. As we saw in Chapter 5, Khuldabad was a major pilgrimage centre since it contained the shrines of a large number of medieval Sufi saints. Also buried there were the remains of many of the region’s Muslim rulers, including Aurangzeb. Since Khuldabad lay at only a short distance from the fortress at Daulatabad, Bilgrami placed his account of the town into a more general history of the Muslim religious and political presence in the region that focused on Deogiri/Daulatabad as the foundational Muslim space in the Deccan. Bilgrami reprised a well-known account of the great Chishti Sufi of Delhi, Nizam al-Din Awliya (d. 1325), sending two of his disciples, the brothers Burhan al-Din Gharib (d. 1337) and Muntajib al-Din (d. 1309), to Deogiri/Daulatabad after its initial (p.237) conquest in 1296.13 Bilgrami noted that it was traditionally said that seven hundred followers accompanied each of the brothers on their separate journeys to Deogiri/Daulatabad, their purpose being to spread their teachings (irshad dadan) of Islam among the people of the region. Here Bilgrami evoked the image of an army of prayer (lashkar-e du‘a) that, while long associated with Deogiri/Daulatabad in particular, was widespread in both Muslim folklore and courtly discourse of Mughal India. In Kashmir, for example, the image was associated with the arrival of the Sufi ‘Ali Hamadani (d. 1389) with seven hundred sayyids and the subsequent conversion of Kashmir to Islam.14 What was notable about Bilgrami’s description of the Sufis’s migration to the Deccan was his emphasis on the notion that Burhan al-Din was granted the complete spiritual deputyship (khilafat) of the Deccan by his master in Delhi before he actually set off for Deogiri/Daulatabad. Shortly before Bilgrami’s birth, the same imaginative claiming of the south had recurred when Shah Kalim Allah (d. 1728) of Delhi granted his disciple Nizam al-Din (d. 1729) of Aurangabad jurisdiction (wilayat) over the Deccan; Nizam al-Din, moreover, was also associated with Bilgrami’s own patron, Nizam al-Mulk.15 Implicit in the narrative Page 6 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives was the imagery of a geographical sub-conquest, for just as the sultan ‘Ala’ alDin Khalji had first assumed political control of the Deccan from his base in Delhi, so would the Sufi Burhan al-Din assume spiritual control of the same southern domains by his similar setting out from Delhi for Deogiri/Daulatabad. Just as Bilgrami also described Muhammad bin Tughluq abandoning his capital of Delhi and transporting its population southwards to transform Deogiri into his new capital of Daulatabad, so too did he relate the settling of the Deccan by the large circle of Nizam al-Din Awliya’s followers after their master’s death in 1325.16 As both a political and spiritual domain, Delhi was presented as having been recreated in the Deccan by the southward settling of its Sufis and sultans. (p.238) Bilgrami was certainly interested in political events at Daulatabad during the period in question. He wove these into his wider account of the Sufi saints buried in Khuldabad, whose medieval tombs we have seen in Chapter 5 being patronized in Bilgrami’s own lifetime. Visible from these shrines at a few miles distant, the fortress of Deogiri/Daulatabad loomed large in the textualized space of Rawzat al-awliya (see Fig. 7.3). Bilgrami (p.239) recounted how Muhammad bin Tughluq had only chosen it as his capital after examining all of his advisors about the best place to locate the capital for his new southern territories.17 Bilgrami described how Muhammad bin Tughluq had personally renamed Deogiri as ‘Daulatabad’ and beautified his new capital there by building Fig. 7.3. The Space as Text: Bilgrami’s many fine new edifices, as well as Geo-history Rawzat al-Awliya gardens and pools at the summit of its hill and a moat encircling its Courtesy of Nile Green walls far below. At no point in his narrative, however, did Bilgrami speak of an earlier pre-conquest history of Deogiri/Daulatabad or of its seizure from its former Yadava rulers. Indeed, the only act of destruction he detailed (and bewailed) was Muhammad bin Tughluq’s abandonment of his old capital of Delhi in his enthusiasm for his new centre at Daulatabad. Memory did not stretch back into pre-Muslim times.

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives In Bilgrami’s Rawzat al-awliya, we see a clear reflection of a local geography of political and spiritual power divided between the sultans of Deogiri/Daulatabad and the Sufis of Khuldabad. This neighbouring bipolar spatial siting of royal and Sufi residences was common in the early modern Deccan, seen most vividly in the subsequent Deccani sultanate capitals of Bijapur and Firuzabad. In fact, a variety of Sufis did settle in Deogiri/Daulatabad itself, as we know from the presence of the shrines of such saints as Pir Lotan and Pir Khajinda there and forty-six other such tombs and mausoleums have been recorded within the fort’s outer walls.18 Bilgrami also mentioned the early Sufi Jalal al-Din Ganj-e Rawan, a semi-legendary figure even at this time, whose shrine cult he described.19 However, more important for Bilgrami’s purpose were the migrant Sufis who had settled in Khuldabad in the fourteenth century, but whose shrines had been patronized by the great and goodly in his own lifetime.20 Bilgrami’s geo-history was, then, inhabited by (p.240) the twin figures of sultans and Sufis, the classic poles of Muslim historical memory in early modern India. Yet for Bilgrami, the central focus of rivalry in the Daulatabad region was not one between a victorious Muslim sultan and a vanquished Hindu raja. As we have seen, the Yadava rulers had no presence in his landscape of memory. Rather, the competition and antagonism which he detailed was that between the victorious sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq and the fearless Sufi Burhan al-Din, who refused either to meet the sultan or accept the lavish gifts he sent.21 As testified by the splendour and pomp of their shrines, themselves termed as a ‘[royal] court’ (dargah) in an ambiguous rivalry-cum-imitation of princely power spaces, for Bilgrami it was ultimately the remembrance of saintly deeds that outshone the memory of kings. Writing amid the disintegration of the Mughal Empire that had carried him south to the Deccan, perhaps Bilgrami was tired of the vanity of the series of would-be sultans that he had witnessed tearing the Empire asunder since the death of Aurangzeb. For Bilgrami, then, it was the saints who had for five hundred years held the land safe for Muslim settlement. Between Deogiri/Daulatabad and Khuldabad, the two pre-eminent hilltop sites in the region, it was at Khuldabad that Bilgrami located the Muslim matrix of the Deccan. The rivalry he presented between Deogiri/Daulatabad and Khuldabad was not so much one between Hindu and Muslim holy sites. On the contrary, his sensitive descriptions in Rawzat al-awliya of the Buddhist-Hindu cave sculptures and temples cut into the western side of the hill on which Khuldabad was situated show that it was not a Hindu or even an pejoratively ‘idolatrous’ geography that he saw the Sufis as contesting. Bilgrami sympathetically described the size and carving of the temples at Ellora, calling it a spectacular place that well deserved visiting.22 His account of the arrival of the Sufis alongside the conquering armies of the Delhi sultans challenged political and military claims to the Deccan’s conquest that were no less Muslim than he and the Sufis whose lives he chronicled. In championing the claim of Khuldabad over (p.241) Deogiri/Daulatabad as the narrative centre of the Deccan and as the Page 8 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives source of its Muslim life, Bilgrami was undermining the claims of not only political power as such but also of such Indo-Persian poets and historians as Amir Khusraw (d. 1325) and Firishta (d. 1623), who had earlier championed the claims of Muhammad bin Tughluq and Deogiri/Daulatabad as holding the key to Muslim power in the region. Amir Khusraw, like Bilgrami a companion of dervishes and kings, had written his Miftah al-futuh (‘Key to the Conquests’) and Tughluqnama (‘Book of the Tughluqs’) in praise of the victories of the Tughluq rulers.23 But for Bilgrami it was not the Deogiri/Daulatabad of the sultans that deserved the epithet of Qubbat al-Islam (‘shelter of Islam’) lent it by its medieval conquerors. It was rather the Khuldabad of the Sufis. The story of Deogiri/Daulatabad in Rawzat al-awliya was therefore one of rivalry between Muslim saints and sultans rather than between Hindu and Muslim kings. It was a history tied to the visible landscape and ultimately verified by architecture. For almost five centuries by Bilgrami’s own lifetime, the ultimate victory of saints over sultans could still be witnessed in the burial of numerous rulers of Deogiri/Daulatabad in the shrines of the Khuldabad Sufis.24 Amid this inter-Muslim rivalry of saint and sultan, what was perhaps most remarkable was that for Bilgrami, Hindu leadership seemed inadmissible as a challenge to the narrative framework in which he was operating, even as it must have been clearly visible to him in the surrounding world of events. Looking at the topography of hills, forts, and shrines around Deogiri/Daulatabad, Bilgrami saw everywhere mnemonic clues alerting him to a Muslim past. This was a medieval age of victorious sultans and still greater saints, the memory of whose deeds was written on the landscape around Bilgrami and transferred by him in turn to the textualized space of his Rawzat al-awliya. As he further elaborated in his Arabic work Subhat al-marjan (‘The Coral Rosary’), as the place of Adam’s fall to earth, the Indian landscape had been the space of a sacred (p.242) Muslim history of prophets and saints since the dawn of time. Many of Bilgrami’s sentiments were echoed in another Persian account of Deogiri/Daulatabad’s sacred Muslim geography. Simply entitled Sawanih (‘Occurrences’), the text was written a few decades after Rawzat al-awliya by an otherwise unknown Muslim by the name of Khaksar-e Sabzawari around 1775.25 Like Bilgrami, Sabzawari recounted the histories of the Sufi shrines of Khuldabad, as well as that of Mu’min ‘Arif (d. c. 1200?) near the actual fort of Deogiri/Daulatabad. For Sabzawari, the shrines were again of the greatest interest. For much of his account, Sabzawari was happy to use the older name of Deogiri (in Persian, Deogir) rather than the royal epithet of Daulatabad and he stretched the geographical limits of the place–name to also include Khuldabad. Although primarily a visitor to the shrines of the saints, Sabzawari was also clearly dazzled by the sight of the fort, which he praised on several occasions as a unique and wonderful castle ‘whose mountain stands like a tower in the sky’.26 Nonetheless, as for Bilgrami, for Sabzawari the region gained its primary importance from the vast number of Muslim saints lying buried there and he Page 9 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives repeated the tradition that fourteen hundred Muslim saints lay interred in the Deogiri/Daulatabad region. They have, he wrote, ‘lit up the earth of the Deccan like the sky’, a metaphor that reflected Bilgrami’s union of heaven and earth in the guise of a saintly garden.27 Sufis and sultans again cropped up together, as in Sabzawari’s description of Muhammad bin Tughluq sending the Sufi migrants Zayn al-Din Shirazi and Kamal al-Din Samanah from Delhi to Deogiri/Daulatabad, and the sultan then nominating Zayn al-Din as the first judge or qazi of the region.28 While Sabzawari provided accounts of the same shrines described by Bilgrami, he also spoke of a number of semi-legendary saints who he saw as responsible for bringing Islam to the region even before the conquests of the (p.243) Delhi sultans and the migration of Burhan al-Din from Delhi. Drawing presumably on oral traditions already present in the area, he described Sayyid Yusuf al-Husayni as the first to bring Islam to the Deccan and so rid Deogiri/Daulatabad of ‘infidelity’ or kufr, the theological term which he used to conceptualize Hindu religiosity and particularly image worship.29 The early saints Mu’min ‘Arif and Jalal al-Din Ganj-e Rawan featured in similar roles, praised in inflated terms for the miraculous feats by which they converted the region to Islam.30 But if Sabzawari’s was unmistakably a Muslim Deccan, freed from an earlier age of ‘infidelity’ by the arrival of the Sufis, he nonetheless described numerous Yogis as being present at the shrines in Khuldabad.31 Whatever the rhetoric of infidelity and conversion, Sabzawari’s own descriptions of religious practice in the region thus showed that such binary notions of religious identity belonged more to the realm of language than practice. Like other Muslims in the region associated with the Chishti lineage, Sabzawari may have regarded Yogis as ‘Muslim-like’ monotheists who were distinct from image-worshipping ‘infidels’ or kafirs. Even so, for Sabzawari Deogiri/Daulatabad remained part of an expressly Muslim landscape, defined not only by the shrines of the Sufi saints but also by the mausoleums of Muslim sultans and notables of North India and the Deccan which he described as lit up at festival times for the enjoyment of pilgrims.32

A Landscape of Rajas and Brahmins The next (and most colourful) geo-history of Deogiri/Daulatabad showed a reading of the landscape that was quite distinct from that presented by Bilgrami and Sabzawari, while at the same time in (p.244) narrative terms showing important structural similarities with the two Persian accounts. In Ganga Ram’s account, Deogiri/Daulatabad (referred to as Deogiri) evoked an unmistakably Brahminical landscape peopled with wise rajas and Brahmins whose traces were to Ganga Ram as visible on the landscape as the architectural signs left by the sultans and Sufis of Bilgrami and Sabzawari. This third landscape narrative is found in a series of Marathi oral narratives that were recounted in Aurangabad in January 1806 by Ganga Ram to the local assistants of the Superintendent of the Mysore Survey, Major Colin Mackenzie.33 While nothing is known about Ganga Ram himself, both the tenor of his narrative and the investigative customs Page 10 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives of early colonial surveyors and their Indian assistants suggest him to have been an educated Maratha Brahmin who was a resident of Aurangabad. While unfortunately there is no room here to discuss the issues surrounding the collection of such data by colonial investigators, it is worth stating that the manuscript showed admirable attempts at ethnographic precision, containing the date and location of the original narration and its subsequent translation and included ambiguous Marathi words in the text.34 If Bilgrami and Sabzawari’s accounts formed a local history for Persian-reading Muslims in the Deccan, Ganga Ram’s narrative belonged rather to an oral tradition of local history pertaining to a local Marathi-speaking Hindu audience. In reference to the genre of Maratha chronicles that evolved during the eighteenth century, Mackenzie’s assistant termed Ganga Ram’s narrative a bakhyr (that is, a bakhar), and it was clearly this genre of historical narrative which Ganga Ram recounted. His presentation of the history of Deogiri/ Daulatabad tied the fort into a history dominated by powerful Brahmins and righteous rajas rather than (p.245) the Sufis and sultans of Persian accounts of the same geography. Yet, there were important parallels between the Persian and Marathi narratives, not least in the etymological origins of the Marathi term bakhar in Persian ‘news reports’ (khabar) collected by Mughal administrators in the Deccan. Moreover, like Bilgrami’s, Ganga Ram’s geo-history was deeply concerned with questions of aetiology. But while Bilgrami was concerned with the origins of Islam in the Deccan and the question of its attribution to either an influx of marauding soldiers or blessed men from the north, Ganga Ram was concerned with a distinctly Brahminical genesis for the landscape that he based on the original foundation and construction of Deogiri/Daulatabad by a Hindu raja and his accompanying Brahmin. Like that of Bilgrami, Ganga Ram’s narrative related to a basic set of factually historical personages. The principal period of reference was to the reign of the Yadava ruler of Deogiri/Daulatabad, Ramachandra (1270–1311), whom Ganga Ram called Ram Raja, and the skills of his brahmanical minister, Hemadri (fl. 1260–1309), to whom he referred by his name in popular memory, Hamanda Punt.35 Correspondingly, some of the events which Ganga Ram narrated were of a historical or semi-historical nature, such as the Turkish conquest of Deogiri/ Daulatabad or the invention of the Modi, or Old Marathi script, by Hemadri. As we have already noted, Ganga Ram’s narrative belonged somewhere between the oral folktale and the written Marathi bakhar. Several existing bakhars dealt with the period of Ramachandra and Hemadri, including the Mahikavatici Bakhar, one of the earliest examples of the genre.36 As Ronald Inden has written with regard to such examples of Hindu historiography, ‘these texts were themselves not read simply as disorderly collections of legends, myths and (p. 246) folktales … [and] listeners took one of these, in a recent recension, as a body of knowledge suitable for the times and circumstances in which he or she lived’.37 Indeed, Ganga Ram’s account of Daulatabad’s foundation by Ram Raja Page 11 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives and Hamanda Punt actually contradicts the medieval written chronicle of the latter, in which Hemadri claimed that Bhillama V (1185–93) had founded the fortress. What Ganga Ram’s account does provide us, however, is rich insight into the narrative topography of Deogiri/Daulatabad as understood by a Maratha resident of the region in the first years of the nineteenth century, when the fortress and its surrounding region was still under Muslim (that is, Hyderabadi) control. Ganga Ram’s story of the origins of Daulatabad described the fortunes of a shepherd boy called Ram who lived on the bare hill upon which the fortress was later built.38 Ganga Ram began by describing how Ram was tending to his herd one day, when he saw one of his goats eagerly eating the leaves from a golden tree. Ram paid little attention to the matter until in the evening he noticed that the dung of this goat had taken the form of golden nuggets; these he hastily collected. Here began Ganga Ram’s visual references to his geographical surroundings, for such golden trees formed a common part of the region’s flora. Some time later, Ram was befriended by a wandering blessed man of the Gosain (Urdu/Hindi gosain, gosai baba) tradition. As a possessor himself of the thirtytwo natural signs of perfection according to Sanskritic tradition, the Gosain was delighted to recognize the same qualities in the shepherd boy. The reason for this delight was that he required another such ‘perfect’ person to perform the dark alchemical operation that was his secret design.39 After a year’s plotting, the Gosain boiled a cauldron of oil and prepared a jar full of other ingredients before luring Ram to the cave in the hill of Daulatabad where he had (p.247) placed them. Persuading his new friend to walk three times around the cauldron, he was about to throw the boy into the boiling oil when the latter suspected the trick and at that very moment turned on his false friend and managed to throw him into the oil instead. Admiring the double trick in classic folktale fashion, the Gosain advised Ram to throw in the contents of the jar as well, and on doing so, Ram saw both the oil and the Gosain transformed into liquid gold. The gold shortly assumed the form of a statue and whenever Ram broke off a part of its body, the missing golden part mysteriously grew back by the following morning.40 Furnished with this wealth, Ram decided to found a kingdom. To aid him in this project, he asked a blessed man living a reclusive life of austerity in another cave on Deogiri/Daulatabad hill to be his chief minister (an echo of Sabzawari’s account of the Sufi judge employed to govern the fortress by Muhammad bin Tughluq). The blessed man chosen by Ram was none other than Hamanda Punt, the famous Brahmin who, unlike the treacherous Gosain, was the hero of Ganga Ram’s bakhar and the personage whose authority his narrative sought to reinforce. Together, Hamanda Punt and the shepherd boy Ram used the gold to raise a great army and conquer the whole Deccan. As their capital city, they founded the fortress of Deogiri/Daulatabad on the hill that had previously been their wild home of cave and pasture, building the citadel (chhota kot) and the Page 12 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives surrounding outer fortress (maha kot) and peopling a great city there. When the construction of the fort was complete, a throne with an umbrella was erected over the shepherd boy and he was set on the throne and given the title of Ram Raja. The possession of a castle was seen as the fundamental requirement of kingship. Ganga Ram’s narrative drew on both a Brahminical and a more generally Indian imaginary, drawing on popular Hindu religious (p.248) practice to present a statue in a cave as a source of good fortune and more generalized narratives that presented the wisdom of cave-dwelling ascetics as capable of founding a kingdom. At a more mundane level, the golden dung that Ram’s mother later continued to collect as the basis of her family’s wealth had clear parallels in village economic life. Yet, such aetiologies of royal genesis and state formation were also recounted by Muslim historians, and Ganga Ram’s contemporary Mir Husayn ‘Ali Kirmani (d. after 1810) included similar traditions uniting a Yogi, a Brahmin, and a dynastic founder in his Persian history of the southern Deccan.41 In structural terms, we also see in Ganga Ram’s story a mirroring of the claims made by Bilgrami for Muhammad bin Tughluq as having constructed the buildings of the fortress and populated it by transferring the population of Delhi southwards to the Deccan. This interplay of narratives was also reflected in the fact that one of the earliest descriptions to be written in India of the alchemical ritual described by Ganga Ram was found in the Kitab fi tahqiq ma li’l-hind of the migrant Muslim savant, al-Biruni (d. 1048).42 Al-Biruni’s description of the practices of Hindu alchemists almost exactly mirrored Ganga Ram’s episode in the cave, while another of al-Biruni’s alchemical tales described a Siddha blessed man turning to gold in a fire before having his self-replenishing fingers repeatedly broken off.43 Ganga Ram’s motif of dynastic origins among shepherds was also by no means unique and in his own lifetime the Maratha Holkar rulers of Indore were regarded as descendants of shepherds. Local histories written in the southern Deccan only a few years earlier also revealed parallels in the origins they ascribed to the Beda Nayakas. The founders of several leading Nayaka families were presented as having tended to herds of cattle, while underground temples and cave-dwelling blessed men were also associated with their rise to power.44 Just as in Chapter 3 we have seen in the way (p.249) the Tarikh-e Khan Jahani brought stories of patronal tribal Sufis into its account of the Afghan rise to greatness, so in these other Indian narratives were such partisan blessed men seen as essential to the rise of their protégées. However, Ganga Ram’s story of Ram Raja also belonged to a tradition of associating the etymology of hills and subsequently fortresses with shepherds. The fort of Gingee was popularly held to have been fortified by the chief of the local shepherd community, who subsequently founded the Kone dynasty (1190–1330). In the Deccan, similar legends were connected to the forts at Bhongir, Gavilgad, and Golkonda, whose etymology was popularly regarded as meaning the ‘shepherd’s hill’ (goli konda). Page 13 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives In an appropriate reflection of Ganga Ram’s story, in the nineteenth century the Yadava rulers of Deogiri were themselves remembered in the northern Deccan as ‘shepherd kings’ (goli raj).45 What we see here are the traces of a narrativized political economy of kingship combining the qualities of the shepherd, the sacred associations of herding cattle, and the possession of a fortified hilltop as the basis of state formation. To return to the geo-history of Ganga Ram, in the second half of his account the Brahmin Hamanda Punt became the central character rather than the shepherd king Ram Raja. As in Bilgrami’s narrative, the focus shifts between a political figure (sultan/raja) and a blessed man (Sufi/Brahmin). In this section, Hamanda was supernaturally carried off at night to Sri Lanka while sleeping in his bed. He awoke at the court of King Vibishana, where he was surrounded by the terrifying figures of the king’s rakshakas and informed of the king’s grave illness.46 Hamanda managed to cure Vibishana by observing that the illness was caused by the king’s failure to keep the Brahmins in his kingdom content. As a reward for his advice, Hamanda was allowed to return to his own kingdom of Deogiri/ Daulatabad with the two things with which he was widely credited in the folklore of the region as inventing or introducing to the Deccan, namely the Modi script and the eighteen types of grain. He was also given a gift of the purest gold, with which on his return (p.250) to Daulatabad, he was able to found several new towns and a great number of temples. Ganga Ram concluded his history by declaring that Ram Raja ruled for a very long time and that Daulatabad became renowned through his and Hamanda Punt’s deeds even though before them it was only a bare hill. While Ganga Ram’s account of the blessed man and the king was a classic example of a story-type well-known in both Sanskrit epic and Indian folklore, it serves here to bring into sharper relief the impact of Bilgrami’s story of Burhan al-Din’s refusal to counsel Muhammad bin Tughluq. For in Indian narrative traditions, the spiritually powerful were expected to be the moral advisors and miraculous assistants of kings. Yet, in a reflection of Bilgrami’s and Sabzawari’s picture of the presence of the hundreds of Sufis resting at peace around Deogiri/ Daulatabad as the true source of the Deccan’s well-being and prosperity, Ganga Ram instead posited the presence of happy Brahmins as the necessary ingredient in successful statehood. Structurally, then, all three narrators offered a parallel model of the blessed man as both delimiter of royal excess and supernatural protector of the state. Like Bilgrami’s and Sabzawari’s accounts, Ganga Ram’s narrative clearly related to other oral historical memories in the Deccan. This is most apparent in Ganga Ram’s description of Hamanda Punt’s temple-building projects, for by the early 1800s scores of early (generally Yadava period) mortarless temples still existed all over the Deccan, sacred spaces whose construction was attributed by their client communities to none other than the Hamanda Punt of Ganga Ram bakhar.47 As in the case of Bilgrami’s and Sabzawari’s geo-histories, there was therefore a concrete spatial core to Ganga Page 14 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives Ram’s narrative that underwrote his account of the religious uses of the landscape. For just as the Persian narratives reflected the vibrant commemorative rituals performed at the region’s many Sufi shrines, so in presenting Deogiri/Daulatabad as a Brahminical holy site (as the site of Hamanda’s cave retreat and the destination of the wandering gosain) before it became a fortress did Ganga Ram’s history reflect Brahminical Hindu ritual practice in the region.48 Once again, (p.251) we see how rituals and narratives intersected to lend meaning to spaces and belonging to their inhabitants. There were in fact numerous Yadava period rock-cut caves at Daulatabad associated with Hindu worship, several of which (like that in Ganga Ram’s narrative) contained cult images. In fact, throughout its centuries of Muslim rule, Deogiri/Daulatabad had never ceased to be a place of Hindu pilgrimage and it was in the imaginary confines of this ritualized geography that Ganga Ram recounted his geo-history in 1806. Except perhaps for a brief period, Hindus and Muslims had always lived together in Deogiri/Daulatabad. Within decades of the Turkish conquest the north African traveller Ibn Battuta (d. 1368) penned a tantalizing description of the lifestyles of Deogiri/Daulatabad’s wealthy Hindu merchants.49 Naturally, these Hindu residents patronized shrines at Deogiri/ Daulatabad that post-dated the conquests of the Delhi sultans and the subsequent migration of Muslims from Hindustan and beyond. In a concrete spatial counterpart to Ganga Ram’s description of Hamanda Punt dwelling in a cave, at the foot of Deogiri/Daulatabad hill was a cave containing the commemorative samadhi edifice of the sixteenth-century Sant, Janardhan Swami. Janardhan was the preceptor of the great Maratha Sant, Eknath (d. 1599), and was also remembered as the chief minister and advisor to a governor of Daulatabad.50 Strikingly, then, Ganga Ram had replaced the figure of the Sant with the figure of his own partisan blessed man, the Brahmin. Despite our narrators creation of a landscape of Brahmins and Sufis, Deogiri/Daulatabad’s was therefore a much more pluralistic landscape, for during centuries of Muslim rule the site remained important as a centre for Gosains and Sants, a whole series of whom were associated with the fortress.51 Among them was the Gosain Manpuri Prasad (p.252) (d. 1730?), who in the region’s written and oral histories was closely connected to his Sufi companion, Shah Nur Hammami (d. 1692), whose shrine in Aurangabad Sabzawari described as being visited by all of the people of the city at the time of its ‘urs.52 At Manpuri’s math or lodge at Daulatabad, two possibly eighteenth-century devotional paintings of Manpuri and Shah Nur were hung side by side.53 In his many poems, Manpuri was keen to stress the essential unity of Muslims and Hindus and in one poem he called Deogiri/Daulatabad the ‘alphabet of the Deccan’ where ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’ (vir aur mir) together maintained a vigil over the fortress gates. Here Manpuri used a vocabulary more suggestive of different social or even class groups than of monolithic religious communities. Finally, local tradition also referred to a Gosain with the strikingly Persianate name of Daulatgiri (‘wealth Page 15 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives gatherer’), who served as the qal ‘adar or governor of Deogiri/Daulatabad. Yet, these Gosain and Sant blessed men were far from identical with the Brahmins whose pre-eminence Ganga Ram recounted into Deogiri/Daulatabad’s narrative landscape. Indeed, they were as likely to ally themselves with Sufis such as Shah Nur as with Brahmins. Amid this splintered religious economy of distinct and competing blessed men, Ganga Ram’s geo-history reflected local shifts in the relative status of these blessed men that emerged from the political struggles of the eighteenth century and the new brahminical patronage of the Maratha kingdoms.

