NOTES ON THE RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE OF IRANIAN BALUCHISTAN OBSERVATIONS FROM THE SARHADD REGION*

VAHE BOYAJIAN-SURENIANTS

Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies

The traditional habitation domain of the Baluches includes mainly the bordering areas of Iran, and Afghanistan. Most of them fol- low the mazhab of , but there are also Shi‘a com- munities in certain regions of Iranian Baluchistan (like Dalgan, etc.) and a sect called Zikriyya. However, almost all the Zikri Baluches, during the last decades of the 20th century, for different socio-eco- nomic, cultural and religious reasons had moved from Iranian prov- ince of Baluchistan to Pakistani .1 The Zikris are not con- sidered a Sufi order, although, as Pastner notes, “Both Zikri and Sunni Baluch pirs, like their counterparts elsewhere in Islamic ‘little tradi- tions’, are heirs to the Sufi belief in the ability of the individual mystic to attain union with God without the mediation of the ‘Ulama or “offi- cial” learned clergy representing ‘Great Tradition’ Islam”.2 In Iranian Baluchistan, among the Sunni Baluches, the Zikris have left mostly negative reminiscences: they are characterised almost as kafir, infidels, following non-Muslim traditions and practicing heretical rituals. As

*A preliminary version of this paper with the title “Sufi Brotherhoods in Iranian Baluchi- stan” has been presented at the CESS IV Annual Conference at Harvard University, October 2003. 1The founder of the Zikrism is believed to be Seyyed Mohammad Jawanpuri, who in the 15th century declared himself the last Mahdi. He started to preach his doctrine in , around the Koh-i Morad, after several pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina and wanderings in Turkey and Syria. The Zikris are concentrated in Makran and Las-Bela in Balochistan province of Pakistan (for the Zikris in general, and particularly in Pakistan, see C.E. Bosworth, “Dhikris”, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Fascicules 3-4 (1981); I.Baloch, “Islam, the State and Identity: The Zikris of Balochistan”, Marginality and Modernity: Ethnicity and Change in Post-Colonial Balochistan, P. Titus, (ed.), , Oxford, 1996; H. Field, An Anthropological Reconnaissance in , 1955, (= Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard Uni- versity Vol. LII), Cambridge, 1959: 57-62). 2S.L. Pastner, “Power and Pirs Among the Pakistani Baluch”, Journal of Asian and African Studies, XIII, 3-4, 1978: 237; for the relations between Sunni and Zikri traditions and leadership, see also idem., “Sardar, Hakom, Pir: Leadership Patterns Among the Pakistani Baluch”, Shari‘at and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam, Katherine P. Ewing (ed.), 1988.

 Brill, Leiden, 2004 Iran and the Caucasus, 8.2 200 VAHE BOYAJIAN-SURENIANTS Jan-Mohammad Hoseinbor, my informant in Gwasht,3 told me, every year, on a special day, the Zikris gather around the Koh-i Morad and perform orgiastic rites, giving freedom to their corporal wishes, com- mitting promiscuity, and so on. The Zikri husbands, according to Hoseinbor, even personally offer their wives to the local mulla (khv"†eh), who presides over the orgy, in order to attain Divine Grace and Mercy. It is clear, however, that such kind of accusations in moral degradation and religious impurity are, in fact, nothing more than the common derogatory characteristics and clichés applied to the hetero- dox trends (not only Muslim) and prevailing among the orthodox since the grey antiquity.4 Traditionally the Baluches, like the Kurds,5 are characterised as a non-pious people, showing no particular interest in religious practice. However, this statement can be truly applied only to a certain no- madic social layer called baluch6 in Iran and Pakistan.7 The roots of folk-beliefs among the latter are much deeper than those of the nor- mative religious concepts. But the Baluches themselves have an ap- propriate knowledge of the Islamic dogmas, customs and religious practices, and sometimes appear to be devoted Sufis. The lack of at least a preliminary study on the religiosity of the Baluches, the role and place of religion in the Baluchi society is more than obvious. Even in descriptive ethnographical accounts on the Baluches the issue of religion is usually touched marginally.8

3See below, footnote 10. 4As an illustrative example the Yezidis, as well as the Ahl-i Haqq sectarians in Iran can be mentioned. The orthodox neighbours (Sunni and Shi‘a) regarded them as followers of Satan (mostly referring to the Yezidis) and sinful peoples having unlawful sexual habits. They refer, as a rule, to the same mythical custom, according to which every year a certain day the sectarians gather in one place, switch the lights off and start their scandalous copulation. This custom is called ¢er"‰-ko•"n (Pers. “light-extinguisher”) (see in details G. Asatrian, Etyudy po Iranskoj Etnologii (Essays on Iranian Ethnology), Yerevan, Caucasian Center for Iranian Studies, 1998: 105). 5Cf. a recent study on Islam in the Kurdish-speaking areas M. van Bruinessen, “The Kurds and Islam”, Islamic Area Studies, Working Paper Series, N 19, Tokyo, 1999: 1-24. 6Following P. Salzman (P. Salzman, Kin and Contract in Baluchi Herding Camps, Baluchistan Monograph Series, Naples, 1992: 9), I also give the name of this social group as baluch, with small letter, and the Baluch, as an ethnos, with the capital one. 7Incidentally, a criminal Gypsy-like group with the name Biloch is attested in Eastern , which leads its origin to the genuine Baluchi tribes, Rind, Lashari, and Mazari (see H.L. Wil- liams, “The Criminal and Wandering Tribes of India”, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, vol. VI, Liverpool, 1912-1913: 51-52). 8P. Salzman (Black Tents of Baluchistan, Smithsonian Series in Ethnographic Inquiry, Wash- ington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000:330-49), for instance, appropriated a whole chapter to the Baluches in Sarhadd, Iranian Baluchistan, without saying a word on the Sufi orders in this region.