Religious literature and the inscription of identity: The Sufi Tazkira tradition in Muslim South Asia

Muslim World

Volumn 87, Issue 3-4, 1997, Pages 315-329

  Hermansen, Marcia K ^a  

^a RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33644528634     PISSN: 00274909     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-1913.1997.tb03642.x     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. Aijaz Ahmad, "Indian Literature: Notes towards the Definition of a Category" in In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London: Verso, 1992), 243-85.
2. Annemarie Schimmel, Classical Urdu Literature from the Beginning to Iqbāl (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1975).
3. Sindhi Literature (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1974).
4. Annemarie Schimmel, Islamic Literatures of India (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1972).
5. M. G. Zubaid Ahmad, The Contribution of Indo-Pakistan to Arabic Literature (Lahore: Ashraf, 1968).
6. Richard Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
7. Āzād Bilgrāmī, Suhbat ul-MarJān (Bombay, 1886).
8. Christopher Shackle, "Punjabi in Lahore" in Modern Asian Studies 4 (1970): 239-67
9. and "Rival Linguistic Identities in Pakistan Punjab" in Rule, Protest, Identity-Aspects of Modern South Asia, eds. Peter Robb and David Taylor (London: Curzon Press, 1978), 213-34.
10. For example, see M. G. Kabir, "Religion, Language and Nationalism in Bangladesh" in Religion, Nationalism, and Politics in Bangladesh, ed. Rafiuddin Ahmed (New Delhi: South Asian Publications, 1990), 35-49.
11. A brief introduction is Thomas F. Mayer and D. R. Woolf, eds., The Rhetorics of Life Writing in Early Modern Europe (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1995), 1-19.
12. Schimmel comments on this and other couplets of Ghālib which are apposite to the present topic in her chapter "Poetry and Calligraphy" in A Dance of Sparks: Imagery of Fire in Ghālib's Poetry (Delhi: Vikas, 1979), 112-36.
13. George Morrison, Persian Literature from the Earliest Times to the Time of Jāmī (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980), 14.
14. M. Garcin De Tassy, Histoire de la literature hindouie et hindoustanie (Paris; A. Labitte, 1870-1871).
15. Farman Fatehpūrī, ed., Nigār-i Pākistān. Tazkirōn kā tazkirah numbar (May/June 1964).
16. Discussed., for example, in Jaroslav Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Neid: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabian Nasib (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1993)
17. and Michael Sells, Desert Tracinias' Six Classical Arabian Odes (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1989).
18. We note here H. A. R. Gibb's statement that "the biographical dictionary is a wholly indigenous creation of the Islamic community. " "Islamic Biographical Literature' in B. Lewis and P. M. Holt, Historians of the Middle East (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968), 54. Reflecting on the inclusion of very ordinary persons in the biographical dictionaries (tabaqāt), Gibb further observes (pp. 54-8) that the history of the Islamic community is essentially the contribution of individual men and women to the building up and transmission of its specific culture. That is, it is these persons (rather than the political governors) who represent or reflect the active force of Muslim society.
19. "Urdu literature, almost from its very beginnings, has been concerned with city life. The language has functioned for a long time as an urban-centered., but non-regional language. " Leslie Fleming, "Two Pakistani Women Writers View the City: The Short Stories of Bano Qudsiyya and Farkhandah Lodhi" in Journal of South Asian Literature 25/1: 1
20. quoting A. K. Ramanujan "Towards an Anthology of City Images" in Richard G. Fox, ed., Urban India: Society, Space and Images (Winston-Salem, NC: Duke University Press, 1970), 224-44.
21. An extensive review article on the "Tabaqāt" genre is Ibrahim Hafsi's "Recherches sur le genre 'Tabaqāt' dans la littérateur arabe. " (Hafsi, 1976, 77). Hafsi lists and classifies the major tabaqāt according to types of persons included (i. e., hadīth transmitters, mystics, or poets), and century of composition. Hafsi then formulates his own classification of tabaqāt compilers as initiators, innovators, or imitators. Under principles of ranking or classifying Hafsi cites some basic examples of schemata for arranging Sunni tabaqāt such as the ordering of Companions of the Prophet, Followers, Successors to the Followers, and later generations. This is, of course, a common way of thinking of merit and authority in early Islam. Parallel Shīa ranking systems are also cited including: Companions of the Prophet, Companions of Alī, then Hasan, and Husayn or alternatively the Pure Ones (asfiyā). Saints (awliyā), Ones Promised Paradise by "All, and his Companions. Arabica 23 (1976): 227-65 and 24 (1977): 1-41.
