UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Texts, Tombs and Memory: The Migration, Settlement and Formation of a Learned Muslim Community in Fifteenth-Century Gujarat Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/89q3t1s0 Author Balachandran, Jyoti Gulati Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Texts, Tombs and Memory: The Migration, Settlement, and Formation of a Learned Muslim Community in Fifteenth-Century Gujarat A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Jyoti Gulati Balachandran 2012 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Texts, Tombs and Memory: The Migration, Settlement, and Formation of a Learned Muslim Community in Fifteenth-Century Gujarat by Jyoti Gulati Balachandran Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2012 Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Chair This dissertation examines the processes through which a regional community of learned Muslim men – religious scholars, teachers, spiritual masters and others involved in the transmission of religious knowledge – emerged in the central plains of eastern Gujarat in the fifteenth century, a period marked by the formation and expansion of the Gujarat sultanate (c. 1407-1572). Many members of this community shared a history of migration into Gujarat from the southern Arabian Peninsula, north Africa, Iran, Central Asia and the neighboring territories of the Indian subcontinent. I analyze two key aspects related to the making of a community of ii learned Muslim men in the fifteenth century - the production of a variety of texts in Persian and Arabic by learned Muslims and the construction of tomb shrines sponsored by the sultans of Gujarat. The texts memorialized the lives of many of the Muslim spiritual figures (sufi shaykhs) who migrated and settled in Gujarat in the early part of the fifteenth century while the royal interest in and sponsporship of tomb shrines of pious, charismatic Muslim men like Shaykh Ahmad Khattū (d. 1445) in Sarkhej, Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn ‘Abdullāh (d. 1453) in Vatwa and Sayyid Sirāj al-Dīn Muhammad (d. 1475) in Rasūlābād contributed to the creation of a Muslim sacred geography in eastern Gujarat. Through a re-reading of contemporary and near- contemporary court-chronicles produced in the region and a tapping of hitherto under- investigated sufi literature in Persian and Arabic, I show how textual narratives and tomb shrines were important elements that tied the memory of many fifteenth-century migrant learned Muslims to their specific regional context in Gujarat for posterity. In turn, the region acquired part of its distinctive identity through the memorialization of these learned figures. The dissertation attempts to bring attention to several crucial political, social and cultural processes that shaped the region of Gujarat in the late medieval and early modern period, and seeks to highlight the importance of integrating sufi texts to our understanding of these processes. iii The dissertation of Jyoti Gulati Balachandran is approved. Nile Green James L. Gelvin Michael Cooperson Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2012 iv Dedicated to my parents for their unconditional love and support. v Table of Contents List of Maps and Figures Note on Transliteration/Translation/Dates Introduction Learned Muslim Migrants and the Emergence of a Regional Community………1 Chapter 1 From Inscriptions to Texts: Fifteenth-Century Beginnings………………………33 Chapter 2 Negotiating Settlement in Gujarat…………………………………………….….84 Chapter 3 Formation and Expansion of Familial and Spiritual Relationships……………...118 Chapter 4 Tomb Shrines and the Creation of a Muslim Sacred Geography in Eastern Gujarat…………………………………………………………..……………….143 Chapter 5 Seventeenth century Re-imaginings of fifteenth-century ancestors: Shaykh Ahmad Khattū and the Suhrawardīs in Gujarat………………………...188 Conclusion…………………...…………………………………………………..215 Appendix I: Tuhfat al-majālis and Mirqāt al-wusūl ila Allah wa al-Rasūl: Authorship and Relative Dates of Composition………………………………....229 Appendix II: Chihil ……………………………………………………...236 Appendix III: Shaykh Ahmad Khattū and his Suhrawardī contemporaries in 16th-17th century tazkirāt………………………………………………………….238 Bibliography………………………………………………………………...….....244 vi Map and Figures Map: Gujarat and its adjoining territories, c. 1500………………………………………....xv Figure 1: Part of Sayyid Bahā’ al-Dīn al-Makkī’s qabīla in Gujarat……………………...140 Figure 2.1: Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn ‘Abdullāh and the first generation of Bukhārī descendants in Gujarat (excludes daughters)………………………………………………141 Figure 2.2: ‘Qutbī’ and ‘Shāhī’ silsilat al-nasab and silsilat al-khilāfat based in Vatwa and Rasūlābād respectively………………………………………………………142 Figure 3.1: Entrance to Shaykh Ahmad Khattū’s tomb shrine in Sarkhej…….....................180 Figure 3.2: Shaykh Ahmad Khattū’s tomb shrine…… ………………………….................181 Figure 3.3: The mosque inside the Sarkhej complex……………………………….............182 Figure 3.4: The lake called Ahmadsar………………………………..