33,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Serie: Lived Religions
- Sprache: Englisch
The first textbook to focus on the history of lived Shi'ism in South Asia Everyday Shi'ism in South Asia is an introduction to the everyday life and cultural memory of Shi'i women and men, focusing on the religious worlds of both individuals and communities at particular historical moments and places in the Indian subcontinent. Author Karen Ruffle draws upon an array primary sources, images, and ethnographic data to present topical case studies offering broad snapshots Shi'i life as well as microscopic analyses of ritual practices, material objects, architectural and artistic forms, and more. Focusing exclusively on South Asian Shi'ism, an area mostly ignored by contemporary scholars who focus on the Arab lands of Iran and Iraq, the author shifts readers' analytical focus from the center of Islam to its periphery. Ruffle provides new perspectives on the diverse ways that the Shi'a intersect with not only South Asian religious culture and history, but also the wider Islamic humanistic tradition. Written for an academic audience, yet accessible to general readers, this unique resource: * Explores Shi'i religious practice and the relationship between religious normativity and everyday religious life and material culture * Contextualizes Muharram rituals, public performances, festivals, vow-making, and material objects and practices of South Asian Shi'a * Draws from author's studies and fieldwork throughout India and Pakistan, featuring numerous color photographs * Places Shi'i religious symbols, cultural values, and social systems in historical context * Includes an extended survey of scholarship on South Asian Shi'ism from the seventeenth century to the present Everyday Shi'ism in South Asia is an important resource for scholars and students in disciplines including Islamic studies, South Asian studies, religious studies, anthropology, art history, material culture studies, history, and gender studies, and for English-speaking members of South Asian Shi'i communities.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 567
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Acknowledgments
Transliteration Note
Introduction
Everyday Shiʿism
Center and Periphery Reconsidered
Redefining Norms: Shiʿi/South Asia/Everyday
Representing Shiʿism
Contributions
The Scope of
Everyday Shi
ʿ
ism
References
Recommended Readings
1 South Asian “Lovers” of the Ahl‐e Bait
Muharram beyond Shiʿism: The “Composite Culture” of Commemorating Karbala in South Asia
The Husaini Brahmins: Hindu Devotees of Imam Husain
Pirla‐Panduga
: “The Festival of
Pirs
” among Hindus and Sunnis in South India
Dulha! Dulha!
: Sunni and Hindu Possession Rituals for the Bridegroom Qasem
The Shrine of Bibi Pak Daman in South Asian Muslim Cultural Memory
Conclusion
References
Recommended Readings
2 “Come, and Cry, Because
ʿAshura
Is Today”
Tears of a Horse: Sufi Metaphors in Shiʿi Devotional Narratives of Birds and Horses
The Female Voice and the Development of Shiʿi Devotional Literature
A Solace for the Heart, a Source of Religious Guidance: Multiple Perspectives on the
Nauhah
Hearing the Miraculous: A Different Kind of Love Story
Human Rights and Communal Harmony: Re‐Visioning Karbala in South Asian Literary Prose
References
Recommended Readings
3 In the House of the Tenth
Mosques
In the House of the Tenth:
ʿAshurkhanahs
in Southern India
Lions, Arches, and Chains: Visual Representation and Symbolic Meaning in Shiʿi Built Spaces
Imambaras
: Dwelling in the Court of the Imam
Karbala Grounds: Pilgrimage and Burial
Conclusion
References
Recommended Readings
4 Metal Hands and Stone Footprints
Conceptualizing Shiʿi Materiality
Gazing in the Eyes of a Martyr: Embodiment and Presencing in the
ʿAlams
of Karbala Heroes
Ta ʿziya
: Karbala on the Move in South Asia
Zuljanah: Remembering Karbala with Imam Husain’s Loyal Horse
Debating Devotional Representations of the Imams and Ahl‐e Bait
Conclusion
References
Recommended Readings
5 Every Place Is Karbala, Every Day Is
ʿAshura
“Hobson‐Jobson”: Representing Muharram in the Religious Imaginaire
The Ten Saddest Days: The
Ayyam‐e ʿAza
ʿAshura
: The Battle of Good vs. Evil, Or Remembering Imam Husain’s Martyrdom
Always Weep and Remember in the
Majlis‐e ʿAza
The
Majlis
Structure
Processions
Matam
: Inscribing Love for the Ahl‐e Bait on the Body
Conclusion
References
Recommended Readings
6 Tasting Sorrow before Joy
Sweet Blessings: The
Niyaz
of Imam Jaʿfar al‐Sadiq on 22 Rajab
Women’s Votive Practices
Bringing God and the Imams Close: Women’s Prayer Rituals
Pilgrimage to Husain: India – Karbala – India
Before Joy, a Taste of Sorrow: Celebratory Events
Conclusion
References
Recommended Readings
Afterword
References
Teaching Appendix
Discussion Questions for the Book Chapters
Source Suggestions: Documentary Films and Image Archives
YouTube video recommendations
Muharram and Other Ritual Performances
1
Material Culture
Glossary
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 3
Table 3.1 Shiʿi number symbolism
List of Illustrations
Chapter 0
Figure 0.01 Muharram banner, Hyderabad. Photo by author, 2005.
