Modern Asian Studies 50, 6 (2016) pp. 1888–1931. C Cambridge University Press 2016 doi:10.1017/S0026749X15000530 First published online 1 July 2016 The Hajj and the Hindi: The ascent of the Indian Sufi lodge in the Ottoman empire∗ RISHAD CHOUDHURY The Academy for International and Area Studies, Harvard University, United States of America Email:
[email protected] Abstract This article charts several historical paths, hitherto underexplored, through the Hindi or ‘Indian’ Sufi lodges of the Ottoman empire. Focusing on the ‘long eighteenth century (circa 1695–1808)’, it tracks their remarkable ascendance as an institutional network for mobile and migrant Indian Sufi pilgrims. From Istanbul to the provinces, the article demonstrates how Naqshbandis and Qadiris on the Hajj circuit drew on local channels of social communications, legal petitioning strategies, and state and inter-state linkages to forge unique identities as ‘trans-imperial subjects’ in an age of decentralization in the Ottoman world. I argue that central to their social success was the creation of new corporate regimes of itinerant piety. But first, I place the little-known lodges at the heart of a specific shift in early modern attitudes to identity, as the story behind ‘Hindi’ beckons wider inquiry into emergent differences among Sufi pilgrims in the Ottoman empire. ∗ For valuable comments on early drafts, I am grateful to Suraiya Faroqhi, Durba Ghosh, Eric Tagliacozzo, and Robert Travers. I am thankful, as well, to Nida Nebahat Nalçacı for eye-opening trips to Istanbul’s Sufi lodges, old and new. Previous iterations of these arguments were presented at Cornell University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Princeton University, and the Social Science Research Council.