………….………….183 Figure 3.5: The tombs of Gujarat sultans inside the Sarkhej Complex……………………..184 Figure 4.1: Sayyid Sirāj al-Dīn Muhammad’s tomb shrine in Rasūlābād…………………..185 Figure 4.2: Close-up of Sayyid Sirāj al-Dīn Muhammad ‘Shāh-i ‘Ālam’s tomb……...........186 Figure 4.3: The mosque inside the Rasūlābād Complex………………………….................187 vii Note on Translation/Transliteration/Dates All translations from Persian and Arabic are mine unless specified otherwise. In spelling and transliteration of Persian and Arabic terms I have followed F. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary and Arabic-English Dictionary, with some aberrations: for instance, I have preferred Husayn and awliyā’ over Husain and auliyā’ respectively. I also make a distinction between the Persianized form of words like sultan, saiyid and shaikh and their English usage without diacritics as sultan, sayyid and shaykh. Similarly I have not used diacritics for the more common place-names like Delhi and Ahmadabad unless they occur in transliteration from Persian and Arabic. I have also diverged from Steingass in the transliteration of combined words. In the case of Persian combined words, I place a hyphen (-) before the letter i to show connection between the two words. Thus instead of Mir’āti Sikandarī I use Mir’āt-i Sikandarī. In Arabic/Perso-Arabic combinations, I put the definite article al followed by a hyphen, instead of “u’l-”. I do not change the form of al for phonetic purposes: Burhān al-Dīn, therefore, is not written as Burhānu’d-Dīn. For words of common Arabic and Persian usage I have preferred Steingass’s Persian transliteration over Arabic. Thus ‘Zafar’ is rendered consistently as Zafar and never as Dafar. All dates in the dissertation are in the Common Era (C.E.). viii Acknowledgements While the writing of this dissertation was a solitary activity – more so because it was written miles away from the academic space of UCLA – it was made possible by the support and encouragement of a host of individuals and institutions. Sanjay Subrahmanyam provided invaluable support and direction from the moment I first came to UCLA in 2005. This support extended from guidance on practical aspects of finding my feet in a new city and country to adjusting to an academic environment that was considerably different from what I had been used to in India. As the initial idea for this dissertation took shape and evolved over the next few years, Sanjay Subrahmanyam encouraged and challenged me intellectually: he offered important comments and critiques as papers evolved into chapter drafts and forced me to think in broader historical terms. I am also grateful to Sanjay Subrahmanyam for supporting my move to the east coast from where I did most of the writing. This dissertation has further benefitted immensely from Nile Green’s meticulous and rigorous reading. He encouraged me to be attentive to the use of specific ideas and terminologies and develop a broader comparative approach to my material and interpretation. He added considerable conceptual clarity to my writing through his invaluable and prompt feedback. I learnt a lot from James Gelvin’s emphasis on writing well and clearly in his classes on the modern Middle East and received helpful comments on the dissertation. Michael Cooperson was an exceptional teacher of Arabic and a very careful reader; he alerted me to the appropriate choice of words when translating from my source material, pointed out several transliteration errors and provided general feedback on the structuring of sentences. ix Several other individuals spread across different institutions contributed to the research and writing of the dissertation in different ways. I am thankful to Ali Anooshahr for providing important training in reading Persian manuscripts during my first year at UCLA. Sunil Kumar read parts of the initial draft of the dissertation and offered several recommendations. He was very generous with his time as we discussed many aspects of my work over long-distance phone conversations. Samira Sheikh opened her library of books on Gujarat to me when I was in London and Sunil Sharma guided me in Ahmedabad when I first landed there to conduct research. Mohaiuddin Bombaywala at the Pir Mohammed Shah Dargah Library was an encyclopedic resource on Persian and Arabic manuscripts concerning the history