Parallel Histories, Shared Landscapes While Ganga Ram clearly drew on pre-existing narrative forms of history drawn from the bakhar, itihasa, and folkloric registers, in comparing him to Bilgrami and Sabzawari we must recognize the nuances within his telling of a Hindu—or more specificall a Brahminical—geography around Deogiri/Daulatabad. Ideologically Ganga Ram’s story was no more inherently an indigenous history than Bilgrami’s tales of powerful Sufis, since (p.253) Ganga Ram’s history articulated what were quite recently renewed Brahminical claims to the landscape that centred around the figure of the Brahmin hero Hamanda Punt and which were most explicitly seen in the latter’s advice to king Vibishana to make the protection of the Brahmins in his kingdom a priority.54 Indeed, in another bakhar, Ganga Ram recounted to Mackenzie’s party that Hamanda Punt personally installed Ram Raja as king, a clear reference to the brahmanical rituals of kingship reinvented in the Maratha kingdoms of the Deccan during the eighteenth century.55 This Maratha context was of great importance, since it is conceivable that the Ram Raja of Ganga Ram’s story was an elision of the Yadava Ramachandra usually associated with Hamanda Punt (Hemadri) and Raja Ram (r. 1689–1700), the later son and heir of the great Maratha ruler, Shivaji. Since Shivaji was himself frequently commemorated in oral epics during Ganga Ram’s lifetime, the memory of this latter-day Maratha Raja Ram seems to have played a shaping role in Ganga Ram’s rendition of Deogiri/Daulatabad’s history a century after this Raja Ram’s death.56 Past and present politics were clearly a base ingredient in all three geo-histories, which each articulated forms of supernatural power and cosmic legitimacy as a means of laying claim to the landscape. Such elements in Ganga Ram’s narrative presented a vivid parallel with the account Bilgrami gave of the evolution of the dynasty of Faruqi sultans who had earlier ruled over Khandesh in the northern Deccan.57 In Bilgrami’s account, the conqueror of Khandesh, Malik Raja (d. 1398), was presented as a disciple of the (p.254) Khuldabad Sufi, Zayn al-Din, who gave the conqueror the classic Sufi insignia of cloak (khirqa) and licence (ijaza). After making the raja of Khandesh submit to him, the victorious Malik Raja in turn passed on these insignia to his ruling descendants, the Faruqi sultans, who were each initiated as Sufis before they acceded to the throne. The narrative had also been briefly described in the seventeenth century by the Page 16 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives north Indian Sufi memorialist Shaykh ‘Abd al-Haqq Dihlawi in his Akhbar alAkhyar.58 Like Ganga Ram’s narrative, Bilgrami’s political economy was one that demanded that rulers must not only be strong, but be as close to their patronal blessed men as possible. In this way, kings and saints equally dominated the political imaginations and narrative landscapes of early modern Muslim and Hindu local historians. Despite their differences, all three accounts shared a fundamentally similar model of how the world around them was governed. For all three emphasized the centrality of the king and blessed man in the historical genesis of Deogiri/ Daulatabad’s visible geography of power. Albeit with different figures (the Sufi or the Brahmin), we see the same narrative template made to fit self-consciously Brahminical Hindu and Sufi Muslim histories of the landscape. The most important commonality between the accounts was precisely this fact that they were all concerned with explaining the same local landscape. As early modern geo-histories of the same spaces, all three texts formed aetiological quests for the origins of the same topographic facts of the landscape. From their common vantage point in Aurangabad, all three narrators were struck by the inescapable topographic presence of Deogiri/Daulatabad fort and of the cave temples and shrines they sought to associate with its moment of origin. Other features of local geography and topography were also important to the narrators. Local audiences would have immediately recognized the references to the golden trees of the region, the hermit caves in the surrounding hills, and the local rivalry of Khuldabad and Deogiri/Daulatabad as neighbouring hill settlements with different claims to primacy. What were presented in the Persian and Marathi geo-histories were alternative narrative maps of the same (p.255) landscape read differently. For Bilgrami and Ganga Ram, it was the formidable landmark of the fortress that provided the ultimate inspiration and anchor for text-making, with the claim of the fortress’s foundation or conquest lending their different heroes a supremely visible and tangible trophy of power. As control of the fortress had always proven to be the decisive factor in the politics of the region, so did power over the imaginary Deogiri/Daulatabad of narrative prove to be the key to symbolic control of the hinterlands that comprised its multiple sacred geographies. These were the geographies of community memory and belonging that all three narrators sought to connect to the indestructible rock-face of the fortress. Symbolic dominion over Deogiri/Daulatabad lent proof of supremacy to either Sufi or Brahminical blessed men and by extension to the connected spaces of shrines or temples in the surrounding region associated with either the Khuldabad Sufis or the Brahmin Hamanda Punt.

A Narrative Landscape This focus on the common physical facts of topography brings us to the buildings that stood at the centre of these rival narrative geographies. For Ganga Ram’s story of Deogiri/Daulatabad was ultimately the story of Hamanda Punt, a figure who had for centuries been renowned as the builder of the stone temples that Page 17 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives formed the most venerated spaces of scores of towns and villages across the Deccan. While on one level Ganga Ram’s story was certainly a history of Deogiri/ Daulatabad fort, through the common point of reference provided by the figure of Hamanda Punt, its larger and expressly spatial purpose was to provide a legitimate genealogy for a sacred landscape of village temples and the Brahmins attached to them that stretched across a landscape whose mater Ganga Ram presented as the blessed Brahmin, Hamanda Punt. Ganga Ram’s narrative was in this sense a textual act aimed at the centralization of a fragmented Brahminical geography made in an era of re-nascent Brahminical influence in the Deccan under the Maratha ascendency. For while Ganga Ram was telling his story to Mackenzie’s assistants in the years before the Maratha defeats by the British, the rulers of the (p.256) neighbouring Maratha kingdoms were busily patronizing new temples that through the fusion of architecture and narrative were connected to the earlier Hindu geo-history transmitted by Ganga Ram’s bakhar. Only a few years earlier, a few miles away from Deogiri/Daulatabad at Ellora, Ahilyabai Holkar of Indore (r. 1767–95) had patronized the construction of the first major temple built there for centuries along with another temple to the popular Maratha deity Khandoba in Aurangabad’s outlying village of Satara. In an architectural process that was the inverse and partner of Ganga Ram’s textualizing of geography, past and present were being mediated and connected through the architectural manipulation of the landscape itself. Like the early modern Muslim patrons of new and existing Sufi shrines examined in Chapter 5, the eighteenth-century Maratha polities likewise used the patronage of temples, rituals, and the blessed men who brought the buildings to life so as to connect themselves with bygone medieval claims to the land. For their part, Bilgrami and Sabzawari provided a parallel aetiology for the scores of Muslim shrines that constituted a sacred Muslim geography in the Deccan (see Fig. 7.4). Like Ganga Ram’s, their narratives likewise centralized a dispersed geography of shrines around the enduring location of their purported fons et origo at Daulatabad/Khuldabad. In this way, they were writing onto the landscape a story of the first Sufis to settle in the Deccan and of the shrines that their followers built at Khuldabad rather than Daulatabad. These were shrines that, like Hamanda Punt’s many purported temples were sufficiently dispersed through the region to need narratives to connect them with Deogiri/Daulatabad. In doing so, Bilgrami and Sabzawari articulated a claim for the spiritual precedence of Khuldabad over not only Daulatabad, but over the wider geography of the Deccan which was claimed by the heirs of the saints interred in its shrines. In this way, the narratives of Bilgrami, Sabzawari, and Ganga Ram all relied on the symbolic cachet of blessed men in the company of kings. Just as the reputation of Hamanda Punt was bolstered by his association with Ram Raja, so was the authority of the Khuldabad Sufis enhanced by the burial in their shrines of a series of Muslim kings from the Deccan sultans to the Emperor Aurangzeb. It was for this (p.257) Page 18 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives reason that in narrative terms the royal fortress had to be alternatively founded or rejected by the Brahmin or Sufi. Composed during a period in the Deccan that witnessed a profound reorganization of political power and of sacred space through acts of patronage, the three geo-histories we have examined show how symbolic hegemony over the region’s primary fortress was Fig. 7.4. Rawzat al-Awliya: The Heavenly deemed a prerequisite for the Garden of the Saints at Khuldabad expression of religious authority. Courtesy of Nile Green In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, all three narrators thus looked to the medieval past to construct aetiological claims for control of Deogiri/Daulatabad fort and of the landscape surrounding it by blurring the geographical spaces of the royal and religious, of the narrative and physical landscape, and of past and present time.

Given the political background of these three stories of space, it is important that we do not gloss over how this turbulent context added urgency to the rival geographical claims that Bilgrami, Sabzawari, and Ganga Ram represented. Bilgrami in particular wrote as a representative of a Muslim high culture that had flourished under the patronage of the Mughals and their early Asaf Jah successors, but which was threatened in his (p.258) lifetime by the rise of the Marathas, who raided Aurangabad repeatedly throughout the eighteenth century. Bilgrami’s vision of the principal rivalry of sultan and Sufi, his complimentary words on the sculptures at Ellora, and the broader cultural values of the cosmopolitan Persianate literary sphere he represented which in Aurangabad counted Hindu bureaucrats among its prominent participants, suggests that his vision was not a communalist one in the modern sense. Yet, as a representative of a social order that he and many of his contemporaries saw as under threat from the Marathas, we cannot ignore the hostility Bilgrami at times directed towards the Marathas and their Brahminical protégées, if not towards ‘Hindus’ at large. This was borne out in another of Bilgrami’s works, Khazana-ye ‘amira (1763), in which he wove a political history of his times into an account of the poets of his and earlier ages.59 In his discussion there of the rise of the Marathas, Bilgrami praised their military prowess while bemoaning their determination to strip the land-owning zamindar notables of the Deccan of their status and income, and so by implication ruin the economic foundations of the cultured class to which he and other denizens of the Deccan’s Sufi shrines belonged. Tellingly, Bilgrami revealed his concern that the aim of the Marathas was to make the Brahmins of the Konkan the ‘rulers of the world’.60 In direct contrast to Bilgrami’s panegyric to the Sufis in Rawzat al-awliya—Sufis whose shrines we saw in Chapter 5 being maintained by the land-grants and largesse of Page 19 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives a sympathetic class of notables—was Ganga Ram’s promotion of the spatial claims of the Brahmins. But as a lineage group who gained renewed status and patronage during the eighteenth century, the Brahmins supported by the Marathas possessed their rivals and detractors. Ironically, Bilgrami voiced his criticism of the Konkani Brahmins by inverting the value of the language of mendicancy that had for centuries been used to praise the Sufis, berating the Brahmins for their ‘begging’ (gada’i) craft and nature that enabled them to acquire such large sources of (p.259) income.61 His remark suggests that we should neither discount nor misconstrue the nature of this antagonism. For ultimately we are looking in this chapter at the narrative expression of competition for limited resources between different blessed men. Sufi and Brahmin were rendered rivals through perceived (if not always actual) differences in the patronage patterns of the rival regional polities of the Marathas and the Mughals/Nizams. Notes:

(1) For architectural studies of the fortress and its surroundings, see Ansari (1983) and Mate and Pathy (1992). (2) Jackson (1999) and Verma (1970). (3) Bordonove (1966). (4) Dhavalikar (2003). (5) A.M. Husain (1972) and Jackson (1999). (6) On re-figuring Hindu and Muslim identities in pre-colonial South Asia, see Eaton, ‘Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States’, in Gilmartin and Lawrence (2000), pp. 246–81 and Talbot (1995), pp. 692–722. (7) On these transformations, see Kotani, ‘Kingship, State and Local Society in the Seventeenth-to-Nineteenth Century Deccan with Special Reference to Ritual Functions’, in Karashima (1999), pp. 237–71. On the evolution of the Maratha kingdoms more generally, see Gordon (1994) and Kulkarni (1996). (8) K.A. Nizami (1995). (9) Ibid., vol. I, p. 104 (Persian text). Author’s translation. (10) On a comparable interweaving of Hindu narrative and sacred space in north India, see Ghosh (2002). (11) I have taken the date of 1161/1748 from Hasan ‘Abbās (2005), p. 11. Carl Ernst has also argued for a date of 1152/1739, which appears to be the date

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives when the text was commenced after Bilgrāmī’s first pilgrimage to the Khuldabad shrines. See Ernst (1992b), p. 281. (12) Ghulām ‘Ali Āzād Bilgrāmī (1996). (13) Ibid., p. 78 (14) On ‘Ali Hamadani, see Hassnain (2001). (15) Green (2006b), Chapter 1. (16) Ghulām ‘Ali Āzād Bilgrāmī (1996), p. 79. See also Roy (1941). (17) Ibid., pp. 79–80. (18) Ansari (1983), p. 618. (19) ‘Ghulām ‘Ali Āzād Bilgrāmī (1996), pp. 110–11. (20) Ansari (1983) includes an appendix of photocopies of original manuscripts of many grants to Sufi shrines by both Muslim and Hindu notables, dealing with donations from, inter alia, Aurangzeb and the Maratha ruler, Shahu. (21) Ghulām ‘Ali Āzād Bilgrāmī (1996), pp. 84 and 102. (22) Ibid., p. 74. (23) Sharma (2002). (24) Correspondingly, three of the governors (qal-‘a-dars) of Daulatabad fort were buried in the shrine of Baha’ al-Din Ansari (d. 1515), a short distance away from the fort. (25) Khāksār Sabzawārī, Sawānih, Asiatic Society of Bengal, Curzon Collection, ms 85. I am grateful to Carl Ernst for providing access to this manuscript. (26) Khāksār Sabzawārī, f. 2l. (27) Ibid., f. 3l. (28) Ibid., f. 12r–12l. (29) Ibid., f. 21r–f. 21l. On these themes in an earlier period, see Ahmad (1963), pp. 470–6. (30) Khāksār Sabzawārī, f. 25r–f. 25l and f. 24r–f. 24l. Sabzawārī’s presentation of these figures has also been discussed in Ernst (1992b), pp. 164–5. (31) Khāksār Sabzawārī, f. 18l–f. 19l.

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives (32) Ibid., f. 10r–f. 11l and f. 19l–f. 20l. (33) Ganga Ram’s narratives were translated into English by Mackenzie’s munshi, Suba Rao Brahmin, and are preserved among the latter’s papers in the Oriental and India Office Collections (Mackenzie Collection: General, vol. XLV). No original Marathi version of this oral narrative is known to be extant. Mackenzie later became a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal and was the first Surveyor General of India. (34) For a more critical reading of Mackenzie’s investigations, see Dirks, ‘Colonial Histories and Native Informants: The Biography of an Archive’, in Breckenridge and Veer (1993). (35) Bhandarkar (1983), pp. 75–92. Hemadri was also the author of numerous dharmashashtra texts, including the famous Caturvarga-cintamani. I am grateful to Anne Feldhaus for providing initial information on this figure. (36) On these and other literary counterparts to Ganga Ram’s history, see Talbot, ‘The Story of Prataparudra: Hindu Historiography on the Deccan Frontier’, in Gilmartin and Lawrence (2000), pp. 282–99 and Tulpule (1979). (37) Inden (1992), p. 233. (38) ‘The Legendary Story of Ram-Rajah of Davageery, Now Called Dowlatabad’, ms, OIOC, Mackenzie Collection: General, vol. XLV. (39) In the textual and oral traditions of the region, such alchemical references cropped up constantly with reference to both Muslim and Hindu blessed men. On Yadava patronage of alchemy in Daulatabad, see White (1996), pp. 112–14. (40) A parallel is found in a folktale relating to the cave of Amarnath and its natural ice lingam in the Kashmir Himalaya. A folktale attached to the cave claims that a Muslim shepherd, Buta Malik, was given a sack of coal by a saint while he was wandering in the mountains. When he returned home, Malik found that the coal had turned into gold. He then hurried back to thank the saint but instead found a cave and the lingams. Muslim shepherds still show the way to the cave to pilgrims and part of the donations are given to the ‘descendants’ of Buta Malik. (41) Meer Husain Ali Kirmani (1996), pp. 35–43. (42) Alberuni (1971), pp. 191–2. (43) Ibid., p. 192. (44) Ota, ‘Beda Nāyakas and their Historical Narratives in Karnataka during the Post-Vijayanagara Period’, in Karashima (1999). Page 22 of 24

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives (45) Hunter et al. (1908–31), vol. 15, p. 230. (46) Note that in the Ramayana of Valmiki, Vibishana was the brother of the demon king Ravana and a diplomat rather than a king. (47) On so-called Hemadpanti temples, see Verma (1973). (48) Modern archaeologists have suggested that Daulatabad was a pilgrimage centre (tirth) before it was turned into a fortress by the Yadavas. An earlier assumption of such primacy was seized upon at the end of the Nizam’s rule in 1948 when a cult image was placed in Daulatabad’s medieval Friday mosque to transform it into a temple. See Ansari (1983) and Mate and Pathy (1992). (49) Ibn Battuta (1985), pp. 225–6. (50) R.A. Ansari (1983), p. 593. (51) Talang (1961), pp. 75–9, cited in Ansari (1983). (52) Khāksār Sabzawārī, f. 37l. (53) On the oral traditions connecting these two figures, see Green (2004c). (54) The same theme recurred in a similar narrative that Mackenzie and his assistants collected in nearby Ahmadnagar, subsequently entitled ‘History of Hamanda Punt’, in Mackenzie’s papers (Mackenzie Collection: General, vol. XLV). (55) ‘An Account of Dowlatabad, Anciently Called Devageery’, ms, Mackenzie Collection: General, vol. XLV. On these rituals, see Kotani (1999). (56) On Raja Ram, see Kulkarni (1996). See also Laine, ‘Śivājī as Epic Hero’, in Sontheimer (1995) and Laine and Bahulkar (2001). (57) Ghulām ‘Ali Āzād Bilgrāmī (1996), pp. 102–3. On the ruling dynasty in question, see Joshi, ‘Khāndesh’, in Sherwani and Joshi (1973–4), vol. 1, pp. 491– 516. (58) ‘Abd al-Haqq al-Dihlawī (nd [1977?]), p. 94. (59) Ghulām ‘Ali Āzād Bilgrāmī (1871). On the rise of the Marathas, see pp. 39– 49. (60) Ibid., pp. 45 and 47. (61) Ibid.