22. Bruce B. Lawrence, Notes from a Distant Flute. Sufi Literature in Pre-Mughal India (Tehran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, 1978);
23. and Carl Ernst, Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1992), 62-84.
24. Carl W. Ernst, Eternal Garden, 82-3.
25. See also Carl Ernst, "The Textual Formation of Oral Teachings in Early Chishti Sufism," in Texts in Context: Traditional Hermeneutics in South Asia, ed. Jeffrey R. Timm (Albany: State University of New York, 1992), 271-97;
26. as well as Nisār Ahmad Fārūqī, Naud-i Malfūzāt (Delhi: Maktabah-i Jāmiah, 1989).
27. The phrase was used by Jaroslav Stekevych in The Zephyrs of Neid, 121.
28. On the religious symbolism (Hindu) of recent architecture in India see Susan J. Lewandowski, "The Built Environment and Cultural Symbolism in Post-Colonial Madras," in The City in Cultural Context, eds. John Agnew, John Mercer, and David Sopher (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1984), 237-52.
29. This is true of the Wahhābīas who destroyed tombs, including that of the Prophet, in eighteenth century Arabia, as well as of contemporary leveling of Sufi shrines in Algeria, Malaysia and other locations.
30. Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
31. S. 85:22. Annemarie Schimmel's discussion of tablet and pen imagery in the Qurān, Hadīath and poetic tradition is quite helpful here. Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1975), 414-16
32. S. 68:1.
33. For Ibn Arabīa's influence in South Asia see William Chittick, "Notes on Ibn Arabī's Influence in the Indian Sub-Continent,' MW 82 (1992): 218-41.
34. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 415. This is the very couplet cited at the outset of the current paper.
35. Carruthers, Book of Memory, 21.
36. A work which stimulated scholarly awareness of technologies of memory was Francis Yates, The Art of Memory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966).
37. al-Suyūtī, Alfiyya fī ilm al-hadīth (Cairo: al-Bābīa al-Halabī, 1934).
38. Cited in J. M. S. Baljon. Religion and Thought of Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi 1703-1762 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 12.
39. S. 3:191.
40. Literally, "keeping in mind", or as one Sufi puts it, keeping the heart in the presence of God in all situations Yād, memory, refers technically to one of the steps of practice in the Naqshbandiyya Sufi order which might be summarized as remaining aware at all times. See Fritz Meier, Zwei Abhandlungen über die Nacishbandiyya (Istanbul: Franz Steiner, 1994), 44-6.
41. Tasawwur evokes an element of visual memory. For example, tasawwur-i shaykh, the calling to mind of the image of a person's spiritual master is a practice of some Sufi orders, particularly the version of Naqshbandi practice known as "rābita" or developing a spiritual bond with the spiritual preceptor. Hamid Algar, "Devotional Practices of the Khālidī Naqshbandis of Ottoman Turkey' in Raymond Lifchez, ed., The Dervish Lodge: Architecture, Art and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 209-27. Tasawwur also refers to formulating a proposition.
42. See Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), Ch. 3 for a discussion of this system.
43. These consist of ritualized recitations of rhymed spiritual genealogies of previous saints in a particular Sufi lineage.
44. Cited in V. G. Kiernan, Poems by Faiz (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971), 128-9.
45. Ernst, Eternal Garden, 67. Nizam ad-Din Awliya: Morals for the Heart, trans. Bruce B. Lawrence (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 214.
46. Nafahāt al-uns min hazarāt al-quds (Tehran: Intishārāt-i ittilaāt, 1994).
47. Jo-Ann Gross discusses this tazkira in " Khoja Ahrār: A Study of the Perceptions of Religious Power and Prestige in the Late Timurid Period" (unpublished Ph. D. diss. New York University, 1982).
