Recentering the Sufi Shrine: a Metaphysics of Presence
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Recentering the Sufi Shrine: A Metaphysics of Presence The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Khan, Irfan M. 2019. Recentering the Sufi Shrine: A Metaphysics of Presence. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42029822 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Re-centering the Sufi Shrine: A Metaphysics of Presence A dissertation presented By Irfan Moeen Khan to The Committee on the Study of Religion In partial fulfillment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of The Study of Religion Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts August 2018 © Irfan Moeen Khan All rights reserved #$%&'!("))"*+!,'!-$*.*+!*/0!#$%&'!1"+23$)34!5'!#*66%/!! 7$&*/!8%33/!1.*/!! ! ! 93:;3/63$"/<!6.3!=>&"!=.$"/3?!,!836*@.4A";A!%&!#$3A3/;3! ! ! ,2A6$*;6! The religious character of Indus Sufism is marked by its devotion to the living presence of Sufi saints at their tombs. In much previous scholarship on Sufism, the tomb has not figured prominently. This has inadvertently marginalized the worship of the saints at their shrines (ziy!ra) into a kind of ethnographically rich yet still epiphenomenal element in the history of Sufism, a view that sees it as much more a matter of “discourse” than a lived experience. This dissertation addresses the problem of how most authentically to interpret popular religious devotion at Sufi saints’ tombs; I argue that we need to begin by re- centering these shrines in our studies. In the case of Pakistan, the state has carried out a systematic program of reform to gradually suppress the devotional energy generated at the Sufi shrines of the Indus valley. In line with a particular trajectory of religious thinking, the state has sought to fashion the hagiographic identities of Indus Sufi saints into more normative models of piety: directly regulating Sufi shrines, promoting specific ritual interventions, and treating the saint’s body as that of a deceased mortal rather than a posthumously powerful channel of the Divine. Since the 19th century, reformist groups such as the Deoband!s and Barelw!s were theologically at odds with one other regarding the ritual of supplication (du‘!) at saints’ shrines. Despite this disagreement between Deoband!s and Barelw!s, both schools insist that all mystical experience must be subservient to strictures of Islamic law. This legal discourse was exported to Pakistan, and there it has led many """! ! religious scholars to push the state to encourage the recitation of the f!ti"a, a Qur’"nic verse commonly employed in sending merit to the dead, as the correct way of observing ziy!ra at Sufi shrines and graves. This ritual intervention is aimed at reversing the metaphysics of posthumous divine union achieved by the saint by stressing that the departed Sufi saint is dead. Through legal reasoning, religious scholars have sought similarly to negate other ritual practices that celebrate the power of deceased saints to communicate with their followers. "B! ! Table of Contents Introduction 1 Conclusion 12 Chapter 1: A Case of Ritual Incongruity in the Practice of Ziy!ra: #!zir$ and F!ti"a 1.1 Introduction 16 1.2 #!%ir$ 19 i. Kurs$ 26 ii. Karam!t 30 1.3 F!ti"a (du‘!) 31 i. Gesture 33 ii. &'!l-i (aw!b 34 iii. Ritual Paradox 40 1.4 ‘Allam" #ahir al-Qadir!: A Barelw! Defense of Ziy!ra 41 1.5 Conclusion 50 Chapter 2 Study of Sufism and Ritual 2.1 “Discourse” and Ritual Experience 52 2.2 Mystical Body 58 2.3 Sufism and Textual Islam 63 i. Pnina’s Werbner’s Ideology of Sufism 65 ii. Omid Safi’s Exchange of Baraka 67 iii. Woodward’s Theory of Divine Kingship 69 iv. Summary 82 2.4 The Textual Bias of Scholars on Sufism 83 2.5 Ineffability and Authority: The Unsayable 86 B! ! 2.5 Conclusion Chapter 3 Ritual and the Politics of Sufism: Governing the Tombs 3.1 Introduction 92 3.2 The Politics of Scripture: The )ariqa-i Mu"ammad$yya in India 96 i. The incarnation of Prophet Mu$ammad: Sayyid Ahmad 104 Barelw! ii. Prophet Mu$ammad and the Two Mims 114 3.3 Nationalization of Sufi Shrines in Pakistan 118 3.4 Pakistan (Nation-State) and Islam 128 3.5 Sovereignty and Scripture in Pakistan 134 3.6 The Body and Islamic Reform 136 3.7 Ambiquity and Ritual 138 3.8 Conclusion 145 Chapter 4 Ritual and Bulleh Sh"h 4.1 Introduction 148 4.2 Hagiography and Ritual: “Thaiy! Thaiy!” 