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Brahmins and Sufis in a Landscape of Narratives

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad

Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad Nile Green

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.003.0036

Abstract and Keywords This chapter draws on the oral traditions preserved at Sufi shrines in south India to show how the shrines serve as concrete anchors of historical memory that preserve the past into the present. Showing how stories of saints are linked to the memory of kings, empires and settlers, the chapter shows how with the emergence of Muslim communities in India, the institutions of Sufi Islam helped create places of belonging in new homelands. Early modern history and the present day are in this way seen to be connected through oral traditions rooted in specific urban spaces. Keywords:   Islam, India, shrines, Sufism, cultural memory, oral tradition, hagiography, Mughal, Nizam, Urdu

Between Architecture and Historiography As we have seen in previous chapters, encounters between Sufi saints and Muslim rulers have played a long and important role in the historiographical traditions of Muslim India. Historians of the Delhi and Deccan sultanates writing in Persian such as Ziya al-Din Barani and Abu’l Qasim Firishta peppered their accounts with such narratives, much to the distaste of their nineteenth-century translators, who frequently excised such episodes wholesale.1 Some of the earliest Sufi texts composed in India, such as the malfuzat ‘recorded conversations’ written in the circle of Nizam al-Din Awliya of Delhi (d. 1325), made clear the importance of this topos of the meeting between blessed man and king.2 The factual nature of such encounters is sometimes difficult to ascertain in view of the didactic and moralizing dimensions to both Persianate Page 1 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad chronicles and Sufi texts. However, the abundant remaining examples of finely built and royally patronized Sufi shrines assure us that such encounters belonged to the world of action as well as writing. This should be a matter of little surprise, for if there is one thing that the discussions of Sufis in medieval and early modern Indo-Persian literature make clear, it is that Sufis were regarded as men of power. It was this power—which included the power to foretell and shape future events as well as the power of ‘legitimization’ more familiar to historians—that charted the parameters of exchange between (p. 261) Sufi blessed men and their royal protégées. These twin figures of the saint and king occupied a central place in the Islamicate cultural imagination of early modern India and parallel figures played key roles in Muslim, Hindu, and European texts elsewhere.3 Despite the rapid and accelerating changes in Indian society in recent decades, oral traditions preserved at Sufi shrines have continued to structure and transmit the historical memory of different communities of both Muslims and Hindus affiliated with the shrines in question.4 Reflecting the recent interest in oral ethno-historical traditions in India, this chapter examines the oral narratives surrounding the shrines of Aurangabad, narratives which were especially concerned with encounters between the city’s early modern Sufis and its erstwhile Muslim rulers and notables.5 The historical narratives examined relate to the three main shrines we saw in Chapter 5 being constructed in Aurangabad during its early heyday as Mughal imperial capital and subsequent founding capital of Hyderabad State. Originally founded in 1610 with the name of Khirki by the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, Aurangabad was re-founded in 1681 by Aurangzeb after the region’s conquest by the Mughal armies. Like the other principal Mughal cities, it received the accolade of a royal sobriquet—Aurangabad—which would link the city in perpetuity to the memory of the emperor and empire that founded it. The period of Mughal and subsequently early Asaf Jah rule witnessed the Deccan’s immense wealth being drawn to the city, an (p.262) affluence that found expression in vast civic and private building projects. These included arguably the finest example of all Mughal architecture in the Deccan in the form of a ‘second Taj Mahal’ to the emperor’s wife, a royal palace built after the examples of Delhi and Agra, and a variety of sub-imperial projects including havelis, gardens, and shrines for notable Sufis resident in the city. However, the city fell into economic decline in the decades after the shift of the capital to Hyderabad during the reign of Nizam ‘Ali Khan (1762–1803), leading early-nineteenthcentury British travellers to remark on the grandiose ruins that surrounded a much-reduced city; for Captain John Seely writing in 1823 the ruined city served as ‘a memento of princely folly and pride’.6 However, as the second city of Hyderabad State, Aurangabad remained a city of regional importance until Hyderabad’s forcible dissolution in 1948. In recent decades its allotment to the state of Maharashtra and its relative proximity to Bombay have led to

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad considerable industrialization and a corresponding increase in population, fuelled partly as in earlier centuries by migration to the city.7 However, as in many Indian and indeed European urban spaces, at the end of the twentieth century an earlier townscape still defined much of the character of Aurangabad’s old city, connecting the daily lives of its inhabitants to the remembered lives of their predecessors. The past needs always to be mediated and handed on and for many Muslim residents of Aurangabad, this mediation was achieved through the combination of oral texts and the surviving architectural spaces of the past. Such an intertwining has a long pedigree in Indo-Muslim historical writings, as witnessed in the early historicoarchaeological masterpiece of al-Biruni (d. 1048), Athar al-baqiyyah. Partly also under the influence of European antiquarianism, in Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s later Athar al-sanadid (1827), it also informed the fusion of place and historical memory in early-nineteenth-century Delhi. In discursive terms, the common word athar (‘traces, relics’) (p.263) still shapes discussion of the past in Urdu writings of the present day. Yet in a city in which the older Persian and Urdu texts of its history are now only read by few, the local past is primarily known to the city’s Muslim inhabitants in the form of its surviving architectural presence. And among these enduring signs of the visible past, the Sufi shrines loom large as among the few living architectural spaces that connect Aurangabad’s past with its present. Other remnants, including city walls, monumental gateways, royal funerary and residential buildings were also significant pointers to the same epoch of Mughal expansion. But as we have already seen with the creation of a narrative landscape around Deogiri/Daulatabad in Chapter 7, such monumental pointers to the past require a narrative framework to find meaning. Amid this wider process of configuring historical memory, the figures of the saints give structure to the open plains of the past through memorable accounts of a saint’s miraculous life that connect past and present experience in ways that are meaningful to their audiences. As an architecturally commemorated blessed man, the saint formed an enduring point of narrative reference around whom there gathered the kings, courtiers, and other notable figures of a city’s past, as well as commemorating other spaces marked in memory as the settings of narrative. As we have seen now many times over in this book, text and territory were dependent partners. The oral tradition surrounding the shrines of Aurangabad has not merely provided the religious biographies of a local Muslim pantheon, but has shaped and transmitted a history for the city and its Muslim residents. Drawing on written as well as spoken memory, these narratives have continued to articulate a model of the past (and by implication of the present) in which divine agency in the world is made manifest through the actions of God’s saintly ‘friends’ or awliya to form an ethno-historical tradition that combined local and regional Indo-Islamic topoi.8 When I collected these narratives in the late 1990s, this was by no means a historical vision shared by the entirety of Aurangabad’s swelling Page 3 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad population, (p.264) a large proportion of whom have in recent decades migrated to the city from the surrounding countryside and from Gujarat and Punjab. It was rather a historical tradition limited to a community of memory composed of the thousands of Aurangabad’s inhabitants who visit their city’s shrines. If reformist Muslims (as well, of course, as secularists and members of other communities of memory) rejected this saint-centred construction of the local past, at the end of the twentieth century it was nonetheless still preserved as the collective history of the many of Aurangabad’s Muslims and Hindus who were devotees of the shrines. Although not every telling of Aurangabad’s history occured necessarily in the shrines themselves, as their visible mise en scène the stories did require the shrines’ territorial presence, as well as that of other topographic features of the surrounding urban space. It is no coincidence that there were no stories about saints in the city whose burial sites are unknown; nor, conversely, were there shrines about whose inhabitants there were no stories. As we have seen in earlier chapters, geographies of burial create spaces of memory and the architectural commemoration of such buried bodies was crucial to the process of memory by spatially rendering the dead visible to future generations. Narrative and place, text and territory are interdependent, each requiring the other for its continued existence. For without the narratives keeping them alive, the shrines would themselves fall into decay through a lack of pilgrim traffic. Almost all of Aurangabad’s ethno-historical narratives were in this way related to a specific place. It was this that lent them a rhetorical quality suggestive of concrete evidence as the tangible reality of their settings contributed to the belief that the stories actually happened. It is for this reason that such narratives need to be seen as histories and not simply folktales. More than mere entertainments, the narratives of the saints created a Muslim (and for non-Muslim remembrancers, an Islamicate) history that was rooted in the surrounding urban spaces of their city of residence. It was a history that was proven through the topographical evidence of that past that was the architectural legacy of the Mughals. Architecture, narrative, and the blessed person in this way conspired to form the living historical presence of a city of stories, a narrative townscape that was the latter-day counterpart (p.265) to the narrative landscape we saw in Chapter 7 being recounted two centuries earlier by Bilgrami, Ganga Ram, and Sabzawari. At the end of the twentieth century, this local lineage of memory contributed to the private hopes of salvation for its remembrancers and to their collective identification with their urban environment. As a means of anchoring lives to local territories, like other such histories it staked claims to a presence in the past that vindicated a presence in the present. Ethno-historical memory in this way allowed Aurangabad’s Muslims and the non-Muslims who stood alongside them to maintain an Islamic and Islamicate sense of history and identity in one of the most important regions for Maratha nationalist historiography. The Hindu and Maratha nationalist movements in Maharashtra that attempted to rename Page 4 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad Aurangabad as Sambhajinagar, so erasing the Mughal marking of space with a Marathi replacement, have in recent decades been important pressures on the preservation of such memory.9 In a region in which the ‘police action’ that accompanied the transfer of Hyderabad State from Muslim to majority rule was still painfully remembered half-a-century later, the stories of saints served to keep alive the memory of an age of Muslim grandeur and self-rule. Tales of powerful Muslim saints and kings, of palaces and empires, were all the more resonant against a background of the generally low social position of Muslims in the city of their telling. In forming a means of mediation through which their remembrancers could navigate between past and present time, from this perspective the stories of the saints reveal as much about the present as they do about the past. Peopling saintly narrative with the historical personalities of courtiers and kings has long been a feature of Persian and Urdu written as well as oral texts. Sufi hagiographies often included biographies of kings or notables associated with the saints. As we saw most vividly with the Afghan Tarikh-e Khan Jahani in Chapter 3, royal and tribal histories likewise contained biographies of the saints, with both forms of written memory binding royal and the (p.266) saintly history together for their mutual preservation. This was the case with the Rawzat al-awliya (1748), the account of Aurangabad’s neighbouring saints of Khuldabad that we have seen in Chapter 7 being written by Azad Bilgrami, as well as with the later Urdu Tazkira-e awliya-e dakan (1912) of ‘Abd al-Jabbar Khan Malkapuri and the Rawzat al-aqtab (1931) of Rawnaq ‘Ali that transmitted the memory of the region’s shrines from Persian to Urdu.10 Such saintly narratives formed not only a way of knowing the past but also a commentary on it. According to their vision of history, it was not the politically powerful who governed the world, but rather God’s friends, the Sufi saints.11 In such narratives, the saintly protectors of ordinary people were seen to overrule the dictates of kings, deciding on the fortunes of monarchs as calmly as they did those of the living clients who brought their problems to the shrines. This was more than an exclusively Sufi vision of power in the world, for it drew historical agency from the hands of the rich into those of the poor as represented by the saint, the blessed faqir (literally ‘poor man’) who was the architectural and narrative apotheosis of the beggar. Yet, such discourses of Sufi power were more than allegories of social protest or cathartic exercises in turning the world upside down.12 Rather they show through the medium of narrative how the memory of the saints was intrinsically linked with relations of power, showing spiritual overlordship as intimately connected with sovereignty over the physical world of human action. Like the divine power from which it was seen to derive, the blessing power of the saint was not solely spiritual but also temporal, even though like divine agency its operation in the visible world was not always obvious or apparent. The sacred spaces of the saints were therefore spaces of power as well as memory, spaces in which the powers of the past—that is the Page 5 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad agency of the dead—was seen as still available and present in an urban geography of buried saints. This was not a remembered past of useless nostalgia, but for those marginal or troubled lives who continued to rely on the miracles of the saints, (p.267) it was a past with a purpose. For these were narratives that both proved and described the miraculous services of the saints and in so doing cut channels through time through which the blessings of the dead could flow. The first of the oral shrine narratives to be discussed related to the Naqshbandi Sufis Shah Palangposh (d. 1699) and Shah Musafir (d. 1715), whose shared shrine (popularly known as Panchakki) we saw in Chapter 5 being built in Aurangabad by members of the Central Asian or Turani faction of the Mughal imperial elite. The second set of narratives related to Shah Nur Hammami (d. 1692) whose shrine we have seen being built by the Mughal diwan of Aurangabad, Diyanat Khan. Although like many Indian Sufis, Shah Nur was probably originally unattached to any Sufi lineage, over time he gradually became associated with the Qadiriyya and later the Chishtiyya. The third ethnohistorical tradition to which we will turn belonged to the shrine of the Chishti Sufi Nizam al-Din Awrangabadi (d. 1729), which was also built under late Mughal patronage.

Shah Musafir and Shah Palangposh Remembered In modern Aurangabad, the association of Shah Musafir with Emperor Aurangzeb was the most widely re-membered oral tradition, one that found expression in a wide variety of contexts. English-language souvenir and guidebooks form an interesting case, stretching from the nineteenth-century souvenir album of Major Gill and James Fergusson entitled One Hundred Stereoscopic Illustrations on Architecture and Natural History in Western India to descriptions of the shrine in the modern-day Rough Guides and Lonely Planet guidebooks.13 Via the Internet, the tradition took on new dimensions in cyberspace, where dozens of websites refer to Aurangzeb’s devotion to Shah Musafir. Yet the germinal oral tradition recorded in the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya of the Sufis’ heir Shah Mahmud (d. 1762) did not contain any story explicitly associating them directly with Aurangzeb, replete as it otherwise was with accounts of their links with the leading Central Asian notables (p.268) associated with the Mughals and the founder of Hyderabad State, Nizam alMulk. Even so, the saints’ posthumous connection with Aurangzeb was certainly already flourishing by the 1830s, when an anonymous European visitor was the first to record it.14 Linking narrative to visual space at the shrine, the visitor also recorded a story claiming that Aurangzeb had personally stocked the pool at Panchakki with costly fish he had brought from all over India. This royal association seems not to have developed out of the earlier oral tradition preserved in the Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya, despite the latter’s detailed accounts of the saints’ connections with the imperial elite. Instead, it appears to have evolved from the visual evidence of the sheer architectural grandeur of the Page 6 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad Panchakki shrine. For in view of the royal associations claimed by the other major shrines of the city as discussed later, it seemed unlikely to the many, who have gathered each evening at Panchakki over the centuries to make a plea to the saints or else promenade by the pools and fountains there, that the saints lacked any royal association when their mausoleum, mosque, and khanaqah so clearly outranked those of other local shrines that did claim such associations. Place, then, could be the creative provoker of the invention of memory. At the end of the twentieth century, the presence of the emperor in Aurangabad was preserved in the spaces of the shrines. The khadim or keeper of Shah Musafir’s shrine at Panchakki related how ‘four hundred years ago the great emperors came here … News [about Shah Musafir] spread everywhere and when these deeds were known, the kings and nawwabs heard about them and came to visit. Aurangzeb also came.’15 A shopkeeper at the shrine similarly recalled how Shah Musafir was visited by many rulers of the age who subsequently became his devotees, including Aurangzeb.16 Beyond these bare but widely remembered particulars, (p.269) narrative memory rarely blossomed into detail at Panchakki. What was important to the shrine’s small circle of devotees and, more importantly, to the many other Muslims of Aurangabad who concurred with the tradition, was the simple fact of the shrine’s imperial associations. For through the space and narrative of Panchakki, the city’s past was pieced together through a historical template that required the presence of the saints in both the narrative and concrete fabric of the surrounding local world, while Aurangabad also acquired the prestige of being the resting place of the spiritual master of the last of the great Mughals. In another narrative describing the relationship between Aurangzeb and Shah Palangposh, the saint was himself positioned above the power of the emperor while at the same time having the capacity to redirect royal power. According to a tradition recounted by one of the shrine’s sajjada nashins, Shah Palangposh was sitting under a tree. Three evil-loving (shar pasand) vagabonds took Shah Palangposh to a hilltop, dragged him to where they used to smoke cannabis (ganja) in a chillum. They used to take him there often in the morning, and Shah Palangposh used to fill the chillum with cannabis; they used to smoke it. When they were intoxicated, they used to start kicking him. Shah Palangposh used to roll down from the hilltop, while the vagabonds would laugh. And again they would drag him up and so it went on every day. But Shah Palangposh never went away in fear. Then after thirty to forty days of this, Aurangzeb, in search of Shah Palangposh, came to Aurangabad and entered the city from the west. As he came by the site of Panchakki, he passed by the hilltop and saw there the three mischief makers, completely intoxicated, and told the soldiers to prick their spears into their backs. They were each given fifty lashes and three spear pricks. Then Aurangzeb asked them, ‘Do you know where Shah Page 7 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad Palangposh stays?’ They didn’t answer since they didn’t know who Shah Palangposh was. So they told Aurangzeb, ‘There is an old man sitting beneath the tree, and he might know who Shah Palangposh is.’ The soldiers dragged them to the tree where Shah Palangposh sat and when Aurangzeb saw the old man, he realized he was Shah Palangposh and instantly bowed before him. [The emperor] sat with closed eyes and hands folded and took Shah Palangposh’s blessing. When the three vagabonds saw this, they were so shocked and scared that Shah Palangposh would tell Aurangzeb [what had happened] and that they would be hanged. But the saint didn’t utter a word and kept all in his heart. And after taking (p.270) his blessing, Aurangzeb went with his army to the city. Seeing all this, the three vagabonds bowed down, fell at Shah Palangposh’s feet, and started crying for help and asking for pardon with great reverence. At this, Shah Palangposh pardoned them and a time came, when they became great scholars of their age at the shrine.17 Two more ethno-historical traditions related the blessed men buried at Panchakki to the other ruling figures of Aurangabad’s early modern gilded age. In the first of these, the foundation of Asaf Jah Nizam rule was associated with the building of the Panchakki shrine, while in the second narrative the hand of Shah Musafir was seen to be behind even the rule of the Maratha peshwas who with the Mughals’ eclipse gained control of much of the territory of the fragmenting empire. The first narrative located its sequence of events at the Nawkhandah palace which, at a short distance from Panchakki, formerly served as Nizam al-Mulk’s residence in Aurangabad and subsequently as the palace of the later Nizams; by the 1990s it was a college for Muslim girls. When Shah Musafir heard that the coronation ceremony of Nizam al-Mulk Asaf Jah was going on, he gave a big earthen pot to a faqir who carried it on his head and placed it before the king at the time of the coronation ceremony. Nizam al-Mulk knew that the faqir was sent from Shah Musafir because he himself was a murid of Baba Shah Palangposh and so he was usually in contact with the faqirs. The king Nizam al-Mulk then said, ‘The faqir has a very big question’ (faqir ka bahut bara sawal hai). Then all of the ornaments and gifts from the guests—jewellery and pearls and so on— were poured into the earthen pot by Nizam al-Mulk, so that the pot was completely filled with the entire wealth of the ceremony. Then the faqir lifted the pot and carried it to Panchakki, where he placed it before Shah Musafir. All of it was sold, and the money was sufficient to construct the entire aqueduct at Panchakki.18 Transformed here into dramatic narrative were memories of the acts of patronage by which the family of Nizam al-Mulk had indeed funded part of the construction of the Panchakki shrine, (p.271) so linking not only the memory of saints but also that of kings to the visible topography regularly entered by Page 8 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad Aurangabad’s citizens. The second narrative further pursued the theme of saintly power and authority over worldly rulers, showing Shah Musafir to have been the miraculous source of the Maratha ruler Baji Rao’s ascent and thereby of the historical destiny of the retraction of Muslim rule in the Deccan. Baji Rao, one of the Maratha kings, was faced with rebellion and was thrown out of his kingdom, Maharashtra. After rescuing himself from the clutches of his enemies with some of his followers and warriors, Baji Rao was passing along this place [Panchakki] and wanted to stay for a while before moving on with the journey. When he came to the shrine, Baji Rao met Shah Musafir and Shah Musafir narrated the story [of the king’s exile] and told him, ‘You are facing a problem,’ and so permitted him to reside [at the shrine]. The king stayed over here and asked the saint to pray for him and find a solution. After some days, Shah Musafir ordered Baji Rao to go back to his own place, and he obeyed the order and went back. As Baji Rao reached his former domains, the rebellion was crushed by some of his companions, and he was again given the throne and honoured to rule the province again.19 Maratha rulers have often been linked with Sufi figures in the Deccan’s historical memory. Shivaji, for example, was said to have been a follower of Shah ‘Inayat Allah (d. 1705) of Balapur.20 But if in Chapter 7 we saw narrative competition for symbolic control of Deogiri/Daulatabad by Brahmins and Sufi blessed men, in these narratives we witness narrative competition between the Sufi saints of the city. For while, as we will see later, it was the Sufi Nizam al-Din who was most commonly associated with the rise of Nizam al-Mulk and the Hyderabad State, except for Shah Musafir none of Aurangabad’s saints was said to have influenced the Maratha rulers of the Deccan. What is clear throughout these narratives is the way in which the saints were linked to memorable historical figures and said to have been the éminences grises, the supernatural power behind the throne, in their ascendance. This strategy of memory brought the dignity of the Mughal and (p.272) Maratha royal past to serve the historical identities of the humbler modern-day clients of the saints. In the case of the Panchakki shrine these included many old Muslim families bereft of their status under the Nizams only half a century earlier. Sustained by the visible proof of former grandeur that Panchakki provided, the remembered lives of Shah Musafir and Shah Palangposh served their community as dignifying testaments to their former status, of who they were in the past and thereby who they are in the present.