Chapter 3
Figure 3.01 Toli mosque microarchitecture.
Figure 3.02 Qasem
ʿalam
, ʿAshurkhanah wa Masjid‐e Ahl‐e Bait, Hyderabad...
Figure 3.03 Qasem's marriage canopy, ʿAshurkhanah wa Masjid‐e Ahl‐e Bait, Hy...
Figure 3.04
Minbar,
Badshahi
ʿashurkhanah
, Hyderabad.
Figure 3.05 Candles and soot at the Paltan
ʿashurkhanah
, Hyderabad.
Figure 3.06 Gateway to Naʿl‐e Mubarak
ʿashurkhanah
, Hyderabad.
Figure 3.07 Buraq, Bibi ka Alava, Hyderabad.
Figure 3.08 Imam ʿAli's handprint, Panjah Shah‐e Wilayat
ʿashurkhanah
, ...
Figure 3.09 Chain and tablets, Panjah Shah‐e Wilayat
ʿashurkhanah
, Hyde...
Figure 3.10 Bara Imambara, Lucknow.
Figure 3.11
Taʿziya
, Bara Imambara, Lucknow.
Figure 3.12 Calligraphic inscriptions, Husainabad Imambara, Lucknow.
Figure 3.13
Karbala
Kazmain, Lucknow.
Chapter 4
Figure 4.01
Musanna
calligraphy on
ʿalam
in Badshahi
ʿashurkhanah
,...
Figure 4.02 Plaster
ʿalam
, Charminar, Hyderabad.
Figure 4.03 Husaini
ʿalam
, Hyderabad.
Figure 4.04 ʿAbbas
ʿalam
with parasol and
mashk
, Karachi.
Figure 4.05 Signboard at the Qutb Shahi
ʿashurkhanah
listing its relics...
Figure 4.06
ʿAlam‐e
S
artauq
, Hyderabad.
Figure 4.07
Taʿziya
in the Bara Imambara, Lucknow.
Figure 4.08
Taʿziya
in Muharram procession, Karachi.
Figure 4.09
Taʿziya
in Karachi
imambara
.
Figure 4.10 Zuljanah
ʿalam
, ʿAshurkhanah wa Masjid‐e Ahl‐e Bait, Hydera...
Figure 4.11 Zuljanah in a Karachi Muharram procession.
Figure 4.12 Old Zuljanah made of cloth, Karachi.
Figure 4.13 Wooden Zuljanah, Karachi.
Chapter 5
Figure 5.01a and 5.01b Cradles (
jhula
) of ʿAli Asghar in Karachi.
Figure 5.02 Muharram procession, Karachi.
Figure 5.03 Procession of ʿAbbas
ʿalam
and
matam
at Bargah‐e ʿAbbas, Hy...
Chapter 6
Figure 6.01
Ziyarah
tour poster, Karachi.
Figure 6.02
Wiladat‐e Moulud‐e Kaʿba
, Hyderabad.
Figure 6.03 Grand Sehra Procession poster, Hyderabad.