154 4.3 Religious Identity of Bulleh Sh"h 162 4.4 ‘Ishq 171 i. Nuqta 177 4.5 Metaphysics of Presence 183 i. Na"n* Aqrib* (Self) 186 4.6 Conclusion 190 Chapter 5 Festival Ritual 218 5.1 Introduction 197 5.2 Mel! in Indus Sufism 202 B"! ! 5.3 Mel! in K!f$ Verse 205 i. Kafi by Bulleh Sh"h 207 ii. Kafi Performance by Sh"h %amid ‘Al! Bela 213 iii. Kafi by Bulleh Shah on Sacred Play 217 5.4 ‘Urs as Festival 228 5.5 Conclusion 234 Chapter 6 #!%ir$ and the Ritual of Sam! 6.1 Introduction 235 6.2 Scripture and Sufi Poetry 240 6.3 Theopoetics of Nisbat 249 6.4 Sam!‘ at the Darg!h 254 6.5 On Ecstasy ("!l and wajd) 256 6.6 Conclusion 263 Conclusion 266 Bibliography 272 ! B""! ! ! Bullhe Sh!h as!n marn! nah$n “Bullhe Sh"h! Immortals, that is who we are!” B"b" Bulleh Sh"h (1680-1757) ! B"""! ! Introduction The title of this dissertation, “Re-centering the Sufi Shrine,” might sound somewhat inappropriate, or rather ordinary, in view of the voluminous scholarship on Sufi shrine visitation (ziy!ra) since the 19th century. However, this re-centering is to be done with reference to the lived experience of Indus Sufism in Pakistan.1 It refers specifically to religious (and ritual) worship, or ‘ib!da, at a Sufi shrine (darg!h or darb!r), which has remained not only unexamined but more or less invisible to scholars who study Sufism. The call for “re-centering” (of the shrine) is twofold: it is directed first at scholars' neglect up to now of religious worship at the darg!h, and second at its ideological regulation and suppression by leaders of Sunni, orthodox Islam in Pakistan, aided since the 1960s by the “Islamic” state through its Department of Awq!f (religious endowments). Therefore, the aim of the study is to present a new scholarly perspective on understanding the religious significance of the Sufi shrine and to uncover the strategies of the ‘ulam! and the state directed against shrine worship as these have long been practiced. The focus will be on a specific ritual action or gesture performed in visiting the darg!h of the Sufi saints in Indus Sufism, namely that which is known as "!%ir$ (being present to the sacred gaze of the saint).2 This ritual centers on worship of the sacred, “resurrected,” body of a Sufi saint, whom devotees experience as present (mawj*d) at the darg!h.3 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Specifically, the call for “re-centering” the Sufi tomb here refers to taking into account the living presence of Sufi saints, its sacred efficacy and agency, as the reason why visitors travel to visit saints' tombs. Therefore, the notion of re-centering also entails describing and analyzing the ritual aspects of ziy!ra that embody the metaphysics of presence. My contention is that the study of Sufi devotional metaphysics associated with shrines, with an aim to highlight the ontological relationship between the poetics of ritual practice and the shrine, necessarily requires an approach that extends well beyond textual descriptions of ziy!ra, especially as discussed in legal discourses on the issue. The metaphysics of presence at Sufi shrines needs to be examined as a lived religious reality in which practice refers to the use or performance of the body in experiencing that presence. 3 Traditionally, Indus Sufism is distinguished by its religious culture of pluralism and the performative arts of the sam!‘, best cultivated in the form of the k!f$ verses attributed to its saints such as B"b" Far!d of PakPattan, B"b" Bulleh Sh"h of Qas&r, Khaw"ja Ghul"m Far!d of Mithankot, and ‘Abdul La'!f C! ! My thesis is that "!%ir$, as a form of religious practice or worship (Urdu ‘ib!dat; Ar. ‘ib!da), is the ritual of communion with the living presence of the Sufi saint, which means that "!%ir$ is effectively equivalent to what is referred to in scriptural Islam as the act of ritual prayer (Pers. nam!z; Ar. 'al!t). However, describing the ritual devotion at the Sufi shrine as ‘ib!dat is classified as idolatry (shirk) by traditionalist ‘ulam!' (including the pro-Sufi variety). Since the 19th century, Islamic reformism has made a concentrated effort to suppress such “idolatry” and reverse the lived metaphysics of Sufism. In addition, the Islamic state of Pakistan in the 1960s joined them and entered fully into the sacred space of Sufi shrines to rupture the perceived “idolatrous” relationship between the devotees and the Sufi saints of the Indus. There has been a strong interest among scholars working in different disciplines in understanding the religious role of Sufi shrines, not simply in Pakistan but across the Islamic world.