Shah Nur Remembered These themes were reflected in the spatialized history passed on at the shrine of Shah Nur. Aurangzeb was once again the main royal figure to feature in these stories and, as in the oral tradition of Shah Musafir, he was regarded as the saint’s devotee. In this pattern of shared claims to Aurangzeb’s discipleship, we Page 9 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad again see the quiet competing of the city’s shrines for the ultimate Muslim client. More than the tradition of Shah Palangposh and Shah Musafir, the narratives commemorating Shah Nur were located against a historical background of factual events as well as persons. In doing so, the narratives not only formulated a rhetoric of authenticity, they also made a challenge to historical memory by demanding a meaningful hermeneusis of past events. This was most clearly seen in the moral dimension to the stories, laying emphasis on the virtues of repentance, devotion, and sincerity.21 Reflecting the conventions of Persian and Urdu historiography, here was history with moral meaning. Convinced by the devotion of his ‘prime-minister’ Diyanat Khan, in one narrative, Aurangzeb came to Shah Nur in repentance for the execution of the ecstatic Sufi Sarmad in 1661. Shah Nur then advised Aurangzeb that it would be advantageous for him to be buried in the holy earth of Aurangabad after his death, a reference to the emperor’s eventual place of burial at the shrine of Zayn al-Din Shirazi in nearby Khuldabad.22 As in the Panchakki (p.273) narrative, here we see the clients of one Aurangabad shrine trying to resolve the issue of the supremacy of their shrine’s status in the face of the emperor’s burial within a rival saintly territory, in this case by positing the agency of Shah Nur rather than of Zayn al-Din himself behind Aurangzeb’s burial (see Fig. 8.1). Such themes of competition between Muslim saints have long formed a feature of the ethno-histories of Sufi shrines in India and elsewhere, pointing again to the internal fractures within the narrative landscape of Muslim Aurangabad. In another narrative from the shrine of Shah Nur, Aurangzeb was presented as seeking miraculous help from Shah Nur in summoning the spirit of his dead father, Shah Jahan. The emperor sought forgiveness for rebelling against and imprisoning Shah Jahan and so, by extension, sought to avoid the torment of hellfire. The Fig. 8.1 The Emperor and the Saint: The moral dimension of the story Grave of Aurangzeb in Shrine of Zayn alreflected on the duties of loyalty Din of sons to fathers. In this Courtesy of Nile Green narrative, it was through Diyanat Khan, the Irani imperial notable and patron of the shrine, that Aurangzeb (p.274) came to hear of Shah Nur’s powers. The narrative began during one of the emperor’s morning tours of inspection.

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad Aurangzeb was in his royal garments. He said, ‘Salam alaykum,’ and Shah Nur said, ‘Wa alaykum salam and go away. I have nothing [for you].’ So he [Aurangzeb] went away. The next day Aurangzeb went again in the same garments, and again Shah Nur said, ‘Go away: I have nothing.’ On the third day Aurangzeb came in the dress of a faqir and Shah Nur said, ‘Sit down,’ and asked, ‘What do you want?’ He said, ‘I want to meet my father.’ Shah Nur asked, ‘For what reason?’ Aurangzeb said, ‘I want to request his pardon.’ But Shah Jahan was dead. Aurangzeb had punished him a lot and imprisoned him, so he wanted to ask for his father’s pardon. So Shah Nur said, ‘Good. You should read Quran Sharif for the whole night and come to meet me at dawn (fajr).’ Aurangzeb said, ‘Good,’ and when he came [again] it was dawn. Shah Nur was in the room and he left it and drew the curtain and said, ‘Speak!’ So Aurangzeb talked to Shah Jahan and asked for his forgiveness. Then he went back and said, ‘Now I want to do something for you.’ But Shah Nur said, ‘I don’t want anything from you.’ So Aurangzeb left.23 The story highlighted the relative possession of power by the saint and the emperor through a reversal of the usual patronal relation ship in which kingship (and more modern political alliances) were conceived. Here Shah Nur, the epitome of the impoverished dervish, was the patron and Aurangzeb, the emperor, the pleader. Such tales certainly have a long provenance and a similar story of a father’s desire to see his dead son was recorded with reference to ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani of Panipat in the early 1900s.24 Further back in time, Aurangzeb’s contemporary Khafi Khan recounted a story of the would-be emperor paying a visit to the khanaqah of one Shaykh Burhan at Burhanpur while disguised in normal clothing at the time of the war of succession with his brothers. According to Khafi Khan, Aurangzeb accosted the blessed man on his way from the mosque and on declaring his brother Dara Shikuh irreligious and promising to himself uphold the Shari‘a managed to procure Shaykh Burhan’s blessing.25 For his part, the Italian traveller Niccolà Manucci (p.275) (d. c. 1717) recounted the eerie tale of Aurangzeb’s visit to a ‘magician’ in 1702 to ask which of his sons would become emperor and to curse the others. Matters clearly went astray, however, when four reversed heads appeared at the bottom of the royal bed and the magician subsequently (if incorrectly) told the emperor that none of the princes would be allowed to reign.26 The kinds of ethno-historical narrative still recounted in Aurangabad at the end of the twentieth century therefore have a long geneaology in written as well as oral texts and with their emphasis on miracles preserve much older strata of cultural memory in which, as though in fossilized template, the saint and king were fixed in perpetuity together. While such shrine narratives are of course only one genre of Muslim historical memory in contemporary India, they do demonstrate how through the narratives no less than the architecture and rituals of saintly remembrance, as they have for centuries the shrines continue to serve as anchors of memory that connect the Page 11 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad Muslims who visit them in present time to the early modern era of their community’s local genesis. The most famous story about Shah Nur referred not to Aurangzeb, but to Shah Nur’s miraculous assistance of the emperor’s diwan, Diyanat Khan, the architectural patron who himself found immortality through his remembered ties to the saint. In this narrative, a devotee of Shah Nur and disciple of the son of the reviver of his cult recollected how Diyanat Khan desperately needed to retrieve an important file from his home in distant Delhi. Without the file, Diyanat Khan would lose his high bureaucratic office at court and, it was hinted, probably also his life. Aurangzeb’s chief minister was Diyanat Khan. One day Aurangzeb said in his court (darbar), ‘Tomorrow is the date of that case and you Diyanat Khan should bring the file.’ So Diyanat Khan agreed. But because Diyanat Khan had left the file in Delhi, the file was not there, even though before the emperor he agreed because he was worried. When the court was over, Diyanat Khan went to Shah Nur at Mochiwara [in Aurangabad] and put the whole situation before him. ‘Huzur, the story is like this. I left the file in Delhi and tomorrow I have to submit it in the court of the emperor. If you help me it can be done, otherwise your servant will leave this life.’ Shah Nur replied, (p.276) ‘Well said! Bring the carriage after ‘isha prayers.’ After the evening time of ‘isha prayer, Diyanat Khan came with the carriage and four horses. So Diyanat Khan sat in the carriage and set off towards Delhi. At the edge of Aurangabad there is the Delhi Gate. When they reached there, Shah Nur asked Diyanat Khan, ‘Bhai, what place is this?’ And Diyanat Khan replied, ‘Huzur, it is the Delhi Gate.’ Shah Nur replied, ‘Bi hamdi’lillah, it is Delhi.’ And so then they were in Delhi. Diyanat Khan happily entered his house and came back with the file and they returned to Aurangabad just as they had come. In the morning, Diyanat Khan presented the file at the imperial court. Aurangzeb was a great face-reader (kiyafah-shinas) and could guess everything from a face and that guess would be correct. So he said, ‘Diyanat Khan, yesterday you did not have the file.’ Diyanat Khan replied, ‘No, huzur, I did not.’ Aurangzeb replied, ‘Then how did you get it today?’ So Diyanat Khan recounted the whole story of the miracle (karamat) of Shah Nur. After that Aurangzeb also went before Shah Nur.27 Here Shah Nur was seen to have power not only over the courtiers who came to seek his help, but also over the very forces of time and space. The narrative also demonstrated the importance of bureaucratic themes in the cult of Shah Nur, a topos that becomes more understandable in the context of the shrine’s erstwhile clientele. For prior to the dissolution of the Hyderabad State, the shrine counted many members of the Nizam’s bureaucracy among its clients. The narrative in this way formed a sanctified epitome of bureaucratic worries by involving the Page 12 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad miraculous powers of a saint with the mundane affairs of the office. It was at once a declaration of saintly power, an advertisement of the kinds of services available at the shrine, and a compression of its community history. So effective has this influence of the demands of an earlier clientele been on the ethnohistorical tradition that the story of the lost file became the most famous of all Shah Nur’s miracles. Helping in the solution of bureaucratic entanglements—a pressing and persistent problem in modern India—became the saint’s speciality in both the past and present. The story of the lost file therefore preserved around the representative figure of Diyanat (p.277) Khan the social profile and workaday requests of this former clientele. Together with him, the glorious past of the city and the power of the saint were all drawn in this telling of history preserved by the shrine. Another narrative about Shah Nur and Diyanat Khan had similar roles. Reflecting the theme of the authority of the blessed man over the possessor of worldly power, at the same time it likewise demonstrated the kinds of issues with which the saint might help his devotees in the present day. Like many of the sick supplicants at Shah Nur’s shrine in modern times, in the remembered past the minister Diyanat Khan was afflicted with dysentery. Diyanat Khan was worried. Every day he would always go to Shah Nur. But [because he was sick] he couldn’t go [to the shrine] for two or three days. One day he went there with great difficulty. He made his salaams. He was ordered to sit and so he sat down. A disciple (murid) brought bajri bread and aubergine bhurta. Shah Nur ordered Diyanat Khan to eat. He was frightened because both of the things were very ‘hot’ [in nature] and … because he was a victim of dysentery his problems would be worse [if he ate]. But again Shah Nur said, ‘Eat it!’ And so Diyanat Khan ate, and as soon as he ate the food, the dysentery was gone. He became completely healthy. After that Diyanat Khan never thought of leaving Shah Nur. He was ready to leave his ministership, but not Hazrat. Even in the time of his death Diyanat Khan said, ‘After death I will be here.’ He said to Aurangzeb, ‘I don’t want the ministership. Take my resignation. I will simply stay here [in the shrine].’ It was Shah Nur’s miracle (karamat).28 In this interface between saintly history and daily life, in present as in past Aurangabad, the illnesses that so often afflicted the clients of the shrine were here given dignity and lasting record by being transformed into sacred history through the identification of personal pain and misery with the suffering of the pious minister and its miraculous cure by the saint. Here was past history as future hope.

(p.278) Nizam al-Din Remembered Although Shah Nur and the saints of Panchakki were all related in Aurangabad’s remembered history to the city’s early modern rulers, it was the narrative life of Page 13 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad Aurangabad’s most famous saint, Nizam al-Din, that made the most ambitious claims over the Deccan’s former Muslim rulers. This was seen in the story of Nizam al-Din’s association with the founder of Hyderabad State, Nizam al-Mulk. The story was well-known throughout the Deccan and the connection of the two figures was also made in written texts. In the masnawi poem entitled Fakhriyyat al-Nizam, for example, Nizam al-Mulk’s grandson ‘Imad al-Mulk Firuz Jang III (d. 1800) claimed that Nizam al-Mulk had made the Sufi bay‘at or pledge of loyalty at the hands of Nizam al-Din.29 In modern day Aurangabad, one version of the famous meeting described Nizam al-Din as sitting under the tree in the khanaqah that now stands adjacent to his mausoleum when his devotee Qillich Khan (the future Nizam al-Mulk) arrived to see him. During this meeting, Nizam al-Din predicted that Qillich Khan would come to rule a great kingdom, and handed him seven of the nine flat-bread rotis that he held in his hands. After this event, Nizam al-Mulk chose yellow (by tradition, the favourite colour of Nizam al-Din) and the round shape of the roti for the design of his standard, the subsequent flag of the Hyderabad State. The modern-day narrator at the shrine added the exegesis that usually accompanies the story by explaining that as the blessed man had symbolically predicted, the dynasty of Nizam al-Mulk ended two centuries later in 1948 with the seventh of his descendants to rule with the title of Asaf Jah as foretold with the gift of seven rotis.30 In another version of the story, Qillich Khan came to Nizam al-Din asking his permission to found a new state named after himself, but the Sufi refused permission unless the state and the title of its ruler were named (p.279) after himself, that is after Nizam al-Din. Qillich Khan agreed and this, the narrator explained, was how he came to adopt the title of ‘Nizam’.31 Once again, historical agency was taken away from kings—for it was Emperor Farukh Siyar who had awarded Qillich Khan the title of Nizam al-Mulk in Delhi in 1713—and put into the more accessible hands of the saints. In yet another version of the story, the hungry Nizam al-Mulk ate the seven rotis and then asked for more, which Nizam al-Din denied him before explaining the meaning of the gift.32 In the various versions of the narrative, Nizam al-Din was given power not only over the destiny of the temporal ruler of the Deccan (and by extension over his dynastic descendants), but also over the territory of the Deccan and its very existence as an independent polity apart from the north. Reconfiguring one of the major events of eighteenth-century history, the shrine’s ethno-history claimed that it was Nizam al-Din and not Nizam al-Mulk who had re-established the Deccan’s independence from Delhi by founding a state that would endure until the middle of the twentieth century. Nizam al-Din, the southern representative of the great Chishti lineage founded in Delhi by his medieval namesake, Nizam al-Din Awliya (d. 1325), was here imagined as the shaping force behind the Deccan’s history. According to this vision of the past, the Muslims of Aurangabad as represented by their patron saint Nizam al-Din, were not peripheral to the Deccan’s political history as populist Maratha revisionism Page 14 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad would have it, but were instead both its visible and invisible architects. For a disenfranchised former high-status Muslim minority, the shrines served as the focus and preservers of an alternative history in which the destiny of their homeland was shaped by Muslim hands. Yet, just as we have seen earlier how the different ethno- histories of the city’s saints competed for influence over Aurangzeb (p.280) and the other rulers of the region, so was Nizam al-Din’s influence over the first ruler of the Hyderabad State disputed by other shrines in the former state’s territories. In the city of Hyderabad itself, in modern times the story of the seven rotis has not always been connected with any particular saint and it was sometimes merely an unknown dervish who made the mysterious prediction.33 In another shrine tradition from Balapur in the northern Deccan, it was the Naqshbandi blessed man Shah ‘Inayat Allah (d. 1705) who was placed in Nizam al-Din’s role in the narrative.34 What is most interesting is that it was not the story of the seven rotis as such that was disputed, but rather Nizam al-Din’s place in it. Here, the manner of Nizam al-Din’s displacement in the story is testament to the intrinsic power of narrative. For it suggests that more important than the identity of a given saint was the ability to re-imagine and re-present the past that was inherent in historical narrative itself. While in Chapter 5 we have already seen Mughal elites associated with ‘Inayat Allah’s shrine, like the Aurangabad ethnohistories, such ritual narratives must be seen in the living context of a shrine’s maintenance of a clientele. As we saw with the changing biographical narratives of the ‘imaginary migrant’ Shah Nur in Chapter 4, the process of preservation also saw the past being re-imagined, ‘re-membered’, in negotiation with the changing profile of a shrine’s clientele. Like Deogiri/Daulatabad, shrines could have multiple and sometimes competing histories at the same time, placing text and territory into a dynamically productive relationship. Returning to the ethno-history of Nizam al-Din’s shrine in Aurangabad, the saint’s influence was also seen to be behind the history of the region in other ways. As an epilogue to the story of the seven rotis described matters: ‘After becoming emperor Nizam al-Mulk made Aurangabad his capital. So Nizam alDin said, “Two Nizams cannot stay in one place, so you must go from here.” So the Nizam went to Hyderabad.’35 (p.281) In this narrative, we see a conceptual athar or relic of the medieval notion of the territorial wilayat of a Sufi saint.36 Though more commonly interpreted as referring to a region of solely spiritual jurisdiction, the concept of wilayat also contained the political dimension inherent to any sacred geography. Indeed, in administrative vocabulary wilayat did often refer to a region under a given regime’s political control. As Platt’s nineteenth-century Urdu dictionary put it, ‘Walayat or wilayat … dominion, realm, province, government; an inhabited country, a region … sahib-e walayat, s.m. A saint.’37 Nizam al-Din’s territorial role here as saintly éminences grise, as the sahib-e walayat behind the Page 15 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad foundation of the Hyderabad State, was further demonstrated in another widespread narrative. This ethno-history related to Nizam al-Mulk’s victory at the pivotal battle of Shakar Kera in 1724 that brought him lasting control of the Deccan and from which the founding of the Nizams’ dynasty is usually dated. In a version of the story told in Aurangabad: The Nizam had no value at the court due to the Sayyid brothers.38 Before coming here, he thought he should meet [the Sufi] Shah Kalim Allah [of Delhi, d. 1728] and ask him for a prayer (du‘a) and inform him that he was going to the Deccan. So he went and asked for the prayers. Shah Kalim Allah said, ‘I gave the Deccan to Nizam al-Din, so you should go and ask him.’ Nizam al-Mulk said to Shah Kalim Allah, ‘Please give me a letter.’ So Shah Kalim Allah said, ‘Bring something to write with.’ But there was nothing, so Nizam al-Mulk took a potsherd (thikri) and wrote on it, ‘The dog of the world is coming, so give him something.’ So Nizam al-Mulk put that potsherd in his turban and came to the Deccan. When he came close to the Deccan, Nizam al-Din began to say, ‘There is a scent of my pir coming! See if there is anyone coming!’39 So they came to know that Nizam al-Mulk was coming, (p.282) and when Nizam al-Mulk came, Nizam al-Din bowed in respect. The people said, ‘The Sufi will never bow before anyone. How has this happened?’ So Nizam al-Din said, ‘In his turban there is a letter from my master (murshid), and I bow in honour of that.’ Nizam al-Mulk presented Nizam al-Din with the letter and asked for food. So Nizam al-Din gave him seven pieces of roti (roti ke tukre). And history shows that in his dynasty there were only seven emperors. When Nizam al-Mulk came to the Deccan he was very worried. The Deccan was under Mubariz Khan. He was very well placed and his army was bigger than that of the Nizam. So he asked Nizam al-Din, ‘Must I fight Mubariz Khan?’ And the murshid replied, ‘Yes.’ Mubariz Khan was also a murid of another Sufi, whose name was something like Bakrewala Pir. He gave Mubariz Khan a blanket (kambal), and said, ‘While you have this blanket no-one can defeat you.’ And Nizam al-Din told Nizam al-Mulk, ‘Erect a clean and tidy tent and set a guard there and no-one must go inside until I enter.’ And in the tent Nizam al-Din was busy worshipping (’ibadat) for the entire night, and the army was standing guard outside. After the fajr prayer, Nizam al-Din asked his disciples, ‘Is the Nizam here?’ So Nizam alMulk came forward and salaamed him. And Nizam al-Din told him, ‘Go to your tent.’ When he went there, he saw that the blanket was there. Nizam al-Din said, ‘Thank God! The blanket has come, and now you must attack and you will win.’ But Nizam al-Mulk was worried, and said, ‘Show me a clear sign (nishan) of winning and then I will fight.’ So Nizam al-Din said, ‘Good! When you see the marks of handprints on the cloth of your tent, that will be a clear sign of your victory and that will be the day of your victory.’ And the whole army came to know of this and everyone was saying Page 16 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad that Nizam al-Mulk would win if there would be handprints. And one day the handprints were seen on every tent. Nizam al-Mulk attacked and won and so he became emperor.40 The story of the battle had entered the textual tradition at least as early as 1912 when a short Urdu account was given by the Deccani (p.283) historian ‘Abd alJabbar Khan Malkapuri.41 In different forms, such tales of blessed men on battlefields were in any case long known throughout India. Other such oral traditions concerned Nizam al-Din’s Chishti co-disciples Shah Kalim Allah and the Hyderabadi Sufis Shah Yusuf al-Din Qadiri (d. 1709) and Shah Sharaf al-Din Qadiri (d. c. 1709). Like Nizam al-Din, both blessed men travelled across the Deccan with the Mughal armies, and a narrative preserved at their own shrine in Hyderabad and Shah Kalim Allah’s shrine in Delhi reflected the setting in the imperial camp of the story relating to Nizam al-Din. The timing of the narrative, like that of Nizam al-Din’s intercession at the battle of Shakar Khera, was decisively fixed in a clear historical location and in this case related to the Mughal siege of Golkonda in 1687. According to this narrative, the two Sufis Yusuf al-Din and Sharaf al-Din were in their tent one night reading the Quran when, apart from their tent, the whole camp was flattened by a great storm. Here the princely supplicant was Aurangzeb, who immediately came to their tent to beg for help with his campaign, the camp being situated near the great fort of the Qutb Shah rulers of Golkonda. After persistent requests, the blessed men submitted and wrote a message with charcoal on a piece of country tile and then ordered the emperor to deliver it to a cobbler—in fact, a santo incognito— who resided just beneath the fort. Aurangzeb returned from the cobbler with a message, which explained that there was a great spiritual force protecting the fort. Greatly distressed, the emperor again begged the Sufis to help him and in response they wrote another message to the cobbler. On receipt of this message, the saintly cobbler immediately stood up in a frenzy and left his post of guarding the fort. Sure enough, the following day Golkonda fell to the armies of Aurangzeb through the blessed men’s efforts.42 As we have noted with regard to Malkapuri, such battle stories were also registered in the Deccan’s written histories. For example, (p.284) the earlynineteenth-century Tazkirat al-bilad wa’l hukam of Mir Husayn ‘Ali Kirmani (d. after 1810) recorded the help given by the migrant Sufi Shah Miskin Majzub to Munawwar Khan during his siege of Kurnool and in his subsequent encounter with the sultan of Mysore, Haydar ‘Ali.43 What is notable about all of these narratives is that as remnants of a pre-communal historical vision preserved at the shrines, they related to Sufis helping one Muslim polity conquer another. Even in their re-telling amid a context of a Maratha nationalist historical imaginary in the late twentieth century, the narratives maintained this early modern and pre-communal vision of Indo-Islamic history. Blessed men had their friends and their enemies, either of whom might be Muslims.