Guide
Introduction
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Acknowledgments
Transliteration Note
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Afterword
Teaching Appendix
Glossary
Index
Wiley End User License Agreement
Pages
iii
iv
v
xii
xiii
xiv
xv
xvi
xvii
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
Everyday Shiʿism in South Asia
Karen G. Ruffle
This edition first published 2021© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
The right of Karen G. Ruffle to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with law.
Registered OfficesJohn Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USAJohn Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
Editorial OfficeThe Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley.com.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print‐on‐demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of WarrantyThe contents of this work are intended to further general scientific research, understanding, and discussion only and are not intended and should not be relied upon as recommending or promoting scientific method, diagnosis, or treatment by physicians for any particular patient. In view of ongoing research, equipment modifications, changes in governmental regulations, and the constant flow of information relating to the use of medicines, equipment, and devices, the reader is urged to review and evaluate the information provided in the package insert or instructions for each medicine, equipment, or device for, among other things, any changes in the instructions or indication of usage and for added warnings and precautions. While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication DataName: Ruffle, Karen G., author.Title: Everyday Shiʿism in South Asia / Karen G. Ruffle.Description: First edition. | Hoboken : Wiley, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2020041591 (print) | LCCN 2020041592 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119357148 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119357131 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119357155 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Shīʿah–India. | Shīʿah–Customs and practices. | Religious life–Shīʿah.Classification: LCC BP192.7.I4 R838 2021 (print) | LCC BP192.7.I4 (ebook) | DDC 297.8/20954–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041591LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041592
Cover Design: WileyCover Image: Bibi ka Alava ʿashurkhanah, Hyderabad. Photo by Karen G. Ruffle, 2006.
For Andreas
Acknowledgments
A number of institutions and organizations have generously supported research that I have conducted in the past two decades that has contributed to the writing of this book. Support from a Fulbright‐Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship (2005), two Council of American Overseas Research Council (CAORC) Multi‐Country Fellowships (2005 and 2010), a University of Miami Max Orovitz Research Award in the Arts and Humanities (2008), a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Standard Research Grant (2010), a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2012), an International Visiting Scholar Fellowship, a joint project of and co‐funded by the Maulana Azad National Urdu University and the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies (2014), and a Research Grant from the American Academy of Religion (2015) have all allowed me to return to India regularly for sustained trips in which I have been able to pursue ever‐new questions about Shiʿi religious life and ritual practice. The American Institute of Pakistan Studies (2000), the University of Miami (2009), and the University of Toronto Mississauga Research and Scholarly Activity Fund (2018) have supported travel and research in Pakistan focusing on Shiʿi devotional literature and material practice. This book and its central focus on everyday practice was incubated while I was a Faculty Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute of the University of Toronto in 2015‐2016, pondering “Things that Matter.” In May 2019 I spent a productive month at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris as a Visiting Professor. I thank Michel Boivin for the generous invitation. The lectures and workshop stimulated lively conversations and provoked a number of questions, suggestions, and insights to which I often returned as I wrote this book.
I thank, in Hyderabad, the late Sadiq Naqvi, Salma Ahmed Farooqui, M.M. Taqui Khan, Ismat Mehdi, Jagdish Mittal, and Firoozeh Papan Matin; in Pakistan, Wasif Rizvi, Hasan Ali Khan, and Fahd Ali; in Paris, Annabelle Collinet, Delphine Ortas, and Sepideh Parsapajouh; at Emory University, Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger; at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Ayesha Irani; at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carl W. Ernst; at Vanderbilt University, Tony K. Stewart; at Stanford University, Anna Bigelow; and at the University of Toronto, Mehreen Zahra Jiwan, Chris Young, Yayo Umetsubo, Usman Hamid, Ajay Rao, Amanda Goodman, Bob Gibbs, Duncan Hill, Sharon Marjadsingh, Heather Thornton, Shabina Moheebulla, and Rachel Kulick. I would like to thank my graduate student Nabeel Jafri for his assistance with the Teaching Appendix and for many of the photographs that appear in this book. His generosity in sharing the fruit of his fieldwork in Karachi is much appreciated and it considerably enriches this work. At the University of Toronto Mississauga, I am fortunate to teach a core group of undergraduate students who are enthusiastic about the academic study of religion, South Asia, and Shiʿi studies. A group of students met with me to brainstorm ideas for the book’s appendix. It has been enriched by their creativity, awareness of courses currently taught across our university versus what they think should be taught, and their thoughts on how Everyday Shi ʿ ism in South Asia would be an appropriate textbook to use in the classroom. I thank Alyssa Azzopardi, Yoonis Bilal, Sharanpreet Chahal, Abigail Eastman, Amanda Hammad, Songyi Kim, Kiran Preet Singh, and Rida Zulqarnain for sharing their knowledge and perspectives.
