Muslim Saints of South Asia

257 Pages·2004·2.63 MB·English

by  Anna Suvorova

MUSLIM SAINTS OF
SOUTH ASIA
This book studies the veneration practices and rituals of the Muslim
saints. It outlines the principle trends of the main Sufiorders in India,
the profiles and teachings of the famous and less well-known saints,
and the development of pilgrimage to their tombs in India, Pakistan
and Bangladesh. A detailed discussion of the interaction of the Hindu
mystic tradition and Sufism shows the polarity between the rigidity
of the orthodox and the flexibility of the popular Islam in South
Asia. Treating the cult of saints as a universal and all pervading
phenomenon embracing the life of the region in all its aspects, the
analysis includes politics, social and family life, interpersonal relations,
gender problems and national psyche. The author uses a multidimen-
sional approach to the subject: a historical, religious and literary
analysis of sources is combined with an anthropological study of the
rites and rituals of the veneration of the shrines and the description
of the architecture of the tombs.
Anna Suvorova is Head of Department of Asian Literatures at the
Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
A recognized scholar in the field of Indo-Islamic culture and liter-
ature, she frequently lectures at universities all over the world. She is
the author of several books in Russian and English including The
Poetics of Urdu Dastaan; The Sources of the New Indian Drama;
The Quest for Theatre: the twentieth century drama in India and
Pakistan; Nostalgia for Lucknow and Masnawi: a study of Urdu
romance. She has also translated several books on pre-modern Urdu
prose into Russian.
ROUTLEDGECURZON SUFI SERIES
Series Editor: Ian Richard Netton
Professor of Arabic Studies
University of Leeds
The RoutledgeCurzon SufiSeries provides short introductions to a variety
of facets of the subject, which are accessible both to the general reader and
the student and scholar in the field. Each book will be either a synthesis of
existing knowledge or a distinct contribution to, and extension of, knowledge
of the particular topic. The two major underlying principles of the series are
sound scholarship and readability.
BEYOND FAITH AND SUFIS AND ANTI-SUFIS
INFIDELITY The defence, rethinking and
The Sufipoetry and teaching of rejection of Sufism in the modern
Mahmud Shabistari world
Leonard Lewisham Elizabeth Sirriyeh
REVELATION,
AL-HALLAJ
INTELLECTUAL INTUITION
Herbert W. Mason
AND REASON IN THE
RUZBIHAN BAQLI PHILOSOPHY OF MULLA
Mysticism and the rhetoric of SADRA
sainthood in Persian Sufism An analysis of the al-hikmah
Carl W. Ernst al-’arshiyyah
Zailan Moris
ABDULLAH ANSARI OF
DIVINE LOVE IN ISLAMIC
HERAT
MYSTICISM
An early SufiMaster
The teachings of al-Ghazali and
A. G. Ravan Farhadi
al-Dabbagh
THE CONCEPT OF Binyamin Abrahamov
SAINTHOOD IN EARLY STRIVING FOR DIVINE
ISLAMIC MYSTICISM UNION
Bernd Radtke and John O’Kane Spiritual exercises for Suhrawardi
Sufis
SUHRAWARDI AND THE
Qamar-ul Huda
SCHOOL OF ILLUMINATION
Mehdi Amin Razavi A PSYCHOLOGY OF EARLY
SUFI SAMA
PERSIAN SUFI POETRY Listening and altered states
An introduction to the mystical use Kenneth S. Avery
of classical poems
MUSLIM SAINTS OF SOUTH
J. T. P. de Bruijn
ASIA
AZIZ NASAFI The eleventh to fifteenth centuries
Lloyd Ridgeon Anna Suvorova
MUSLIM SAINTS OF
SOUTH ASIA
The eleventh to fifteenth centuries
Anna Suvorova
First published 1999
by Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow
This edition published 2004
by RoutledgeCurzon
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by RoutledgeCurzon
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2004 Anna Suvorova; English translation M. Osama Faruqi
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage
or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-59271-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-34445-6 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–31764–9 (Print Edition)
IN CHERISHED MEMORY
OF MY FATHER, AND NOW
OF MY MOTHER TOO

CONTENTS
Foreword ix
Acknowledgements xii
1 The Indian tomb 1
2 The hermit of Lahore 35
3 The old man of Ajmer 59
4 The ascetic of Pakpattan 81
5 The peacemaker of Delhi 105
6 The spiritual sovereign of Multan 132
7 The warrior saints 155
8 The mendicant saints 178
Epilogue 199
Notes 204
Glossary 222
Bibliography 230
Index 237
vii

FOREWORD
Christopher Shackle
In many ways the new millennium is indeed a New Age for humanity,
a time in which we are all inexorably becoming ever more closely
linked with one another. Human nature being what it is, however, the
multiplication of increasingly close economic ties and mechanical
social connections is a process which too often outruns our capacity
to understand and to appreciate the diverse religious and cultural
traditions with which we now find ourselves in such immediate
contact. To use the fashionable image, the Other against which we
once were safely able to define ourselves at such a comfortable distance
is now a much more immediate presence. Given the instincts all too
successfully instilled by the early evolution of mankind, the instant
reaction to this situation is to sense the threat of strangers getting
too close rather than to perceive the opportunity of getting to know
some different new friends and something of from where they come.
Openness is certainly the basic requirement for this process of
mutual understanding to take place, and is sorely needed if we are
properly to move together into the new world of global co-existence
into which we have all so rapidly been thrust. But understanding
requires not just openness but also knowledge, as is nowhere more
apparent today than in the lethal fog of misunderstandings too often
born of closed minds and ignorance which prevents so many from a
proper appreciation of the world of Islam. The events of recent years
have shown, as never before, the urgent need for informed and
sympathetic accounts of the kind which alone can hope to help open
hearts as well as minds.
It is just such a window of understanding which is opened through
this book by Professor Anna Suvorova, herself a distinguished
Russian scholar of Urdu literature and South Asian Muslim culture.
In its original version, it was deservedly very well received in Russia,
which has its own clear needs for studies of this kind. It now appears
ix