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad In both the narratives of the siege of Golkonda and of Nizam al-Din’s help on the battlefield we see the same motifs of the cryptic ostrocon, the army camp, the morose prince, and the final military victory with the understated and mysterious help of the migrant blessed man. As well as transforming mundane political history into remembered Heilsgeschichte, the imprecise nature of the Sufis’ help was significant in relation to the kinds of miracles witnessed by modern-day clients of their shrines, around which the narratives themselves were recounted. For whatever their visible outcomes, the precise means of saintly miracles are described by modern-day believers as being like those employed by the saints in the battlefield narratives, that is, as more often subtle than spectacular in their operation, as invisible hands behind the visible events of history. In this sense, in the spatial setting of the shrines the narratives acted as prototypes of a saintly modus operandi of modest and oblique miracle-making against which clients could assess fortunate episodes in their own lives. Mirroring community history with present individual experience, the stories of saints formed a means by which collective and private history could intersect, making history present and meaningful in the lives of its remembrancers. In the narratives of historical memory associating Nizam al-Din with the foundation of the Hyderabad State, we see the reflection of the much more widespread concern with questions of origins that at various points in this volume we have seen Sufis (p.285) connected to. In India, as in neighbouring Muslim regions, such foundation stories have long been associated with Sufi figures and provide some of the most memorable narratives in many Muslim historical traditions in both textual and oral form.44 In the Deccan, it was the story of Nizam al-Din and Nizam al-Mulk that became the most famous of these in that it related to the formation of the last significant Muslim-ruled state in the region. A similar aetiological narrative related to the foundation of another eighteenth-century successor state, whereby the wandering Sufi Sabir Shah granted Ahmad Shah Abdali (r. 1747–73) the nascent state of Afghanistan by placing a wheat crown upon his head during his coronation ceremony. In Afghanistan, as in Hyderabad, the story was still widely recounted in the twentieth century.45 As we have seen earlier in this chapter, even the historian Khafi Khan described a visit by Aurangzeb to Shaykh Burhan at Burhanpur during the course of which the blessed man confirmed Aurangzeb’s kingship.46 Other such early modern stories related to the foundation of pre-Mughal Muslim cities and dynasties in the Deccan. The city of Burhanpur was narrativized as having been established by the Sufi Burhan al-Din Gharib (d. 1337) of Khuldabad, while the rule of the Qutb Shahs of Golkonda was similarly seen to have had such Sufi origins. Golkonda’s last ruler, Abu’l Hasan Tana Shah (d. 1699), was also said to have been elevated to kingship through the powers of the descendants of Shah Raju Qattal, at whose shrine in Khuldabad we saw him being buried in Chapter 5.47 In neighbouring Gujarat, the foundation of Ahmadabad was long associated with its Sufi namesake, Ahmad Khattu (d. Page 18 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad 1446), at whose shrine in the city several of the sultans of Gujarat were buried.48 These issues of collective genesis, of state, city, and local community, later formed (p.286) one of the main themes of the oral tradition of the Aurangabad shrines, which served to preserve the memory of Mughal and Asaf Jah history even at the end of the twentieth century. For in Aurangabad, the narrative of the rotis given by Nizam al-Din to Nizam alMulk provided an aetiological charter for the Hyderabad State that diminished the moral culpability of its first ruler Nizam al-Mulk for breaking faith with his imperial master in Delhi by detaching the Deccan from the Mughal Empire. In a retrospective gilding of events and intentions, the story (first written down as we have seen in 1912) served to legitimize a state whose origins were frequently viewed as more opportunist than ennobling.49 Right up to its dissolution in 1948, the Hyderabad State’s connections to the Mughal past remained politically important: for this reason the Nizams had continued to attend the ‘urs of Aurangzeb at Khuldabad until the mid-twentieth century, approaching the imperial tomb as barefooted vassals in the ritual perpetuation of memory. Whether featuring Nizam al-Din or his rival Shah ‘ Inayat Allah, for those Muslims in Aurangabad who at the end of the twentieth century chose to remember the Hyderabad State as part of their historical identity, the narrative of the rotis lent the former state both political dignity and divine purpose. Seen against the social position in which many disenfranchised Hyderabadi Muslims found themselves in independent India, and the Marathi and Indian nationalist narratives of Hyderabadi oppression and backwardness, the shrines of the saints served as spaces of memory that preserved and promoted an alternative recollection of history, a re-membering of the Nizam’s state as a moral polity founded through the blessing and approval of God’s saintly friends. Here was not the disenchanted reading of early modern history promoted by the secular Muslim scholars of Aligarh, but a popular and in some senses subaltern history of a Muslim minority who found meaning in their past through narrating the presence of divine agency in their architectural midst. (p.287) Such narratives were by no means the unique preserve of Muslim blessed men and in line with what we saw in Chapter 7 of parallel aetiological narratives based around Sufis and Brahmins, many comparable traditions existed with regard to Hindu blessed men, Yogis in particular. These too functioned in a narrative framework embedded in factual political events, so serving to re-interpret, to re-member history in a theocentric, cultic, and partisan direction. An example relevant to the Aurangabad ethno-histories is the account of the foundation of the state of Nepal in 1768 by Prthivinarayan Shah with the aid of the Nath Yogi, Bhagavantanath.50 The similarly remembered role of Mastnath (d. c. 1808) in helping Man Singh of Marwar to regain his throne from his treacherous cousin Bhim Singh during the siege of Chittor echoed the narrative structure of the Aurangabad ethno-histories.51 For like Shah Nur of Aurangabad, Mastnath also had a taste for the moral shortcomings of the Page 19 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad Mughal emperors, and in a reflection of Nizam al-Din’s prediction of the dynastic limits of Asaf Jah rule, one nineteenth-century hagiography described Mastnath predicting the demise of Shah ‘Alam and the downfall of the Mughals en somme. Surviving from the early modern era to find new resonance in the age of nationalist and communalist historiographies, these alternative histories of India’s past survived through their interdependence with the surviving cultic spaces of Hindu and Muslim blessed men alike. In new social and political contexts, the texts and territories of the saints continued to function as the memory spaces for south Indian Muslims in a postcolonial and post-Hyderabad era in which the Muslim role in tellings of Indian history was increasingly diminished.

The Anchors of Memory The narratives recounted at Aurangabad’s shrines show how the power and prestige of the saints was inseparable from that of (p.288) their city’s early modern golden age. Although in their ongoing posthumous careers as miraculous agents the saints moved through time as immortals made by architecture, through the recounting of deeds enacted long ago during their mortal careers, they and their shrines carried history along with them. When the Muslim rulers and notables of the Indian south had long disappeared, their memory lingered in narratives that created a history for their communities of memory that was structured around the firm anchorage of patronal blessed men rendered permanent by the presence of their shrines. In a contrast that local pilgrims to Aurangabad’s shrines often drew, while the tomb of Aurangabad’s initial founder Malik ‘Ambar lies forgotten and neglected in Khuldabad, the surrounding shrines of the saints are still filled with visitors who recount story after story of their lives. Such remarks remind us that it was invariably the memory of the saints, shored up by shrine, narrative, and ritual, that lingered when almost everything else of their age was forgotten. Standing at once in both the present and the past, and entwining the itinerant details of their own local and distant deeds with grand episodes of state in the history of the Deccan at large, Aurangabad’s shrines helped both to shape and transmit a sense of historical identity among their communities of memory. By positioning the saint at the narrative centre of key historical events, the past was not only recollected but re-membered, its parts put together according to a template placing historical agency in the hands of the saintly patrons of king and pauper alike. The continuation from early modern to modern times of features of this enchanted, anti-Newtonian, and religious model of history was integral to the preservation of the saintly shrines in turn, which needed to be continually enlivened by the tales of saintly power that bring pilgrims to their gates. Whatever the epistemic breaks experienced by other traditions of historical narration in India, the continued topographic presence of the shrines and their saints’ continued intervention in the lives of their followers have helped to ensure the continuity of history itself. It has created the Muslim communities of Page 20 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad memory who despite the downturn of economic and political fortunes continue to see themselves as heirs to an imperial age of Muslim saints and kings. Fixed around the shrines that provoke and preserve the telling of (p.289) these tales, this is a history that connects its recounters to the spaces of their homelands as texts that connect their remembrancers to their territories. At the end of the twentieth century, stories of saints and sultans made up the most popular part of the Muslim ethno-history preserved at Aurangabad’s Mughal-era shrines. Rarely seen alone or dealing with the ordinary people of the world, the saint was encountered through narratives placing him in direct relationship with the rulers of the states that once centred on Aurangabad. It was here that the concrete visual evidence of the grand saintly shrines acted as the medium between narrative imagination and historical fact. For as the tangible outcome of actions of patronage, the shrines made narratives of royal saintly followings credible to their audiences. Here was an essential sense of narrative reality, since in the stories the saints showed their ability to have visible agency in the world and so help in the daily needs that the shrines’ clients continued to address to them. If this reminds us of the interdependent links between architecture and narrative, between and memory, then it also tells us that the early modern past was still meaningful, alive, and accessible at the end of the twentieth century as blessed men who died three hundred years earlier continued to act in the lives of their followers. Accessible through the shrines built by their imperial patrons of former times, the persons and spaces of the saints continue to generate new narratives in the many life-histories of saintly intervention recounted by those who still gather at the shrines. In these new stories told every year in the shrines of cities like Aurangabad, the history of the Deccan’s early modern migrants is still being made. Notes:

(1) For further discussion, see Hardy (1960). (2) Digby (1990a) and Nizami (1949–50). (3) For South Asia, see Bayly, ‘Cult Saints, Heroes, and Warrior Kings: South Asian Islam in the Making’, in Yandell and Paul (2000) and Kulke (1993). For Europe, see Klaniczay (2000) and Nelson, ‘Royal Saints and Early Medieval Kingship’, in Baker (1973). (4) For theoretical perspectives on oral tradition and the study of the past, see Copland (1988) and Heehs (1994). On the operation of spoken memory, see Goody, ‘Memory in Oral Tradition’, in Fara and Patterson (1998). (5) For a spatial reading of the oral tradition of the Aurangabad shrines, see also Green (2004c). For other oral narratives concerning Sufi saints, see Digby, ‘To Ride a Tiger or a Wall? Strategies of Prestige in Indian Sufi Legend’, in

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad Callewaert and Snell (1994), Snell (2000), Elwell-Sutton (1968), and Bruinessen (1991). (6) Seely (1824), p. 347. (7) For a modern sociological study of Aurangabad’s Muslim community, see Khan, ‘Social Change among the Muslims of Aurangabad City’, in Engineer (1995). (8) On the question of folk motifs in Persian historiography, see Perry (1986). (9) Gokhale (1998) and Hansen (1999). On Maratha kings in oral and written poetic traditions, see Laine, ‘Śivājī as Epic Hero’, in Sontheimer (1995). (10) Ghulām ‘Ali Āzād Bilgrāmī (1996), ‘Abd al-Jabbār Malkapūrī (1912), and Rawnaq ‘Alī (2000). (11) On these themes in contemporary Egypt, see Reeves (1990). (12) Cf. Scott (1985). (13) Gill and Fergusson (1864), p. 72. (14) ‘The Durgahs and Mahomedan Saints of Hindostan’ (1836). (15) Osman Khan, interview, 7 November 1999. This and the following narratives were recounted in Urdu and recorded for later analysis and translation. I am most grateful to my friend Bashar Nawaz for helping me collect, transcribe, and translate some of these narratives. (16) Qazi Zaruruddin, interview, 4 December 1999. (17) Yahya Maghrebi, one of Panchakki’s two sajjadah nashins, interview, 22 December 1999. (18) Yahya Maghrebi, interview, 22 December 1999. (19) Yahya Maghrebi, interview, 23 January 2000. (20) Hādī Naqshbandī (1996), pp. 17–18. (21) For a recent study of the role of morality in an Indian oral tradition, see Blackburn (2001). (22) Sharrafuddin Siddiqui, head of Shah Nur’s shrine committee, interview, 22 December 1999. (23) Abdul Hamid Khan, khādim at Shāh Nūr’s hujrah in the Mochiwara quarter of Aurangabad, interview, 20 December 2000. Page 22 of 24

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad (24) Crooke (1926), p. 99. (25) Khafi Khan (1975), pp. 544–5. (26) Manucci (1907–8), vol. 3, p. 202. (27) Dada Pir, interview, 19 October 1999. (28) Shivaji, a Hindu devotee of Shah Nur, interview, 15 January 2000. (29) Khān, Masnawī-ye Fakhriyyat al-Nizām, ms, pp. 92–3. I have consulted a copy held at the shrine of Nizam al-Din in Aurangabad. (30) Anonymous visitor to the shrine of Nizam al-Din, interview, 18 October 1999. A similar version of this story is given in Shakeb, ‘The Role of the Sufis in the Changing Society of the Deccan, 1500–1750’, in Lewisohn and Morgan (1999), p. 375. (31) Yaqub Ali, devotee of Nizam al-Din and murid of the late sajjada nashīn of the shrine of Qaysar Miyan, interview, 29 October 1999. (32) Bashar Nawaz, resident of Aurangabad, 8 January 2000. Another version, in which Nizam al-Mulk could eat no more than seven loaves, is recorded in Luther (1997), pp. 6–7. (33) Ibid. (34) Zahir ul-Islam Naqshbandi, brother of the current sajjadah nashin of Shah ‘Inayat, interview, Balapur, 28 September 2000. (35) Nurul Hasnayn, resident of Aurangabad, interview, 18 January 2000. (36) Radtke, ‘The Concept of Wilaya in Early Sufism’, in Lewisohn (1993). (37) Platts (1884), p. 1200. (38) On these major players in eighteenth-century politics, see Rizvi (1980). (39) The motif of the master’s sacred odour is a well-known one and the wellknown nineteenth-century hagiographer Ghulām Sarwar Lāhawrī also used the motif in describing Nizam al-Din’s first encounter with his master, Shāh Kalīm Allāh. See ‘Abd al-Sattār ibn Qāsim Lāhawrī (1894), p. 464. The story of the scent of the approaching pīr was also known in a version relating to Nizam alDin Awliya of Delhi. (40) Nurul Hasnayn, interview, 18 January 2000. In another version (Syed Hassan, devotee of Nizam al-Din, interview, 16 February 2000), the second Sufi is named Shaykh Chādarpōsh, with whom Nizam al-Din was ‘fighting a spiritual

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Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad war’. The handprints in this alternative version were described as yellow, the favourite colour of Nizam al-Din. (41) ‘Abd al-Jabbār Khān Malkapūrī (1912), pp. 1097–8. (42) This version was recorded in Prasad (1969). It is also known in Aurangabad and another version of the story was related to me in September 2003 in Delhi by a khādim of the shrine of the saints’ master, Shah Kalim Allah. (43) Meer Hussain Ali Kirmani (1996), pp. 252–4. (44) DeWeese (2000) and Taylor (1990). (45) Muhammad Ali (1963) and Mīr Ghulām Muhammad Ghubār (1939). Also Kohzad (1951). (46) Khafi Khan (1975), pp. 13 and 544–5. (47) On Burhanpur, see Ernst (1992b), pp. 227–30. On the Qutb Shahs, see Sherwani (1974), pp. 601–2. (48) Desai, ‘The Major Dargahs of Ahmadabad’ in Troll (1989), pp. 76–81. (49) For modern South Asian Muslim readings of Nizām al-Mulk’s political agenda, see Husain (1963) and Nayeem, ‘Political Status of Nizamu’l Mulk Asaf Jah-I in the Deccan (1713–1748 AD)’, in Taher (1997). (50) Bouiller, ‘The King and his Yogi: Prthivinarayan Şah, Bhagavantanath and the Unification of Nepal in the Eighteenth Century’ in Neelsen (1991). (51) White, ‘The Exemplary Life of Mastnāth: the Encapsulation of Seven Hundred Years of Nāth Siddha Hagiography’, in Mallison (2001).

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Index

Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

(p.321) Index A’in-e Akbari (Abu’l Fazl) 26, 84, 100, 103 A‘zam Shah, Mughal ruler 24, 167 ‘Abd al-Ghani 218, 219 ‘Abd al-Latif, Sayyid 156, 197 ‘Abd al-Rahim Khan-e Khanan 161, 163 ‘Abd al-Rahim, Sayyid 156 ‘Abd al-Rashid ‘Pathan’, Qays 83, 99 ‘Abd al-Razzaq, Shah 171 Abdali, Ahmad Shah, Afghan ruler 285 Abraham/Ibrahim, Prophet 86 Abu Bakr, Khatib 38 Abu al-Hasan (11th century) 39 Abu al-Hasan (Chishti Sufi, d.1678) 165 Abu al-Hasan (Qutb Shahi ruler, d.1702) 158, 167, 285 Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili 136 Abu al-Hasan al-Shakkaz 45 Abu al-Muzaffar 159 Abu Sa‘id 6, 40 Abu’l Fazl 84 acculturation and ‘conversion’ 4, 6, 17, 119, 122 Adam (Prophet) 18 Adam's Peak, Sri Lanka 18 Adham, Ibrahim ibn 18, 145 Adhan, Shaykh 56 ‘Adil Shah, sultans of Deccan 118, 153, 156 Afghan(s) in India 64–70 Lodi and Sur rulers 66, 68, 70–3 after Mughals 108–15 tribal lineages 17, 91 al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din 141 Page 1 of 19

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Index Aflaki, Shams al-Din 42 Afro-Indian Siddis 28 Afsana-ye shahan (Shaykh Kabir) 79, 82 Afsus, Shir ‘Ali 60 Aftab-e Dakan (Tara Sahib Qureshi) 139–40 Ahmad Khattu 24, 178, 285 Ahmad-e Jam, Shaykh 23, 74 Ahrar, Ubaydullah 16, 132 Ahsan al-shama’il (Kamgar Khan) 213 ‘Aja’ib al-lughat (Illahyar Khan) 113 Akbar (Mughal Emperor) 24, 25, 26, 27, 43, 51, 52, 56, 61, 74, 76, 90, 100, 103, 168, 177, 178, 185 (p.322) Akbar Shah II, Mughal Emperor 24 Akbarabadi, Habib Allah 57 Akhbar al-akhyar (‘Abd al-Haqq Muhadis) 54–5, 250 Akhbar al-awliya (‘Abd Allah Khweshgi) 95, 164 ‘Alawi, Shaykh Ba 57 ‘Ali Sarwar Lodi Shahu Khayl 93–4 ‘Ali Shah, Safi 141 ‘Ali, Nehri, Shah 183–4 Amanat Khan 173 Amin, Mirza 161 Amir Nawaz Jang 189 Anangaranga (Kalyana Malla) 79 Ansari, ‘Ali Muhammad 94 Ansari, Bayazid 107 Ansari, Mahmud Siddiqi 192 Anwar al-Din Khan 167 Arabo-Islamic norms 99 Arabophone sayyids of Shustar 13 ‘Aras-e buzurgan (Shaykh Ba ‘Alawi) 57 architecture and history 255–62 Arus-e ‘irfan (Mahmud Bahri) 59 Asaf Jah, Nizam rulers of Hyderabad/Deccan 28, 30, 61, 129, 202, 285 patronage of saintly space 151–3, 154–5, 157–60, 162–3, 164–5, 166, 169, 174–6, 179, 182, 188, 191, 192, 195, 197, 198–9 Ashuri Begam 166 Asrar al-nikah (Ahmad Kasani) 48 Asrar-e masnawi (‘Abdullah Khweshgi) 78 Athar al-baqiyyah (al-Biruni) 262 Athar al-sanadid (Sayyid Ahmad Khan) 262 ‘Atr-e Nawras Shahi, 51 ‘Attar, Farid al-Din 14 Aurangabad 59, 95, 134 new imperial capital 170–85 patronage of shrines 146, 147, 151, 161, 166–7, 169 remembering history at the shrines 31, 32, 260–89 Sufi settlers 12, 17, 21, 31, 118, 122, 128–9, 130–3, 138, 139 Sufi shrines 57, 58, 61, 126, 129, 132, 144 Page 2 of 19

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Index use of books in takiyya 209–19 Aurangzeb/Awrangzeb, Mughal Emperor 24, 25, 26, 52, 53, 58, 104, 132, 220, 222, 239, 256, 261, 267–76, 279, 283, 285–6 patronage of Sufi shrines 148–2, 153–8, 159–61, 163–6, 169–9, 170, 174, 182–84, 185–90, 192–96 ‘Awarif al-ma‘arif (‘Umar Suhrawardi) 9, 12, 27 (p.323) Awliya, Nizam al-Din of Delhi 24, 25, 49, 52, 72, 77, 110, 127, 147, 148, 166, 236, 237, 260 Awliya, Qadir 148, 182 Awliya, Tipu Mastan 156, 197 Awrangabadi, Nizam al-Din 11–12, 57, 130, 18–9, 180, 181, 213, 217–25, 237, 268, 271, 278–87 Babur, Mughal Emperor 16, 21, 72, 74, 77, 80, 105, 130 patronage of Sufi shrines 146, 147 Baburnama (Babur) 16 Badshah Begam, queen of Awadh 37 Baghdadi, Sayyid Ibrahim 156 Bahadur Shah Zafar, Mughal Emperor 24 Bahar u Khazan (Baha’ al-Din Hasan ‘Uruj) 138, 139 Bahmani sultans 21, 23, 26, 27, 127, 152, 153, 166, 189, 186 Bahmani, Ahmad Shah 154 Bahri, Mahmud 59 Baji Rao, Maratha ruler 271 Bakhtiyar Kaki, Qutb al-Din 21, 24, 37, 56, 74, 89, 147 Bala Shah, Pir 192 Balapur, town in Deccan 174 provincial Sufi settlement 159–62 Balkh, city in Central Asia 16, 142, 143 Bang-e dara (Sir Muhammad Iqbal) 116 Baqi Bi’llah Birang Naqshbandi Sufi 106 Baqli, Ruzbihan 46, 47 Baraich Afghan tribe 94, 98 Baraich, Shaykh Bustan (d.1593) 80, 98 Baraich, Shaykh Sabit 94 barakat (‘blessing power’) 1, 2, 97 Barakat al-awliya (Imam al-Din Naqwi) 132 Barani, Ziya al-Din 260 Barelwi school of theology 38 Barki, Mawlana Ahmad 106 Basilat Jang, jagirdar of Adoni 198 Batni Afghan tribe 88, 89, 99 Batni, Khalilullah 74 Batni, Shaykh ‘Ali Mizyani 72 Battuta, Ibn 18, 251 Bava Gor, Afro-Indian shrine, Gujarat 144 Bayt, Shaykh 99, 100 Beda Nayaka rulers 248 Beed, town in Deccan 185–96 Bengal Muslim spaces 121 Page 3 of 19