Babak Rahimi has read drafts of portions of the manuscript and provided me with critical feedback that has been immensely valuable. I have spent hours discussing theoretical points of the book with Luther Obrock, who so often asks the right question and makes excellent reading suggestions. The book has benefitted from the generous reviewers of the manuscript whose critical feedback and suggestions for revision have helped me to clarify arguments and to improve the book. The book’s Teaching Appendix is inspired by the model in Sherali Tareen’s 2020 Debating Muḥammad in Modernity.
I am grateful for the tremendous support I have received from the editorial team at Wiley‐Blackwell. Rebecca Harkin approached me with the idea to write an introductory textbook on South Asian Islam, and I suggested a project focusing on South Asian Shiʿism instead. Rebecca saw the necessity for such a project and was an enthusiastic supporter in its earliest stages. This vision has been carried on by my editor Juliet Booker, who has nurtured the project and encouraged me to take it in somewhat unexpected directions. I thank my project editor Richard Samson, who kept the project on schedule. I thank managing editor Liz Wingett for seeing the production of the book through its final stages. I also thank Wiley‐Blackwell staff Catriona King, Sarah Peters, and Sophie Bradwell for their assistance, support, and vision. Many thanks to Hannah Archambault for her meticulous reading and editing of the manuscript.
A portion of Chapter 5, on the relationship of love for Imam Husain and the Ahl‐e Bait and the performance of self‐flagellation, was originally published in History of Religions in 2015 in my essay, “Wounds of Devotion: Re‐Conceiving Mātam in Shiʿi Islam.”
This book could not have been written without the support of my family. Frequent telephone calls to my mother, Janet Hood, have been sustaining and a constant source of pleasure, encouragement, and support. My step‐son Noel D’Souza and his wife Olessia have also listened to endless discussions about Shiʿism, for which I am grateful. Most importantly, I thank my husband, Andreas D’Souza, for his patience and intellectual creativity as I have struggled through ideas with him. His love and support helped me to make this book a reality.
Transliteration Note
Everyday Shiʿism in South Asia traverses North and South India and Pakistan and multiple languages: Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Telugu, and Kannada, to name a few. Everyday Shiʿism is not confined solely to the Islamicate linguistic and literary domain; in this book I use a simplified transliteration system to provide maximum legibility for the reader across what may seem to be a dizzyingly diverse linguistic array. I do not use diacritical markers with the exception of ʿayn and hamzah. Indic and Islamicate words are italicized. For clarity, I use the English plural marker, “s,” rather than systems of pluralization used in Arabic, Persian, or the Indian languages used in this book.
In several instances, there are terms that appear with enough frequency to warrant a brief explanation for my transliteration choices and the semantic range these spellings convey. Taʿziya are the replicas of Imam Husain’s shrine tomb at Karbala that are displayed and taken out in procession during Muharram and are a core element of South Asian everyday Shiʿism. Taʿziyeh is an indigenous Iranian performance art genre in which the events of Karbala are re‐enacted in dramatic tableaux. The Shiʿi practice of going on pilgrimage to the shrine‐tombs of the Imams and Ahl‐e Bait, as well as to gaze upon and make offerings to ʿalams in imambaras, imambargahs, and ʿashurkhanahs is known as ziyarah (lit. “visitation”). A ziyarat is a prayer of salutation and benediction performed on ritually important occasions, such as when undertaking pilgrimage to an Imam’s shrine‐tomb, on ʿashura, or at the end of a majlis mourning assembly. These salutary prayers are made to the twelfth Imam, al‐Mahdi, Imam Husain, and other important Shiʿi sacred figures.