48. See also Alīa ibn al-Husayn Kāshifī, Rashahāt (Lukhnow: Newal Kishore, 1890).
49. Ernst, Eternal Garden, 90.
50. For example the extensive tradition of compiling gazetteers of regions under British control. Henry Scholberg, The District Gazetteers of British India (Zug: Inter Documentation Co., 1970).
51. See also N. Gerald Barrier, The Census in British India: New Perspectives (New Delhi: Manohar, 1981).
52. Agrā: Matba Faid, n. d.
53. Lahore, 1364/1944.
54. Lawrence, Notes from a Distant Flute, 20.
55. Muhammad Sādiq Dihlavī Kashmīrī Hamadānīa, Kalimāt aJ-sādiqin, ed. Muhammad Saleem Akhtar (Islamabad: Iran Pakistan Research Center, 1988).
56. Kalimāt al-Sādiqin, 5. Amir Khusrau, Qirān al-Saādayn (Lukhnow: Nawal Kishore, 1875), 22-23, is the Mathnavī from which these verses are taken. Other features of Delhi such as the Friday mosque and minaret are praised in the same section.
57. Bruce Lawrence, "Biography and the 17th Century Qādiriyya of North India," in Islam and Indian Regions, eds. Anna Libera Dallapiccola and Stephanie Zengel-Ave Lallemant (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1993), 402.
58. Nasr Iqbāl Qureishīa, "Muarrikh-i Lahūr Miān Muhammad Dīn Kalīm Qādirī," in Arafāt, Lahore (November/ December 1989): 128-38.
59. Hadīgat al-Auliyā, by Maulānā Hakīm Muftī Ghulām Sarwar Lahūrī (1837/ 1244 A. H.-1890).
60. By Muhammad Dīn Kalīm, Madinat al-Auliyā is about 636 saints buried in Lahore. It is about 700 pages long.
61. Michel Foucault, "In Other Spaces," Diacritics 16 (1986): 22-7.
62. A further dimension of the relationship between gardens, tombs, and Islamic cosmology has been explored by the art historian Wayne Begley, in "The Myth of the Taj Mahal and a New Theory of its Symbolic Meaning," The Art Bulletin 61 (March 1979): 7-37.
63. Tarif Khalidi, "Some Classical Islamic Views of the City," in Studia Arabica and Islamica: Festscrift for Ihsān Abbās, ed. Widād al-Qādīa (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1981), 271.
64. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).
65. The incorporation of such pilgrimage circuits into calendars of ritual observances of saints' anniversaries is discussed in Carl W. Ernst, "An Indo-Persian Guide to Sufi Shrine Pilgrimage" in Manifestations of Sainthood in Islam (Istanbul: Isis, 1993), 43-68. "Whenever one comes to a town, the first thing one has to accomplish is to kiss the feet of the saints who are full of life, and after that, the honor of pilgrimage to the tombs of saints found there. If one's master's tomb is in that city, one first carries out the pilgrimage to him; otherwise one visits the tomb of every saint shown him. ", 61. Quoted from Simnānīa, Latāif al-Ashrafī.
66. Carla Petievich, "Poetry of the Declining Mughals: The Shahr Āshob," in Journal of South Asian Literature 25, no. 1: 99-110.
67. On the influence of English literary canons on India and a post-colonial critique see Gauri Vishvanathan, Masks of Conguest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).
68. Sara Suleri, The Rhetoric of English India (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992).
69. Frances Pritchett, Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and its Critics (Berkeley: University of California, 1994), 75.
70. Jonathan Z. Smith in his study of "place" in religion writes concerning the Jewish and Christian understandings of sacred centers in Jerusalem, "For each there was a triumphant, ideological literature that perceived in their construction a cosmogonic act. For each, there was a literature of indigenous lamentation. . . that found, in the destruction or loss of the sites, a plunge into chaos. " To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1987), 3.
71. Muhammad Dīn Kalīm, Madīnat al-auliyā (Lahore: Maārif, 1982), 78-79.