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Index Bhagavantanath, Nath Yogi 287 Bhakti poets 102 Bhillama V, Yadava ruler 246 Bhim Singh, ruler of Gohad 287 Bhimsen 154, 155 Bhongir, town in Deccan 249 Bidar 167 former Bahmani capital 163–67 Muslim reorganization 163 Bijapur, ‘Adil Shahi capital 149, 150, 160 (p.324) conquered by Mughals 155–9 Bilgrami, Ghulam ‘Ali Azad 18, 19, 20, 95, 134–7, 167, 175, 180, 184, 210, 220, 222, 232, 233–41, 242–4, 248–50, 256–8, 265, 266 al-Biruni, Abu Rayhan 248 books to bureaucrats, knowledge as information 220–4 institutionalization 11 of memory (zakira) 205, 207 use in a late Mughal takiyya 201–227 tazkira 205 Brahmins and Sufis in a landscape of narratives 229–59 narrative competition 146 Brahmins of Konkan 258 Brajbhasha (language) 79, 102 bridal symbolism 44–6 Budhan, Baba 198 Burhan al-Din Gharib 36, 169, 183, 236, 285 Burhanpur, city in Deccan Mughal architectural and literary patronage in 159–60, 161, 168 burial and enshrinement 4, 18, 25, 125, 144 Burton, Sir Richard 37, 79 Chahar Aymaq, Afghan-Turkish tribe 100 Chandni Chabutra, Bidar 163 Chardin, John 59 Chich Begam 182 Chishti Sufis/Chishtiyya 9, 12, 13, 52, 78, 89, 157, 163, 183, 267 Chishti, Allah Diya ibn ‘Abd al-Rahim 55 Chishti, Khwaja Mawdud 97 Chishti, Mu‘in al-Din 21, 24, 26, 51, 56, 72, 122, 123 Chishti, Salim 23, 24, 178 Chishti, Shams al-Din 143 Christianity 122 commemorative mechanisms 3 Coromandel Coast, Chishti shrines of 29 ‘corruption’ of Sufism 21 cosmopolitanism contradictions of Islam in India 70–82 Dabhar, Khandi Rao 192 Dabistan-e mazahib (anon., attributed to Muhsin Fani) 223 Page 4 of 19

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Index Dakani Urdu literature 50–1 Damri Mahal, Aurangabad 181 Danishmand, Afghan Sufis 96 Danishmand, Ibrahim 96 Dara Shikuh, Mughal prince 15, 274 Darwesh, Shaykh Muhammad 96 Daulatabad. See Deogiri and Daulatabad David/Da’ud 79 Dawi, Abu Ishaq 91 al-Daymani, Walid wuld Khaluna 85 (p.325) Deccan Muslim architecture 144–7, 149–54, 160–64, 167–72, 174–82, 186–7, 191, 194–5, 198–201 Naqshbandi shrines 29 sultanates 12, 127, 154, 260 Delhi sultanates 9, 48, 226 sultans, 229, 230, 231, 232, 240 Deogiri and Daulatabad 30, 196, 230–4, 238, 239–42 landscape of Rajas and Brahmins 243–52 a narrative landscape 255–8 devotee (murid, mukhlis) 88 diaspora consciousness 67 didactic and doctrinal manuals 9 Dihlawi, Abd al-Haqq. See al-Haqq, ‘Abd Muhadis Dihlawi, Jamali 49, 76, 77, 78 Diyanat Khan 138, 170, 172, 173, 190, 222, 267, 272, 274–9 Din-panah Mughal palace 24 Divine unity (tawhid-e haqq-e ta‘ala) 79 Dughlat, Mirza Muhammad Haydar 101 Durga Devi (Jamal Ara Begam), Hindu princess 195 Durrani, Ahmad Shah, Afghan Emperor 112 Eknath, Maratha sant 251 Ellichpur, Panni Afghan nawwabs of 162 erotic symbolism 50 ethnic factionalism 86 Fakhriyyat al-nizam (‘Imad al-Mulk Firuz Jang III) 278 Farid al-Din Ganj-e Shakar 9, 49, 239 Faridun Khan 148 Farmuli, Shah Muhammad 79 Faruqi sultans of Khandesh, Deccan 253, 254 Fatehpur Sikri 24 Fatawa-e ‘Alamgiri 149 Fawa’id al-fu‘ad (Amir Hasan Sijzi) 49 Fergusson, James 267 Firdaws al-murshidiyya fi asrar al-samadiyya (Mahmud ibn ‘Usman) 39 Firdaws, Shaykh Rukn al-Din 54 Firishta, Abu’l Qasim 241, 260 Firuz Jang I, Ghazi al-Din Khan 174, 190, 193 Page 5 of 19

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Index Firuz Jang III, ‘Imad al-Mulk 278 Fusus al-Hikam (Muhyi al-Din Ibn ‘Arabi) 45 al-Fuwati, Ibn 41 Gabriel/Jibra’il, angel 39 Gada’i, Shaykh 77 Gaekwar, Pilaji 193 Ganga Ram 233, 235–6, 244–58, 268 Gangohi, ‘Abd al-Quddus 73 (p.326) Gangohi, Rashid Ahmad 37 Gavilgad fortress 249 Gedächtnisraum (‘memory space’) 16 genealogies (silsila), genealogical organizing principle 85–8, 100–1, 140, 144 geographies 35, 68, 102, 132, 154 cosmopolitan 114 of knowledge 12, 13 of memory 17, 27, 136, 147, 255, 263 Muslim geographies outside India 128, 129 Muslim geographies, spatial narratives of 19, 119–26 pilgrimage 39 sacred 110 of slave trade 63 created by Sufi shrines/Sufi settlers 16, 29, 82, 93, 129, 138, 140, 144, 166, 195, 198–200 of settlement and internment 18 Gesu Daraz, Muhammad al-Husayni, 21, 123, 127, 158, 184 shrine at Gulbarga 152–55, 160, 179, 191 al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid 45 Ghazi, Salar Mas‘ud 37, 81 Ghaznavi sultans 5 Ghulam Husayn Khan 61 Ghur sultans 100 Ghurghusht Afghan tribe 88, 89 Gill, Major 267 Gingee fort, Tamil Nadu 249 Gobind Singh, Guru 219 Golkonda, Qutb Shah capital 61, 153, 157, 158, 249 Mughal siege 283, 284 Gor, Baba, Afro-Indian saint 63 Gulbadan Begam, Mughal princess 75 Gulbarga Chishti shrines of 132 patronage of Sufi institutions 164, 197 shrine of Gesu Daraz 20, 123, 152–55, 160, 179, 184, 191 Sufi settlement in 127, 136, 142 Gulzar-e asafiyya (Ghulam Husayn Khan) 61 Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad 17, 55 Hafiz ‘Ali Shah 13, 62, 81, 157, 215 Hafiz Rahmat Khan, Indo-Afghan ruler 109, 111 hagiographical writings 3–4, 10, 15–16, 20, 100, 126, 140, 144, 147 Page 6 of 19

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Index Hajji ‘Ali, shrine of, Bombay 125–6 al-Hallaj, Mansur 16 Hama, town in Syria 140, 182 Hamadani, ‘Ali 139, 237 Hamanda Punt (Hemadri) 245, 247, 249–53, 255–6 (p.327) al-Hamid, Shah 125 Hamida Begam, Mughal princess 23 Hammami, Shah Nur 58, 137–43, 170, 222, 183, 190, 223, 252–67 Hamu, Khwaja 94 Hanafi jurisprudence 149, 220 Hanbal, Ibn 36 al-Haqq, ‘Abd al-Haqq Muhadis 55 Hasan Abdal, north Indian town 104, 125, 180 Hasan Rasulnuma, Sufi Sayyid 148 al-Hasan, Abu 39 Hasanat al-abrar (Muhammad Murad) 15 Hatim Ta’i 142 Hayat Khan, Muhammad 109 Hayat-e Afghan (Muhammad Hayat Khan) 109 Haydar ‘Ali 198, 284 Hayza, Shaykh Kabir 73 Hazarat al-quds (Badr al-Din Sirhindi) 106 Hazrat Makan, shrine of Vellore 197 Heilsgeschichte (‘sacred history’) 120, 145, 284 heretical and deviatory sect (mazhab-e zandaqa wa ilhad) 90 Hijaz 120 Hills, Henry, English printer 203 Hindu temples architecture 161 destruction 163 Hindwi literature 50, 79–80, 102 historiography (tarikh texts) 85, 102, 108, 110, 114, 205–6, 245, 265, 272 Holkar, Ahilyabai, Maratha ruler of Indore 256 Holkar Maratha dynasty 248 al-Hujwiri, ‘Ali ibn ‘Usman 5, 117, 123, Humayun, Mughal Emperor 23, 24, 25 70, 72, 73, 75, 77 Humayun-nama (Gulbadan Begam) 74 Husam al-Din Khan 163 Husam al-Din, Shaykh ‘Ali bin 56 Husayn, Shah 100 Husayni, Razi al-Din Raju Qattal 158 Husayni, Sayyid Achpal 190 Husayni, Sayyid Haydar 183 al-Husayni, Sayyid Yusuf 243 Husayni, Shah Asad Allah 198 Hussayniyya Shi‘i ritual spaces 120 Hyderabad. See also Deccan conquered by Mughals 155–9 Nizams of 53, 61, 141, 208, 230, 259 Page 7 of 19

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Index official self-conception 141 Ilahyar Khan 113, 114 Iltutmish, Shams al-Din 55 image worship 243 Imam ‘Ali 61 (p.328) imambarga/imambara shrines 38, 120 ‘Inayat Allah 159, 160–1, 162, 271, 280, 286 Indo-Muslim history 15, 17, 262 religious knowledge 228 social hierarchy of the ashraf (‘nobles’) 139 infidelity (kufr) 232, 243 institutional dimension of making of Muslim space 146–200 inter-regionalism 35 Iqbal, Sir Muhammad 116 Iraj Khan, Nawwab 161 Islam/Islamic 1, 4, 7, 17, 21, 81, 99, 101, 128, 152 Heilsgeschichte (‘Sacred History’) 144 matrimonial customs 35 moral and cosmic order 2 orthodoxy 149 reading habits 208 religious idiom 68 textuality in India 16 Itthal (Vitthal), Maratha patron of Sufis 191 Ja‘far Khan, Sayyid 193 Ja‘far Sharif 62 Jahanara Begam, Mughal princess 16, 53, 148 Jahangir, Mughal Emperor 24, 26, 51, 85, 90, 103, 106, 114 Jahangirjascandrika (Keshavdas) 102 Jai Singh, Mughal general 160 Jajal al-Din Ganj-e Rawan 239, 243 Jalna region (inc. Beed, Vaizapur, Paithan) 1852–96 Jamal al-Din, Shaykh 60 Jamal, Babu 60 Jami, ‘Abd al-Rahman 46 Jamil Beg Khan 179 Jamshid Khan 185 Janardhan Swami, Maratha sant 251 Janbhasha, north Indian dialect 114 Jat tribal peoples 125 defeat at the hands of Afghans 112 Jawahir al-Faridi (‘Ali Asghar Khan of Bahadal) 48 Jawahir-e khamsa (Muhammad Ghaws of Gwalior) 9 al-Jawzi, Ibn 37, 41 Jilani, ‘Abd al-Qadir (of Baghdad) 16, 122, 164, 182, 274 Judaism 122 Judeo-Muslim prophets 79 Kabuli, Muhammad Sadiq 106 Page 8 of 19

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Index Kakar, Haybat Khan 83 Kakar, Malik Adam 95 Kakar Afghan tribe 91, 97 Kalan Khan, Mir 165 Kale Miyan 24 Kali Masjid, Aurangabad 163 Kalimullah, Shah 10 11, 12, 218, 237, 281–3 Kalimat al-sadiqin (Muhammad Sadiq Kashmiri) 54 Kalyana Malla, Sanskrit author 79 (p.329) Kamgar Khan, Muhammad 181, 223 Karani Afghan tribe 91 Karbala, city in Iraq 120 Karim Muhammad, Sayyid 156 Kasani, Ahmad 48 Kashani, Mu‘iz-al-Din 9 Kashf al-mahjub (‘Ali ibn ‘Usman al-Hujwiri) 5, 8, 9, 20 Kashf al-lughat (‘Abd al-Rahim ibn Ahmad Suri) 78 Kashkul-e kalimi (Shah Kalimullah) 10 Kashmiri traditions 121 Kashmiri, Muhammad Sadiq 54 Kazaruni Sufi brotherhood 114 al-Kazaruni, Abu Ishaq 39, Keshavdas 103 Khafi Khan 186–7, 274, 285 Khajinda, Pir 239 Khalilullah Khan 148 Khalilullah, Mir 163 Khalilullah, Shah (Nim‘atullahi Sufi) 27, 128, 164 Khalji, ‘Ala’ al-Din, Khalji sultan 52, 237 Khalji, Mahmud, Khalji sultan 25 Khalji sultans 25, 231 Khallikan, Ibn 43 Khan Dawran 189 Khan, Sir Sayyid Ahmad 262 Khandesh, region of Deccan 168, 254 Khandoba, Maratha god 192, 256 Khattak, Afzal Khan 109 Khawwas Khan, Masnad-e ‘Ali 72, 73 Khayr, Abu Sa‘id ibn Abi al- 40 Khazana-ye amira (Ghulam ‘Ali Azad Bilgrami) 175 Khirki (former name of Aurangabad) 167, 185, 261 Khizr Khan, Hajji 106 Khizr, Khwaja 95 khujista bunyad (title of Aurangabad) 150 Khulasat al-ansab (Hafiz Rahmat Khan) 100, 108, 109, 111–13 Khuldabad, town in Deccan 25, 266, 272, 285, 286, 288 Brahmins and Sufis 236, 237, 239, 240, 241, 242, 246, 255, 256, 257 medieval Sufi and royal necropolis 167–9 patronage of saintly space 151, 158, 166, 177, 182, 183, 185, 189, 194, 197 Page 9 of 19

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Index migrant Sufis and sacred space 121, 127, 132, 135, 137 ‘urs of 52, 58, 61 Khurasan, Khurasani Sufis 6, 12, 17, 23, 27, 39, 40, 41, 46, 49 Khusraw, Amir 48, 77, 232, 241 Khwan-e pur-e ni‘mat (Sharaf al-Din Maneri) 49 Khweshgi, ‘Abd Allah 78, 95–6 Khweshgi Afghan clan, 78, 95–7, 164 (p.330) Khweshgi, Ahmad Khan 164 Khweshgi, Shaykh Wato Shuriyani 96–7 kinship and ethnicity 71, 76, 78, 82, 87 Kirmani, Awhad al-Din 46 Kirmani, Mir Husayn ‘Ali 198, 248, 284 Kitab fi tahqiq ma li’l-hind (al-Biruni) 248 Knowledge, transformed into information 227–8 knowledge, institutionalization of 228 Kone dynasty, Tamil Nadu 249 Konkani Brahmins 258 Koti mosque, Paithan 196 Krishna, Hindu God 102 Kulal, Amir 100 Kurds 86 Kurnool, siege by Haydar ‘Ali 283 Kuta Khayl, Afghan tribe 100, 111, 112 Kuta Shihab al-Din, Shaykh 100 linguistic movement 10 lodges and madrasas 11 Lodi and Sur, Indo-Afghan sultans 66, 71, 80, 102 Lodi, Bahlul 72, 74, 76, 111 Lodi, Khan Jahan 79, 82–6, 98, 102 Lodi, Sikandar 72–3, 75–7, 81, 89, 96, 111 Lotan, Pir 239 Ma’asir al-umara (Shah Nawaz Khan) 137–8, 170, 172 Ma’asir al-karam (Ghulam ‘Ali Azad Bilgrami) 20, 95, 137–8, 152, 170, 172 Ma’asir-e ‘Alamgiri (Saqi Must‘ad Khan) 152, 179 Ma’mur Khan 190 Ma‘ruf, Shaykh 74 Ma‘sum Shah, Mawlawi 161 Mackenzie, Colin 244, 253, 255 Madar, Shah 123 Madhumalati (Mir Sayyid Manjhan) 51, 74, 79 Maham 75 Mahikavatici Bakhar 245 Mahmud Bahri 155 Mahmud Gawan 128 Mahmud, Mir 198 Majalis-e Jahangiri (‘Abd al-Sattar ibn Qasim Lahawri) 51–2 Majzub al-Din, Khawaja 189 Makhdum ‘Abd al-Haq 197 Makhdum-e Shah shrine, Salaya, Gujarat 125 Page 10 of 19

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Index Makhzan al-‘Aras (Muhammad Najib) 58 Makhzan-e Afghani (Ni‘matullah) 108 making geography, anchoring memory 198–200 maktab 210 Malfuzat-e Naqshbandiyya (Shah Mahmud Awrangabadi) 130–34, 174–5, 180, 187, 188, 209–17, 267–8 (p.331) Malik ‘Ambar, Nizam Shah regent 180, 182, 193, 288 Malik Raja 253, 254 Malik Siyah 44 Malkapuri, ‘Abd al-Jabbar Khan 140, 162, 282 Man Singh 288 Manaqib al-‘arifin (Shams al-Din Aflaki) 42 Manaqib-e Chishtiyya (anon.) 13 Mandu sultans of Malwa 56 Maneri, Sharaf al-Din 49, 90 Manikpuri, Raji Hamid Shah 74 Manjhan, Mir Sayyid 50, 74, 79 Manpuri Prasad, Gosain 251–2 Mansaram, Lala 156, 183 Mansur ‘Ali Shah 191–2 Manucci, Niccola 274–5 Maqamat-e Amir Kulal (Shihab al-Din ibn bint-e Amir Hamza) 100 Maratha(s) 187, 215, 234, 257–8, 270 defeat at the hands of Afghans 111 patronage for Sufi shrines 176, 190–2 patronage of temples 256 peshwa 176, 226, 231, 270 rulers of Deccan 192, 230, 233, 246, 271, 279 rulers of Gwalior 191 rulers of Pune and Indore 194 maritime counter-geography of Iraq and Iran 13 marriage, endogamous forms 2 Masnawi-ye ma‘nawi (Jalal al-Din Rumi) 47, 215 Masnawi-ye Taraqqi (Aman ‘Ali Taraqqi) 62 master–disciple relationship 11 Mastnath, Nath Yogi 287 Maswani, Shaykh ‘Isa 79 Mawdudi, Abu ‘Ala’ 37 Mawla ‘Ali, Hyderabad shrine 61, 158 mawlud-singers 59 Mazhar Jan-e Janan, Mirza 111 Mecca Masjid mosque, Hyderabad 121, 157 meditative practices 10–12 memory architecture, memory 4, 18, 29, 65, 87, 112, 113, 121, 131, 135, 148, 157, 204– 5, 207, 214, 228–35, 239, 245 anchors 4, 134, 198–200, 275, 287–9 architectural spaces 15, 18–19, 30, 147, 167–8, 170 collective 3, 206, 265 embodied forms 33, 65, 204, 210 Page 11 of 19

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Index geographies of 18, 27, 140, 147, 255 historical 32, 33, 84, 124, 167, 194, 239, 260–71, 264, 271–72, 275, 284 (p.332) of migrants 143–4 Muslim communities of 1, 3, 16, 17, 29, 30, 31, 119, 136 narrative forms of 124 oral 15, 170 of pilgrimage 15 spaces/sacred memory spaces 3, 6, 15, 27, 34–5, 61, 63, 64, 86, 119, 120, 124, 130, 137, 263, 286 tribal saint as anchor of 21, 92–103 written 4, 107, 123, 141, 173, 181, 265 Miftah al-futuh (Amir Khusraw) 241 migrant Sufis and sacred space 5, 17–18, 116–45 miniature paintings 128 Mir‘at-e aftab-numa (Shah Nawaz Khan) 85 Mirsad al-‘Ibad (Najm al-Din Razi) 41 Miskin Majzub, Shah 283 Mongol invasions 31, 42 movement and settlement 142–4 Mu‘iz al-Din Abposh, Sayyid 196 Mu’min ‘Arif 195, 243 Mubariz Khan 282 Mughalization of Sufi landscape 148–9 Mughal-Timurid sphere 13 Muhammad Ghaws 10, 21, 61, 73, 178 Muhammad Kambakhsh, Mughal ruler 188, 196 Muhammad, Mir Sayyid 91, 108, 153 Muhammad Mugni, Sayyid 183 Muhammad, Prophet 1, 36, 40, 41, 43, 44, 57–8, 113, 140, 142 Muhammad Sadiq, Khwaja 174 Muhammad Sardar Shah 189 Muhammad Shah 25, 169 Muhammad Zaman Hakim 174 Muhyi al-Din, Ibn ‘Arabi 12, 14, 45 Mujaddidi Naqshbandi lineage 105, 107, 159 Mukhtar Khan 163 Multani Padshah. See Qadiri, Abu al-Fath Shams al-Din Mumtaz Mahal, Mughal princess 26, 52 Munawwar Khan, Nawwab 197, 281 al-Munawwar, Muhammad ibn 40, 50 Munib Allah, Sayyid 160 Muntajib al-Din Zarbakhsh 58, 168, 194, 236 Murad, Muhammad 15 Muraqqa‘-e Dihli (Dargah Quli Khan) 59, 122, 134 Musa Nikka 101 (p.333) Musharraf, Mir 110 Mushtaqi, Rizq Allah 70, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81, 82 Muslim geographies and spatial narratives 17, 18, 119–26 Page 12 of 19

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Index patronage of Sufi institutions 146–52 sainthood 92 settlement patterns in India 14, 19 sultanates 5 Must‘ad Khan, Saqi 153 Muthi Kansi, Shaykh 98, 199 Muti Khalil, Shaykh 94 Muzaffar Khan 23 al-Nabulusi, ‘Abd al-Ghani, 219 Nafahat al-uns (‘Abd al-Rahman Jami) 13, 46, 97, 215 Najib al-Dawla 111 Najib, Muhammad 57 Najm al-Din Razi 40 naqqarakhana (‘kettledrum room’) 158, 165, 169, 172 Naqshbandiyya/Naqshbandi Sufis 13, 16, 27, 28, 46, 52, 60, 89, 109, 110, 117, 131–34, 147, 159–62, 174, 182, 185, 189, 198, 209, 213, 217, 218, 267 interaction with Mughals’ blessed men 104–8 shrines 29, 174, 178 Naqwi, Imam al-Din 135, 140 Nasir al-Dawla, Asaf Jah prince 159 Nasir al-Din al-Hasan 178 Nasir al-Din Chiragh-e Dihli 72 Nasir Jang, Asaf Jah prince 167 Ni‘matullah ibn Habib Allah 199 Ni‘matullahi Sufi brotherhood 23 Ni‘matullah Wali, Shah 23, 82, 99, 167 Nizam ‘Ali Khan (Asaf Jah II) 157–9, 166, 176, 189, 191, 262 Nizam al-Mulk (Asaf Jah I) 28, 30, 61, 209, 221–2, 270–1, 278–81, 284–85 patronage of Sufi shrines 150, 151, 152, 155, 158, 159, 160, 166, 167, 174–6, 179, 181, 182, 183, 185, 189, 192, 197, 268 Nizam al-qulub (Nizam al-Din Awrangabadi) 10, 218 Nizam Shah sultans of Ahmadnagar 127, 167, 185, 261 Nizam, Miyan 76 Noah/Nuh, Prophet 86 Nizam al-Din Awrangabadi, See Awrangabadi Nizam al-Din Norris, Sir William, English Ambassador 188 oral traditions 83, 189 Ottoman shrines, 23, 150 Paithan 185–96 Panchakki shrine, Aurangabad 129, 133, 134, 144, 174–8, 180, 184, 186, 191, 192, 267– 71, 277 (p.334) Parekh, Bhimji, Bombay Indian printer 203–4 Pashtuns (Pathans) 66, 69, 80, 81, 82, 84, 89, 91, 92, 97, 101, 104 pedagogical relationships 11, 201–2, 212 Persian Sufi writing in India 6, 31 Persophone (‘Persian-speaking’) Sufis 12–13 Phulwari Sharif, town in Bihar 62 popular devotionalism 35 printing 202–3, 224–6 Page 13 of 19