Introduction
On a bright, sunny day in Hyderabad’s Old City during Muharram in 2005, I was in the lane leading to the house of my mentor, the late Dr. Sadiq Naqvi, a historian of Persian literary and cultural history at Osmania University, as well as a renowned orator (zakir; “one who remembers”) in the Muharram mourning assemblies. On the long, white‐washed wall off Alava‐e Sartauq Mubarak ʿashurkhanah, a centuries‐old building where the metal standard containing a piece of the shackle that was placed around the neck of Imam Zain al‐ʿAbidin – the only male survivor of the battle of Karbala, Iraq in 680 CE – is displayed throughout the year, I saw hanging a massive, black banner, so rich in visual and verbal detail that it stopped me in my tracks to stare at it for several minutes.
The tableau presented by the banner, its subsidiary banners projecting below, as well as the artfully placed potted plants, compelled me to snap a photograph. Over the years, I have taken thousands of photographs of Muharram rituals, Shiʿi built space and devotional objects, and it is to the image of this banner that I return again and again (see Figure 0.01).
Each chapter of Everyday Shiʿism in South Asia is informed and inflected by elements of this banner, whether it is ʿAbbas’s ethic of care for family (represented by his severed arms and the arrow‐pierced waterskin), Qasem’s blood‐drenched name (representing his battlefield valor and commitment to protecting his faith, despite being a newlywed husband), Zainab, whose voice and testimony serves as inspiration for Shiʿi devotional literature, and Zainab’s young sons ʿAun and Muhammad (symbolized by two small water pots), who chose to fight like men on the Karbala battlefield while suffering terribly of thirst. The poet Millat’s couplets add an aesthetic touch to the banner, while amplifying the emotional effect of the verbal and visual images:
Figure 0.01 Muharram banner, Hyderabad. Photo by author, 2005.
On ʿashura morning, deep in thought and with a
Grieving heart, ʿAbbas must now show bravery.
Elsewhere on the banner Zainab speaks poetically of her half‐brother ʿAbbas’s valiant sacrifice, and we also hear her tone of righteous indignation at the humiliations suffered by her family:
When Zainab laid eyes on ʿAbbas’s arm,
She cried out, “Why not come, and cut the other, too?”
Another couplet encourages the devotee to consider the sacrifice of Imam Husain’s six‐month‐old son ʿAli Asghar, whose throat was pierced by an arrow:
Until we live in the path of ʿAli Asghar,
We shall only feel shame.
That an infant would give up his life for the cause of family and faith is intended to give pause, to reflect on one’s petty needs and concerns in the world.
This banner is not mere art, although it is certainly artistic. Nor is it simply a work of literary devotion to Imam Husain and the Ahl‐e Bait. Shiʿi cultural memory is encoded in this banner graphically and visually in ways that are legible for South Asian Shiʿa, using symbols and linguistic terms of reference that are resonant and spiritually meaningful. While an outsider may look at this banner and see dripping blood, severed arms, prison doors, and arrows, an insider to the tradition will immediately understand how these images are coded and to whom each representation points. ʿAbbas’s severed arms are viewed not with revulsion or fear by Shiʿa. Rather, they are viewed with a tremendous sense of love for his tender affection towards the children in the caravan suffering terrible thirst in the desert heat and deprived of water for three days. They remember ʿAbbas going on a suicidal mission to the banks of the Euphrates River to fill a waterskin, affectionately known as mashk‐e Sakinah in memory of his beloved niece and Husain’s youngest daughter, whose suffering he could no longer endure. The violence that is remembered is in relation to the caretaking ʿAbbas was doing for his family, particularly for the children who could not care for themselves, which brings tears to devotees in the mourning assemblies (majlis‐e ʿaza) during Muharram.