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Index Prthivinarayan Shah, ruler of Nepal 287 Punjab 190–1, 264 Afghan settlements/Sufis of 69, 83, 98, 100, 106, 109, 114 sacred geography of 17 Sufis/Sufi settlements/shrines of 22, 48, 93, 95, 96, 119, 122, 187, 196 Naqshbandi shrines 29, 174 Suhrawardi lineage 28 ‘urs ritual 48–9 Qadiri, Abu al-Fath (Multani Padshah) 164 Qadiri lineage/Qadiriyya Sufis 13, 15, 72, 89, 110, 118, 155, 156, 164, 182–3, 267 Qadiri, Sayyid Amir Hamza 164 Qadiri, Shah ‘Ali 166 Qadiri, Shah Latif 185 Qadiri, Shah Sharaf al-Din 157, 283 Qadiri, Shah Yusuf al-Din 157, 283 Qalandar, La‘l Shahbaz 37 Qasuri, Ahmad Khan Khweshgi. See Khweshgi, Ahmad Khan Qattal, Shah Raju 158 Qibla, Bab Allah Shah 185–6 Qibla, Jan Allah Shah 185–6 Qillich Khan 278–9 Qissa-ye ahwal-e rohila (Rustam ‘Ali Bijnuri) 114 Qudsiya Begam 121 Quli Khan, Dargah 110 Quli Khan, Khwajim 198 Quran and Hadith 204–4 Quraysh, Arab tribe 142 qurbat (‘proximity to God’), doctrine of 214 Qushayri, ‘Abd al-Karim 116 Qutb al-Din 24, 25, 184 Qutb Shah sultans of Golkonda 61, 127, 153, 157–8, 167, 283, 285 Ra’is, Sayyidi ‘Ali 117 Rabi‘a Dawrani, Mughal princess 170, 172, 176, 177 Rahman, Sayyid 188 Rahmani zawiyas in North Africa 185 Rahmatabad, town near Nellore, Deccan 194 (p.335) Rajas and Brahmins, landscape of 239–48 Rajuri mosque, Beed 186 Ram Raja, Maratha ruler and narrative hero 245–50, 253 Ramachandra, Yadava ruler of Deogiri/ Daulatabad 245, 253 Rashahat-e ‘ayn al-hayat (Fakhr al-Din Kashifi) 13 Raskhan, Indo-Afghan bhakti poet 102 Rawnaq ‘Ali 266 Rawshaniyya, Afghan religious movement 90 Rawzat al-aqtab (Rawnaq ‘Ali) 266 Rawzat al-awliya (Ghulam ‘Ali Azad Bilgrami) 167, 236, 238–41, 258, 266 Red Fort, Agra 161 religion and kinship 89 religion, conception of 235 Page 14 of 19

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Index religious architecture 163 establishment of Baghdad and Delhi 8 learning 201 movements 236 resources 4 traditions 118 Risala dar ansab-e Afghanan (Hafiz Rahmat Khan) 109 ritual performances 3, 10, 35. See also ‘urs Riza Khan, Ahmad 38 Rohila Afghan tribe 109, 110, 111, 112, 113 Rohilkhand, Indo-Afghan kingdoms of 111–14 Rohri, shrines of, Punjab 121 Rukn al-Dawla 158 Rukn al-Din, Sayyid 182–83, 193, 195 Rumi, Jalal al-Din 13, 42, 47, 48, 78, 81, 214, 215 Rumi, Ziya al-Din 49 Rustam ‘Ali Bijnuri 114 Rustam Dil Khan 166 Sa‘dat Allah Khan, Nawwab 197 Sa‘dat, Sayyid 192 Sa‘di 180 Sa‘id Khan 48 Sabir Shah 280 Sabzawari, Khaksar 58–60, 133, 177–8, 181, 233, 234, 241–4, 250, 256–7, 264 Safar Khayr (Ghulam ‘Ali Azad Bilgrami) 137 Safavid (Safawi) dynasty of Iran 27, 112 Safawi Sufi brotherhood 88 Safinat al-awliya (Dara Shikuh), 15 saint (awalia) 18–32, 33–5, 82–103 Saint-Michel, Mont 229–30 sajjada nashin (‘Sufi successor’) 21, 22, 23, 134, 155, 156, 160, 171, 177, 179, 184, 200 Sakhi Sarwar 100–1 Salabat Jang, Asaf Jah prince 165, 166 Salar Jang family 59, 173, 181 (p.336) Saljuq Empire 221 Sama‘ al-Din, Shaykh 75–6 al-Samad, Khwaja ‘Abd 95 Samanah, Kamal al-Din 242 Sambhaji, son of Shivaji 153 sandalmali (‘sandalwood-rubbing’) ceremony 46, 50, 53 Sarbani Afghan tribe 88, 89 Sarwani, Dattu 73 Sarwani, ‘Umar Khan 73 Sarwani Afghan tribe 73, 100 Sawanih (Khaksar Sabzawari) 58, 242–3 Siyar al-‘arifin (Jamali Dihlawi) 49, 77 Seely, John, 262 self-consciousness 30, 64 Page 15 of 19

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Index Shah ‘Alam, Mughal Emperor 168, 186, 193, 287 Shah Arzan 62 Shah Aziz, Sayyid 182 Shah Ganj mosque, Aurangabad 181 Shah Jahan, Mughal Emperor 15, 22, 24, 25, 26, 55, 273, 274; patronage of Sufi shrines 148, 149, 168, 177 Shah Mahmud of Panchakki, Aurangabad 130, 131, 134, 175–6, 177, 209, 267 Shah Mastan 198 Shah Musafir of Panchakki, Aurangabad 60, 61, 129–37, 174–5, 178, 179, 182, 187, 198, 208–10, 212–13, 217, 219, 220, 224, 267–72 Shah Nawaz Khan 138, 171, 173 Shah Pir Muhammad 148 Shah Ramazan 192 Shah Sa‘id Palangposh of Panchakki, Aurangabad 103, 104, 129–37, 174, 178, 209, 210, 267–72 Shah Yahu 198 Shah-e Zinda 25, 171 Shaker Kera battle (1724) 281, 283 Sharaf al-Dawla 193 Shari‘a 149 sharif Muslims 30 Shattari Sufis 118 Shi‘a Imams 38 Shi‘i Islam, Shi‘ism 128, 157–8, 164 learning 12 rulers 163 sacred spaces 120 Shibli, Abu Bakr 16 Shinde, Mahadji, Maratha ruler 191 Shinde, Ranoji Rao, Maratha ruler 191 Shirani Afghan tribe 91 Shirazi, Zayn al-Din 24, 25, 52, 58, 61, 151, 158, 242, 272–3 Shivaji, Maratha ruler 153, 187, 253, 271 Shorawak, Afghan village 94 shrine architecture 1, 3, 4, 14, 17–20, 22, 23, 25, 30, 46, 52, 118–20, 124, 128, 130, 144– 5, 208, 287 (p.337) fusion with temple architecture 241, 243, 255–6 and history 260–67, 268, 275 Mughal patronage of 146–7, 149–54, 160–64, 167–72, 174–82, 186–7, 191, 194–5, 197–200, 275 and narrative 289 Sidis, Afro-Indians 126 silsila (‘chain, lineage’) 2, 16, 88, 127 Simnani, Ashraf Jahangir 148 Sirhindi, Ahmad 105, 106, 107, 110, 159 Sirhindi, Badr al-Din 106 Siyar al-aqtab (Allah Diya ibn ‘Abd al-Rahim Chishti) 55 Solomon/Sulayman, Prophet 79 Sona Ba’i, Hindu princess 195 Page 16 of 19

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Index spatial marking and memory 18 storytelling 14 Subhani, Mahbub 164 Subhat al-marjan (Ghulam ‘Ali Azad Bilgrami) 17, 134, 237 Sudan, ethnic formation in Nilotic 86 Sufi(s) brotherhoods 2 and Sultans, landscape 236–44 enter the Deccan 127–9 supernatural ‘blessing power’ 1–2 status of sayyids 91–2, 141 Suhrawardi prayer manuals 6 Suhrawardi, Shihab al-Din 28 Suhrawardi, ‘Umar 8, 11, 116–17 Sulaimanccarita 79 Sulayman mountain range 69, 94 Sulayman, Shaykh Muhammad 102 Sur, Indo-Afghan sultans 66, 69, 102, 79–80, 107 Suri, Islam Shah, Indo-Afghan ruler 79 Suri, ‘Abd al-Rahim ibn Ahmad 76 Suri, Sher Shah, Indo-Afghan ruler 26, 71, 74–5 Syria, Muslim geography 143 Taj al-Din 182 Taj Mahal, Agra 22 Takmil al-Nu‘ut fi Luzum al-Buyut (‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi) 218 Talbis Iblis (Ibn al-Jawzi) 41 Tamachi Pir 24 Tansen, Mughal court musician 61 Tantric traditions of India 34 Taraqqi, Aman ‘Ali 62 Tarikh-e Khan Jahani (Ni‘mat Allah) 79, 82–92, 103–7, 108, 109, 112–13, 131, 248, 265 Tarikh-e murassa (Afzal Khan Khattak) 109 Tarikh-e rashidi (Mirza Muhammad Haydar Dughlat) 101 (p.338) Tarikh-e shahi (Ahmad Yadgar) 71, 76 Tarikh-e Sher Shahi (‘Abbas Khan Sarwani) 100 Tarikh-i-Dilkusha (Bhimsen) 154 tariqa (Sufi brotherhood) 2, 11 Tarjuman al-‘ashwaq (Muhyi al-Din Ibn ‘Arabi) 45 Tashumsha, Saharan tribal confederation 85 tawa’if (‘courtesan dancers’) 61 tawajud (‘ecstasy’) 52 Tawarikh-e Afghani (Hafiz Rahmat Khan) 109 Taymiyya, Ibn 36 Tazkirat al-ansar (‘Ali Muhammad Ansari) 96 Tazkirat al-awliya (Farid al-Din ‘Attar) 13, 211, 212 Tazkirat al-awliya-e dakan (‘Abd al-Jabbar Khan) 266 Tazkirat al-bilad wa’l hukam (Mir Husayn ‘Ali Kirmani) 283 Tazkirat al-Shu‘ara (Dawlat Shah Samarqandi) 223 tazkirat commemorative texts 220 Page 17 of 19

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Index Thanawi, Ashraf ‘Ali 37 Thevenot, Jean de, French traveler 177 Timur Khan 100, 101 Timurid dynasty 47, 171 Tipu Sultan, ruler of Mysore 52, 197 al-Tirmizi, al-Hakim 38 Tirmiz 42 tribal and religious identity 91 tribal saint as the anchor of memory 92–103 tribalizing sainthood 82–92 tribe, diaspora and sainthood in Indo-Afghan history 64–115 Truth (haqq) 220 Tughluq, Muhammad bin, Tughluq ruler 26, 189, 237–40, 238, 243, 244, 246 Tughluqnama (Amir Khusraw) 240 Tughluq sultans 189 invasion of South India 167 Tükles, Baba 101 Turk Biyabani, Shaykh 54 Turkish sultans 127, 129 Turkoman tribes 102 Turktaz Khan 176 ‘Ubaydullah Ahrar 131 Umayyad caliphs 116 ‘urs (wedding) ritual 165, 169 approaching ‘urs, reconfiguring Indian Islam 35–8 under the Mughals 51–63, 101, 126, 134 of the saints 33–5 sectarian vision of ‘urs ritual 37 trans-regional precedents 39–48 ‘Uruj, Baha al-Din Hasan 223 ‘Usman Sayyah, Shaykh 54 (p.339) Vaizapur 185–96 Vibishana, king of Sri Lanka 249, 252 wajh-e ma‘ash and wajh-e amlak land grants 71 Wala Jah rulers 198 Walad, Baha’ al-Din 42 Wali, Ahmad Shah 26 Wali, Khaki Shah 198 Wali, Ni’matullah, see Ni‘mat Allah Wali, Nur Shah 184 Wali, Shah Abu al-Fayz Shahanshah 166, 189–90, 191, 193 Wali, Shah Amin 198 Walidiyya (‘Ubaydullah Ahrar) 16 Waliullah, Shah 37 Wanderwort (mobile loanword) 2 Waqf 105 Waqi‘at (Rizq Allah Mushtaqi) 71, 74, 79 wilayat (‘sainthood’), doctrine of 2, 111, 113, 177, 199, 214, 237, 281. See also qurbat writing and Sufi institutional spaces 9 Page 18 of 19

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Index Wuqu’i, Muhammad Sharif 83 Ya‘qub 83 Yadava rulers of Deogiri 229, 230, 231, 249, 250, 251 Yadgar, Ahmad 70, 76, 82 Yamin al-Dawla 172 Yazid, Abu 6 Yoga 9 Yogis 58, 243, 286 Yusuf, Mir Muhammad 220 Yusufzay Afghan tribe 90 Zabar al-Din, Miyan 77 Zafar Mahal, Delhi 25 Zakariya, Baha’ al-Din 21 Zayn al-Din Khan 147 Zaynab, Sayyida (Cairo) 44 Ziegenbalg, Bartholomaeus, missionary and printer 208 zikr (‘remembrance, chant’) 10, 43, 171, 208 Zikr-e jami‘-e awliya-e Dihli (Habibullah Akbarabadi) 56

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Bibliography

Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India Nile Green

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077961 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077961.001.0001

(p.290) Bibliography Primary Sources

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Bibliography ‘An Account of Dowlatabad, Anciently Called Devageery’, ms, Mackenzie Collection: General, vol. XLV, British Library. Ahmad Yādgār, Tārīkh-e Shāhī (Tārīkh-e Salātīn-e Afāghīna), ed. M. Hidayat Hosain (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1939). Alberuni, Alberuni’s India, trans. E.C. Sachau (New York: W.W. Norton, 1971). Ali Bin Uthman al-Hujwiri, The Kashf al Mahjub: The Oldest Persian Treatise on Sufism, trans. R.A. Nicholson (Delhi: Taj Company, 1999). Allāh Diya bin Shaykh ‘Abd al-Rahīm Chishtī, Khwājagān-e Chisht: Siyar alAqtāb, ed. Muhammad Sarwar Mawla’ī (Tehran: Nashr-e ‘Ilm, 1385/2006). (p. 291) Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi’s Bihishti Zewar: A Partial Translation with Commentary, trans. and commentary by B.D. Metcalf (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Avicenna, Avicenna’s Psychology: An English Translation of Kitāb al-Najāt, trans. F. Rahman (London: Oxford University Press, 1952). Badr al-Dīn Sirhindī, Hazarāt al-Quds (Lahore: Muhakama-ye Awqāf-e Punjāb, 1971). Bahādur Shāh Zafar, Ākhirī Moghol Tājdār Abū Zafar Sirāj al-Dīn Muhammad Bahādur Shāh kā Rūznāmcha, ed. Hasan Nizāmī (Delhi: Khwāja Awlād Kitābghar, repr. 1964). Bashīr Muhammad Khān, Tārikh-e Awlīyā-e Karām-e Burhānpur (Burhanpur: Seher Art Press, 1997), vol. 2. Bhimsen, Memoirs of Bhimsen Relating to Aurangzib’s Deccan Campaigns, trans. J. Sarkar (Bombay: Government of Maharashtra, 1972). Bijnori, R.A. An Eighteenth Century History of North India: An Account of the Rise and Fall of the Rohilla Chiefs in Janbhasha by Rustam Ali Bijnori [Qissa wa ahwāl-e rōhela], I.H. Siddiqui ed. (Delhi: Manohar, 2005). Dargāh Qulī Khān, Muraqqa‘-e Dihlī: Fārsī Matan aur Urdū Tarjuma, ed. and trans. Khalīq Anjum (Dehli: Anjuman-e Taraqqī-ye Urdū, 1993), trans. C. Shekhar and S.M. Chenoy, Muraqqa‘-e Dehli: The Mughal Capital in Muhammad Shah’s Time (Delhi: Deputy Publication, 1989). Das, H., The Norris Embassy to Aurangzib (Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhupadhyay, 1959).

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Bibliography Ghulām ‘Alī Āzād Bilgrami, Khazāna-ye ‘Āmira (Kanpur: Nawāl Kishawr, 1287/1871). ———, Ma’āsir al-Kirām (Agra: Matba‘a-ye Mufīd-e ‘Ām, 1328/1910). ———, Rawzat al-Awliyā (Dehli: Liberty Art Press, 1416/1996). Ghulām Sarwar Lāhawri, Khazīnat al-Asfiyā (Kanpur, n.p., 1312/1894). Gulbadan Begam, The History of Humayun (Humāyūn-nāmah), Persian text with translation by Annette S. Beveridge (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1902). Hādī Naqshbandī, Rūh al-‘Ināyat (Balapur: Rashid Book Depot, 1417/1996). Hāfiz Rahmat Khān, Khulāsat al-Ansāb [The Summary of Genealogies] Bodleian Library, Ms. Ouseley 172. Hakim al-Tirmidhi, The Concept of Sainthood in Early Islamic Mysticism: Two Works by Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, trans. B. Radtke and J. O’Kane (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1996). Hasan ‘Abbās, Ahwāl wa Āsār-e Mīr Ghulām ’Alī Āzād Bilgrāmī (Tehrān: Bunyāde Mawqūfāt-e Duktur Mahmūd Afshār, 1384/2005) [includes texts of Bilgrāmī’s Persian works]. ‘History of Hamanda Punt’ in Mackenzie Collection: General, vol. XLV, British Library. (p.292) Ibn ‘Arabi, Sufis of Andalusia: The Ruh al-Quds & al-Durrat at-Fakhirah, trans. R.W.J. Austin (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971). ———, The Bezels of Wisdom, trans. R.W.J. Austin (Lahore: Suhail Academy, 1988). Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa, trans. H.A.R. Gibb (Rawalpindi: Services Book Club, 1985). Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishāq’s Sīrat Rasūl Allāh, trans. A. Guillaume (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1967). Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah, Ibrahim Adil Shah II: Kitab-i Nauras, N. Ahmad (ed. & trans.) (Delhi: Sangit Natak Akademi, 1956). Ilahyār Khān Hāfiz al-Mulk Nawwāb Hāfiz Rahmat Khān, ‘Ajā’ib al-Lughāt, British Library, ms Or. 399. ‘Imād al-Mulk Ghāzī al-Dīn Khān, Masnawī-ye Fakhriyyat al-Nizām, ms, shrine of Nizam al-Din, Aurangabad.

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Bibliography Jaffur Shurreef, Qanoon-e Islam, or the Customs of the Mussulmans of India, trans. G.A. Herklots (Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1991 [1863]). Jahanabadi, K. The Scallop Shell (Being a Sufite Practical Course on Divine Union) (Madras: Ananda Press, 1910). Jahāngīr, The Tūzuk-i-Jahāngīrī, or, Memoirs of Jahāngīr, trans. A. Rogers and ed. H. Beveridge, 2 vols (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1909–14). Jalāl al-dīn Muhammad Balkhī [Rūmī], Masnawī-ye Ma‘nawī, ed. R.A. Nicholson (Tehran: Intishārāt-e Paymān, 1378/1958 [repr.]). Jamālī Dihlawī, Siyar al-‘Ārifīn (Delhi: Matba‘a-ye Rizawī, 1311/1893). Jamali-yi Dihlawi, The Mirror of Meanings (Mir’āt al-ma‘ānī): A Parallel English Persian Text (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 2002). Kalīm Allāh Jahānābādī, Maktūbāt-e Kalīmī (Delhi: Matba‘a-e Mujtabā‘ī, 1315/1897). Kāmgār Khān, Ahsān al-Shamā’il, ms, shrine library of Hazrat Sulaymān Tawnsawī, Taunsa Sharif. Khafi Khan, Muntakhab al-Lubāb: Khafi Khan’s History of ’Alamgir, trans. S. Moinul Haq (Karachi: Pakistan Historical Society, 1975). Khāksār Sabzawārī, Sawānih, Asiatic Society of Bengal, Curzon Collection, ms 85. Khwāja Ghulām Husayn Khān Khān Zamān Khān, Tārīkh-e Āsaf Jāhiyān (Gulzāre-Āsafiya), ed. Muhammad Mahdī Tawassulī (Islamabad: Markaz-e Tahqīqāt-e Fārsī-ye Īrān wa Pākistān, 1377/1999). ‘The Legendary Story of Ram-Rajah of Davageery, Now Called Dowlatabad’, Mackenzie Collection: General, vol. XLV, British Library. Mahmūd Bahrī, ‘Arūs-e ‘Irfān, Salar Jang Library, Hyderabad, ms Tas. 114. Mahmūd ibn ‘Usman, Die Vita des Scheich Abu Ishaq al-Kazaruni in der Persischen Bearbeitung (Firdaws al-Murshidiyya fī Asrār al-Samadiyya), ed. Fritz Meier (Leipzig: Kommissionsverlag F.A. Brockhaus, 1948). (p.293) Major Gill and J. Fergusson, One Hundred Stereoscopic Illustrations on Architecture and Natural History in Western India (London: Cundall, Downes, and Company, 1864). Manjhan, Madhumālatī, trans. A. Behl and S. Weightman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Page 4 of 37

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Bibliography Ahmed, A.S. and D.M. Hart (eds), Islam in Tribal Societies: From the Atlas to the Indus (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984). Akimushkin, O.F., ‘A Rare Seventeenth Century Hagiography of the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Shaykhs’, Manuscripta Orientalia, 7, 1 (2001). Akimushkin, O.F. et al., The Arts of the Book in Central Asia, 14th–16th Centuries (Paris: UNESCO, 1979). Akkach, S. ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi: Islam and the Enlightenment (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007). Alam, M. and S. Subrahmanyam, ‘The Making of a Munshi’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 24, 2 (2004). ———, Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). ———, ‘Frank Disputations: Catholics and Muslims in the Court of Jahangir (1608–11)’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 46, 4 (2009). (p.296) Alavi, R.A., ‘Working of the Postal and Intelligence Services in the Mughal Deccan’, in idem., Studies in the History of Medieval Deccan (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyyat-i Delli, 1977). Andreyev, S.B., ‘History and Doctrine of the Rawshani Movement’, DPhil. dissertation (Oxford University, 1997). Ansari, R.A., ‘Medieval Daulatabad Complex: A Cultural Study’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Marathwada University, 1983). Apter, A. and L. Derby (eds), Activating the Past: History and Memory in the Black Atlantic World (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishers, 2010). Aquil, R., Sufism, Culture, and Politics: Afghans and Islam in Medieval North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007). Ara, M., ‘The Lodhī Rulers and the Construction of Tomb-Buildings in Delhi’, Acta Asiatica, 43 (1982). Arlinghaus, J.T., ‘The Transformation of Afghan Tribal Society: Tribal Expansion, Mughal Imperialism and the Roshaniyya Insurrection, 1450–1600’ (PhD dissertation, Duke University 1988). Asani, A.S., ‘The Bridegroom Prophet in Medieval Sindhi Poetry’, in F. Mallison and A.W. Entwistle (eds), Studies in South Asian Devotional Literature: Research Papers 1989–91 (Delhi: Manohar, 1994). Page 8 of 37

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Bibliography Asher, C.B., Architecture of Mughal India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). ——— ‘Piety, Religion and the Old Social Order in the Architecture of the Later Mughals and their Contemporaries’, in R.B. Barnett (ed.), Rethinking Early Modern India (Delhi: Manohar, 2002). Aslanapa, O., ‘The Art of Bookbinding’, in Akimushkin et al. (1979). Aubin, J. ‘De Kūbahān à Bidar: La Famille Ni‘matullahī’, Studia Iranica, 20, 2 (1991). Avery, K.S., A Psychology of Early Sufi Samā‘ :Listening and Altered States (London: Routledge Curzon, 2004). Aziz, A., The Imperial Library of the Mughals (Lahore: n.p., 1967). Babayan, K. Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002). Baldick, J., ‘Medieval Sūfī Literature in Persian Prose’, in G. Morrison (ed.), History of Persian Literature (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981). Baljon, J.M.S., ‘Shah Waliullah and the Dargah’, in Troll (1989). Basilov, V.N., ‘Honour Groups in Traditional Turkmenian Society’, in Ahmed and Hart (1984). Basu, H., Habshi-Sklaven, Sidi-Fakire: Muslimische Heiligenverehrung im westlichen Indien (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1994). ———, ‘Drumming and Praying: Sidi at the Interface between Spirit Possession and Islam’, in K. Kresse and E. Simpson (eds), Struggling with History: Islam and Cosmopolitanism in the Western Indian Ocean (London: Hurst, 2007). (p.297) Bayly, C.A., ‘India and West Asia, c. 1700–1830’, Asian Affairs, 19, 1 (1988). ———, Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in the Making of Modern India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998). Bayly, S. Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). ———, ‘Cult Saints, Heroes, and Warrior Kings: South Asian Islam in the Making’, in K.E. Yandell & J.J. Paul (ed.), Religion and Public Culture, London, Curzon, 2000). Bazzaz, S., Forgotten Saints: History, Power, and Politics in the Making of Modern Morocco (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010). Page 9 of 37

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Bibliography Begley, W.A. and Z.A. Desai, Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb (Washington: University of Washington Press, 1989). Beisembiev, T.K., ‘Ferghana’s Contacts with India in the 18th and 19th Centuries (according to the Khokand Chronicles)’, Journal of Asian History, 28, 2 (1994). Bellamy, J.A., ‘Sex and Society in Islamic Popular Literature’, in A.L. al-SayyidMarsot (ed.), Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam (Malibu: Undena Publications, 1979). Béller-Hann, I., The Written and the Spoken: Literacy and Oral Transmission Among the Uyghur (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 2000). Berger, M., Islam in Egypt Today: Social and Political Aspects of Popular Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). Berkey, J., The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A Social History of Islamic Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). Berry, M.E., Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). Betteridge, A., “Arūsī’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica. Bhandarkar, R.G., Early History of the Deccan (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1983). Biegman, N.H., Egypt: Moulids, Saints, Sufis (The Hague: Gary Swartz/SDU Publications, 1990). Bierman, I.A., Writing Signs: The Fatimid Public Text (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Bilgrami, R., ‘The Ajmer Wakf under the Mughals’, Islamic Culture, 52 (1978). Bilgrami, S.A.A., Landmarks of the Deccan: A Comprehensive Guide to the Archaeological Remains of the City and Suburbs of Hyderabad (Hyderabad: Government Central Press, 1927). (p.298) Bilgrami, S.H. and C. Willmott, Historical and Descriptive Sketch of His Highness the Nizam’s Dominions, 2 vols (Bombay: Times of India Steam Press, 1883–4). Blackburn, S., Moral Fictions: Tamil Folktales in Oral Tradition (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2001). Bloom, J. Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). Page 10 of 37

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Bibliography Blum Hansen, T., The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India (Princeton University Press, 1999). Boivin, M., ‘Reflections on La‘l Shahbaz Qalandar and the Management of his Spiritual Authority in Sehwan Sharif ’, Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society, 51, 4 (2003). Bordonove, G., Le Roman du Mont Saint-Michel: douze siècles de foi, d’art et d’histoire (Paris: R. Laffont, 1966). Bouiller, V., ‘The King and his Yogi: Prthivinarayan Śah, Bhagavantanath and the Unification of Nepal in the Eighteenth Century’, in J.P. Neelsen (ed.), Gender, Caste and Power in South Asia: Social Status and Mobility in a Transitional Society (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1991). Böwering, G., ‘The Adab Literature of Classical Sufism: Ansarī’s Code of Conduct’, in B.D. Metcalf (ed.), Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Boxer, C.R., A Tentative Check-List of Indo-Portugese Imprints, 1556–1674 (Bastora, Goa: Tip. Rangel, 1956). Bredi, D.C., ‘La funzione politica dello sciismo nei sultanati deccani medievali’, Rivista degli Studi Orientali, 64, 1–2 (1990). ———, ‘Shi‘ism in the Deccan: A Hypothetical Study’, Islamic Culture, 62, 2–3 (1988). Brenner, L., Controlling Knowledge: Religion, Power, and Schooling in a West African Muslim Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001). Brock, S., The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1992). Brookshaw, D.P., ‘Palaces, Pavillions and Pleasure-gardens: The Context and Setting of the Medieval Majlis’, Middle Eastern Literatures, 6, 2 (2003). Brubaker, R., ‘The ‘Diaspora’ Diaspora’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28, 1 (2005). Burton, R.F., Sindh and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1973 [1851]). Busch, A., ‘Literary Responses to the Mughal Imperium: The Historical Poems of Keśavdās’, South Asia Research, 25, 1 (2005). Canaan, T., Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine (London: Luzac & Co, 1927). (p.299)

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Bibliography Carruthers, M., The Book of Memory: A Study in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Census of India, Beliefs and Practices Associated With Muslim Pirs in Two Cities of India (Delhi and Lucknow), Monograph Series Part VII-B, Monograph 1 (Delhi: Ministry of Home Affairs, 1966 [1961]). Chaghatai, M.A., ‘Pakpattan and Shaikh Farid’, Iqbal Review, 9 (1968). Champion, C., ‘Les meilleurs saints sont musulman’: La figure de Hatim comme modele de saintete dans l’hagiographie islamique indienne: L’exemple du Bihar’, in F. Mallison (ed.), Constructions hagiographiques dans le monde indien: Entre mythe et histoire (Paris: Librarie Honore Champion, 2001). Chander, S., ‘From a Pre-Colonial Order to a Princely State: Hyderabad in Transition c.1748–1865’ (unpublished PhD. dissertation, Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1987). Chittick, W.C., ‘Notes on Ibn ‘Arabī’s Influence in the Indian Sub-Continent’, Muslim World, 82 (1992). ———, ‘Travelling the Sufi Path: A Chishtī Handbook from Bijapur’, in L. Lewisohn and D. Morgan (eds), The Heritage of Sufism, vol. 3, Late Classical Persianate Sufism (1501–1750) (Oxford: Oneworld, 1999). Chow, K.W., Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). Clayer, N., ‘Des agents du pouvoir ottoman dans les Balkans: Les Helvetis’, Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, 66 (1992). Cohen, R., Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2001). Cole, J.R.I., Roots of North Indian Shi ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722–1859 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). ———, ‘Shi‘ite Noblewomen and Religious Innovation in Awadh’, in V. Graff (ed.), Lucknow: Memories of a City (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997). Cook, M.A., ‘The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition in Early Islam’, Arabica, 44, 4 (1997). Copland, I., ‘The Historian as Anthropologist: “Ethnohistory” and the Study of South Asia’, South Asia, 11, 2 (1988). Cousens, H., Lists of Antiquarian Remains in His Highness the Nizam’s Territories, [Architectural Survey of India, vol. 31] (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1900). Page 12 of 37

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Bibliography ———, Bijapur and its Architectural Remains [Architectural Survey of India, vol. 37] (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1916). Crawford, A., History of Poona and Deccan in Perspective (Delhi: Gian Publishing House, 1987). Crooke, W., Religion and Folklore of Northern India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926). (p.300) Currie, P.M., The Shrine and Cult of Mu‘īn al-Dīn Chishtī of Ajmer (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989). Dadvar, A., Iranians in Mughal Politics and Society 1606–1658 (Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1999). Dale, S.F. and A. Payind, ‘The Ahrārī Waqf in Kābul in the Year 1546 and the Mughūl Naqshbandiyya’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 119, 2 (1999). Das Gupta, A., The World of the Indian Ocean Merchant, 1500–1800 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001). De Tassy, G., Muslim Festivals in India and Other Essays, trans. M. Waseem (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997 [1831]). Demidov, S.M., Sufismus in Turkmenien: Evolution und Relikte [Sufism in Turkmenistan: Evolution and Remnants]. Hamburg: Reinhold Schletzer, 1988). Dernonsablon, P., ‘Notes sur deux vêtements talismaniques’, Arabica, 33 (1986) Desai, Z.A., ‘Some Unpublished Inscriptions from Kurnool’, Epigraphia Indica Arabic and Persian Supplement (1951–2). ———, ‘Mughal Architecture of the Deccan’, in H.K Sherwani and P.M. Joshi (eds), History of Medieval Deccan (1295–1724), 2 vols (Hyderabad: Govt of Andhra Pradesh, 1973–4). ———, ‘The Major Dargahs of Ahmadabad’, in C.W. Troll (ed.), Muslim Shrines in India: Their Character, History and Significance (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989). Deshpande, P., Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700–1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). DeWeese, D., Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994).

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Bibliography Dimock, E.C., The Place of the Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism in the Vaisnava Sahajiyā Cult of Bengal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). Dirks, N.B., ‘Colonial Histories and Native Informants: The Biography of an Archive’, in C.A. Breckenridge and P. Van Der Veer (eds), Orientalism and the Post-Colonial Predicament: Perspectives on Orientalism and South Asia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). Donaldson, B.A., ‘The Koran as Magic’, Moslem World, 27 (1937). Dor, R., ‘Ecrire l’oral, traduire l’écrit: quelques remarques centrées sur des matériaux özbek’, Révue du Monde Musulman et de la Mediterranée, 75–6 (1995). Duff, J.G., A History of the Mahrattas, 2 vols, revised and annotated by S.M. Edwardes (London: H. Milford/Oxford University Press, 1921), vol. 1. Eaton, R.M., ‘The Court and the Dargah in the Seventeenth Century Deccan’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 10, 1 (1973). ———, Sufis of Bijapur, 1300–1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). (p.302) ———, ‘The Political and Religious Authority of the Shrine of Bābā Farīd’, in B.D. Metcalf (ed.), Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). ———, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). ———, ‘Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States’, in D. Gilmartin and B.B. Lawrence (eds), Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 2000). ———, ‘Indo-Muslim Traditions, 1200–1750: Towards a Framework of Study’, South Asia Research, 22, 1 (2002a). ——— (ed), India’s Islamic Traditions, 711–1750 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002b). ———, ‘The Articulation of Islamic Space in the Medieval Deccan’, in idem, (ed.), Essays on Islam and Indian History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003). ———, ‘The Articulation of Islamic Space in the Medieval Deccan’, in I.A. Bierman (ed.), Islam on the Margins (Los Angeles: Center for Near Eastern Studies, 2005).

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Bibliography Gordon, S., Marathas, Marauders, and State Formation in Eighteenth Century India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994). (p.305) ———, ‘Maratha Patronage of Muslim Institutions in Burhanpur and Khandesh’, in D. Gilmartin and B.B. Lawrence (eds), Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000). Graham, W.A., ‘Qur’ān as Spoken Word: An Islamic Contribution to the Understanding of Scripture’, in R.C. Martin (ed.), Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985). Green, N.S., ‘Geography, Empire and Sainthood in the Eighteenth Century Muslim Deccan’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 67, 2 (2004a). ———, ‘A Persian Sufi in British India: The Travels of Mirza Hasan Safi ‘Ali Shah (1835–1899)’, Iran, 42 (2004b). ———, ‘Oral Competition Narratives of Muslim and Hindu Saints in the Deccan’, Asian Folklore Studies, 63, 2 (2004c). ———, ‘Translating the Spoken Words of the Saints: Oral Literature and the Sufis of Awrangabad’, in L. Long (ed.), Religion and Translation: Holy Untranslatable? (Buffalo NY: Multilingual Matters, 2005). ———, ‘Ostrich Eggs and Peacock Feathers: Sacred Objects as Cultural Exchange between Christianity and Islam’, Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 18, 1 (2006a). ———, Indian Sufism since the Seventeenth Century: Saints, Books and Empires in the Muslim Deccan (London: Routledge, 2006b). ———, ‘Blessed Men and Tribal Politics: Notes on Political Culture in the IndoAfghan World’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 49, 3 (2006c). ———, ‘Saints, Rebels and Booksellers: Sufis in the Cosmopolitan Western Indian Ocean’, in K. Kresse and E. Simpson (eds), Struggling with History: Islam and Cosmopolitanism in the Western Indian Ocean (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). ———, ‘Shi‘ism, Sufism and Sacred Space in the Deccan: Counter-Narratives of Saintly Identity in the Cult of Shah Nur’, in A. Monsutti, S. Naef, and F. Sabahi (eds), The Other Shi‘ites: From the Mediterranean to Central Asia (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2007).

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Bibliography Hassnain, F.M., Shah Hamadan of Kashmir (Srinagar: Gulshan, 2001). Heck, P.L., ‘The Epistemological Problem of Writing in Islamic Civilization: alHatīb al-Baġdādī’s (d. 463/1071) Taqyīd al-‘ilm’, Studia Islamica, 94 (2002). Heehs, P., ‘Myth, History and Theory’, History and Theory, 33, 1 (1994). ——— (ed.), Indian Religions: A Historical Reader of Spiritual Expression and Experience (London: Hurst, 2002). Heffening, W. “Urs’, in The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed). Hermansen, M. K. and B.B. Lawrence, ‘Indo-Persian Tazkiras as Memorative Communications’, in D. Gilmartin and B.B. Lawrence (eds), Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 2000). Hoffman-Ladd, V.J., ‘Mysticism and Sexuality in Sufi Thought and Life’, Mystics Quarterly, 18, 3 (1992). Huda, Q., ‘Celebrating Death and Engaging in Texts at Dātā Ganj Bakhsh‘s ‘Urs’, Muslim World, 90, 3 and 4 (2000). (p.307) ———, ‘Khwaja Mu‘in Ud-Din Chishti’s Death Festival: Competing Authorities Over Sacred Space’, Journal of Ritual Studies, 17, 1 (2003a). ———, Striving for Divine Union: Spiritual Exercises for Suhrawardī Sūfīs (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003b). Hudson, L., ‘Reading al-Sha‘rani: The Sufi Genealogy of Islamic Modernism in Late Ottoman Damascus’, Journal of Islamic Studies, 15, 1 (2004). Hunter, W.W. et al., Imperial Gazetteer of India (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908– 31). Husain, A., ‘The Family of Shaikh Salim Chishti during the Reign of Jehangir’, in K.A. Nizami (ed.), Medieval India—A Miscellany (Delhi: Asia Publishing House, 1972), vol. 2. Husain, A.A., Scent in the Islamic Garden: A Study of Deccani Urdu Literary Sources (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000). Husain, A.M., The Rise and Fall of Muhammad Bin Tughluq (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyyat-i Delli, 1972). Husain, I., ‘Some Afghan Settlements in the Gangetic Doab (1627–1707)’, in Proceedings of the Indian History Conference (Varanasi) (1969).

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Bibliography Kadam, V.S., ‘The Dancing Girls of Maharashtra’, in A. Feldhaus (ed.), Images of Women in Maharashtrian Society (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998). Kaptein, N.J.G., Muhammad’s Birthday Festival: Early History in the Central Muslim Lands and Development in the Muslim West until the 10th/16th Century (Leiden: Brill, 1993). Karrar, A.S., The Sufi Brotherhoods in the Sudan (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1992). Kasaba, R., A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants and Refugees (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009). Kaschuba, W., Die Überwindung der Distanz: Zeit und Raum in der europäischen Moderne (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2004). Khalidi, O., ‘The Shias of the Deccan: An Introduction’, Hamdard Islamicus, 15, 4 (1992). Khan, A.N., ‘Mausoleum of Shaikh Baha’ al-Din Zakariyya at Multan and the Introduction of Central Asian Art Traditions in South Asian Subcontinent’, Revista degli Studi Orientali, 59 (1987). ———,‘The Shias of the Deccan: An Introduction’, Hamdard Islamicus, 15, 4 (1992). Khan, I.A., ‘Shaikh ‘Abdul Quddūs Gangōhī’s Relations with Political Authorities: A Reappraisal’, in K.A. Nizami (ed.), Medieval India: A Miscellany, vol. 4 (New York: Asia Publishing House, 1977). Khan, M.A., ‘Social Change among the Muslims of Aurangabad City’, in A.A. Engineer (ed.), Problems of Muslim Women in India (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1995). Khan, Y.H., The First Nizam: the Life and Times of Nizamu’l Mulk Asaf Jah I (London: Asia Publishing House, 1963). Kiyānī, M., Tārīkh-e Khānaqāh dar Īrān (Tehran: Intishārāt-e Tūrī, 1380/2001). Kirk, R.T.F., Paper Making in the Bombay Presidency: A Monograph (Bombay: np, 1908). Klaniczay, G., Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Kohzad, A.A. ‘Huits légendes concernant la fondation de la ville de Herat’, Afghanistan, 4 (1951). (p.309)

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Bibliography Kokan, M.Y., ‘[Language and Literature, (i)] Arabic’, in H.K. Sherwani and P.M. Joshi (eds), History of Medieval Deccan (1295–1724), 2 vols (Hyderabad: Government of Andhra Pradesh, 1974), vol. 2. Kotani, H., ‘Kingship, State and Local Society in the Seventeenth-to-Nineteenth Century Deccan with Special Reference to Ritual Functions’, in N. Karashima (ed.), Kingship in Indian History (Delhi: Manohar, 1999). Kriss, R. and H. Kriss-Heinrich, Volksglaube im Bereich des Islam, 2 vols (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1960). Kugle, S.A., ‘Haqiqat al-fuqara: Poetic Biography of ‘Madho Lal’ Hussayn’, in R. Vanita and S. Kidwai (eds), Same-Sex Love and in India: Readings from Literature (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000). ———, Sufis & Saints’ Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality, and Sacred Power in Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). Kulkarni, A.R., The Marathas (Delhi: Books & Books, 1996). Kulke, H. (ed.), Kings and Cults: State Formation and Legitimation in India and Southeast Asia (Delhi: Manohar, 1993). Kumar, S., The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, 1192–1286 (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007). Kwakkel, E., ‘A New Type of Book for a New Type of Reader: The Emergence of Paper in Vernacular Book Production’, The Library, series 4, 3 (2003). Lahiri, N., ‘Archaeological Landscapes and Textual Images: A Study of the Sacred Geography of Late Medieval Ballabgarh’, World Archaeology, 28 (1996). Laine, J.W., ‘Śivājī as Epic Hero’, in G.D. Sontheimer (ed.), Folk Culture, Folk Religion and Oral Traditions as a Component in Maharashtrian Culture (Delhi: Manohar, 1995). Laine, J.W. and S.S. Bahulkar, The Epic of Shivaji: A Translation and Study of Kavindra Paramananda’s Sivabharata (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2001). Lang, H., Der Heiligenkult in Marokko: Formen und Funktionen der Wallfahrten (Passau: Passavia Universitätsverlag, 1992). Latif, S.A., ‘Jamali’s Relations with the Rulers of Delhi’, in Nizami (1977), vol. 4. Lawrence, B.B., ‘The Diffusion of Hindu/Muslim Boundaries in South Asia: Contrasting Evidence from the Literature and the Tomb Cults of Selected IndoMuslim Shaykhs’, in P. Gaeffke and D.A. Utz (eds), Identity and Division in Cults

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Bibliography and Sects in South Asia (Philadelphia: Department of South Asia Regional Studies, 1984b). ———, ‘Early Indo-Muslim Saints and Conversion’, in Y. Friedmann (ed.), Islam in Asia: South Asia, vol.1(Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1984a). ———, ‘Veiled Opposition to Sufis in Muslim South Asia: Dynastic Manipulation of Mystical Brotherhoods by the Great Mughal’, in F. De Jong and B. Radtke (eds), Islamic Mysticism Contested: 13 Centuries of Controversies and Polemics (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999). (p.310) Layish, A., ‘Waqfs and Sufi Monasteries in the Ottoman Policy of Colonization: Sultan Selim’s Waqf of 1516 in Favour of Dayr al-Asad’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 50, 1 (1987). Le Goff, J. and P. Nora (eds), Constructing the Past: Essays in Historical Methodology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Lelyfeld, D., ‘Disenchantment at Aligarh: Islam and the Realm of the Secular in Late Nineteenth Century India’, Die Welt des Islams, 22, 1–4 (1982). Levey, M., ‘Ibn Masawaih and his Treatise on Simple Aromatic Substances’, Journal of the History of Medicine, 16 (1967). Levi, S. (ed.), India and Central Asia: Commerce and Culture, 1500–1800 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007). Lewis, I.M., ‘Zar in Context: The Past, the Present and the Future of an African Healing Cult’, in I.M. Lewis, A. Al-Safi, and S. Hurreiz (eds), Women’s Medicine: The Zar-Bori Cult in Africa and Beyond (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991). ———, Saints and Somalis: Popular Islam in a Clan-Based Society (London: Haan Associates 1998). Luther, N., Hyderabad (Delhi: Government of India Publications Division, 1997). MacDonald, D., ‘Emotional Religion in Islam as Affected from Music and Singing: Being a Translation of a Book of the Ihya ‘Ulum ed Din of Al Ghazzali’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1901–2). Mackail, J.W., Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1890). Mackenzie Shah, A., ‘Constructing a Capital on the Edge of Empire: Urban Patronage and Politics in the Nizams’ Hyderabad’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2005.

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