This banner reflects an important dimension of everyday Shiʿism through which Shiʿi devotion to the Imams and Ahl‐e Bait is grounded in emotional practices that mediate historical remembrance of the Karbala events, providing outlets for creative expression through ritual performances of the cultural memory of a violent act without violence. In Shiʿi cultural memory, the battle of Karbala was an act of shocking and horrific violence that was committed against the grandson and family of the Prophet Muhammad. It is through the shared cultural memory of the violence of Karbala, ritually performed through orations describing their suffering, the recitation of poetry in the mourning assembly, the display of devotional objects, and through the performance of highly structured forms of self‐flagellation (matam) performed with the hands and with instruments such as blades and chains, that individual and collective bonds of loyalty (walayah) and love (mahabbah) are reaffirmed each year.
Clifford Geertz’s “Notes on a Balinese Cockfight” offers useful insight into how we might further understand this banner and how it is emblematic of the ethos of the everyday Shiʿism I present in this book. In his ethnographic study of the cockfight in Bali, Geertz came to treat this ritual performance of a violent act without violence, considering it “as a text is to bring out a feature of it (in my opinion, the most central feature of it) that treating it as a rite or pastime, the two most obvious alternatives, would tend to obscure: its use of emotion for cognitive ends. What the cockfight says it says in a vocabulary of sentiment … Attending cockfights … is … a kind of sentimental education. What he learns there is what is his culture’s ethos and his private sensibility (or anyway, certain aspects of them) look like when spelled out externally in a collective text” (Geertz 1973, 449). The banner I photographed draws on key Karbala themes of sacrifice, suffering, violence, love, bravery, valor, kindness, faith, and generosity. This banner offers a microscopic perspective into the South Asian Shiʿi ethos and is a primer of religious sentiment.
The dense bundling of symbols and text on this Muharram banner demonstrates that for South Asian Shiʿa, memory of Karbala does not reside in an abstracted, remote past. While the event of Karbala happened in the historical past in 680 CE, its memory is embodied through social and cultural forms of production such as poetry, oratory, material objects, and built space. The banner is a mnemonic device, that is, it serves as a “reminding object” to help Shiʿa remember the panoply of Karbala events (Assmann 2015, 332). According to Jan Assmann, the forms that cultural memory takes are myriad and formalized as “narratives, songs, dances, rituals, masks, and symbols; specialists such as narrators, bards, mask‐carvers, and others are organized in guilds and have to undergo long periods of initiation, instruction, and examination” (2015, 334).
This book is about the contours of everyday life and cultural memory of Shiʿi women and men, which is shaped by visitations to the shrine‐tombs of saints, recitation of poetry, remembrance of the battle of Karbala, religious architecture and the devotional objects these buildings contain, festive events known as jashn, and different types of vows and votive offerings, all of which are inflected by perpetual devotion to the Imams and Ahl‐e Bait. The identities of these Shiʿa are also shaped by virtue of living in South Asia, by rank and status (whether one is sayyid or not), by the languages they speak, such as Urdu, Bengali, Sindhi, Telugu, Panjabi, or a range of other regional languages, and territorial affiliation to diverse locales, including Chennai, Ladakh, Kohat, Rampur, or Cambay. The vicissitudes of the 1947 Partition of the subcontinent into the postcolonial nation‐states of India and Pakistan have further molded Shiʿi identities in the modern period. For Pakistani Shiʿa, one’s status as a migrant citizen (muhajir) who came to the Muslim state from Lucknow or Delhi or elsewhere in India in the mass movement of people across the borderland constitutes a discursive domain in which “local” vs. “foreign” practices are negotiated and debated.1
Everyday Shiʿism
This book focuses on the everyday religious worlds of Shiʿi individuals and communities at particular historical moments and places in South Asia. I draw many of my examples from Hyderabad and the surrounding region, where I have conducted fieldwork on Shiʿi history, ritual, and material practices since 2003. I do not intend to make Hyderabad “speak” for all of South Asian Shiʿism, however, this is a place where I have spent extended periods of time. I have also studied and conducted fieldwork in Lucknow, India, and in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi, Pakistan, from which I draw examples as well. In many of the chapters, I present topical case studies. Some of these case studies are like photographic snapshots. As a form of casual, amateur photography, the “snap” is usually intended for private use. These are the photographs that gather in shoeboxes or massed in digital drives. Snapshots tell stories of our everyday lives (Zuromskis 2013). A case study‐snapshot approach reveals the domestic, private dimensions of South Asian Shiʿism, which is one aspect of the everyday. My second approach is what I call the case study‐microscopic, which affords fine‐grained, close observation of everyday Shiʿism. The microscopic offers close analysis of public rituals, objects, and built space. While particularity may seem to preclude our ability to generalize about forms, functions, and meanings of everyday Shiʿism in South Asia, close study of a text, material object, architectural form, or ritual practice allows for an interpretive unpacking of the intersection of Shiʿi religious symbols, cultural values, and social systems in historical context.
The “everyday” reflects the central approach and ethos of this book, and I use the term in a number of ways. At the most basic level, the everyday refers to the activities of daily life that are inflected by Shiʿi religious laws, norms, ethics, rituals of belief and devotion,2 and gender values. The everyday is an inclusive space that recognizes both women and men as active participants in Shiʿi religious life and practice without relegating women to the purview of “popular” religion and men to the “scholarly/intellectual” domains of the daneshgah or howzah (types of religious schools), mosque, or library. While one might consider the everyday to be a dimension of popular culture and religiosity, or within the domain of folklore, this leads to the formation of the essentializing and exclusionary binaries of popular‐elite and everyday‐scholarly that belie on‐the‐ground experience of South Asian Shiʿa. The everyday resists setting up an artificial binary that posits a divide between non‐elite practice and the “religion of the scholars.” The everyday is a space inhabited by all people, whether rich or poor, educated or illiterate, male or female. As we shall see in the following chapters, the concept of the everyday reveals the ways in which Shiʿi identities, like others, are multilayered, shaped by ethnic, linguistic, caste, and socioeconomic factors, as well as by gender and age.
Beyond being a site of resistance for our tendency to categorize identities and practices in binarized terms, the everyday is a space for the creative expression of Shiʿi devotion to the Imams and Ahl‐e Bait. The everyday is grounded by emotional practices that mediate Shiʿi historical memory and diverse South Asian cultural practices and norms to cultivate an ethos of love (mahabbah), longing for, sadness, and loyalty to the Imams and Ahl‐e Bait. Connected to the emotional practices of the everyday are those which are embodied, referring to the multitude of ritual practices and literary forms that encourage Shiʿa to feel what individual figures such as Zainab, ʿAbbas, Qasem, or Sakinah endured at Karbala, and to imaginally share in their experiences through physical acts such as self‐flagellation (matam) or applying henna to the hand in remembrance of the battlefield wedding of Husain’s daughter Fatimah Kubra to his teenaged nephew Qasem.
The Shiʿi everyday is translocative, collapsing time and space between the historically and geographically distant sites in Arabia, Syria, and Iraq where the Imams and Ahl‐e Bait lived and died. The everyday is not solely a construct or a condition of the present, although as scholars of religion we tend to be “presentist” in engaging this concept. The everyday is a method for situating Shiʿism and the Shiʿa – as individuals and communities – in specific spaces, places, linguistic registers, and sites of cultural exchange in the longue durée. Rooted in bodily, emotional, and material practices, everyday Shiʿism is intrinsically historical and social. The cultural anthropologist Monique Scheer writes, “The body thus cannot be timeless; it contains history at multiple levels. This consists not only of the sedimentations of evolutionary time, but also the history of the society in which the organism is embedded, and its own history of constantly being molded by the practices it executes” (2012, 201).
To understand everyday Shiʿism in South Asia requires an attentiveness to the interplay of history at many levels, the development of practice in evolutionary time, and the ways in which the “local” profoundly shapes religious worlds.
Center and Periphery Reconsidered
“If you want to know how Muharram was originally practiced, you should go to India.” I frequently heard statements like this during the more than four months of field research I conducted in Iran in 2004, focusing on a Persian‐language martyrdom narrative, Rowzat‐e shohadah (The garden of the martyrs), written in 1502 by Mullah Husain Vaʿez Kashefi in Herat, Afghanistan (a text I shall discuss in more detail in Chapter 2). Such statements were not uncommon for me to hear from my Iranian interlocutors. For some, Indian Muharram was a historical anachronism, a ritual performance frozen in time. For others, it was untainted by the post‐revolution political theology that shapes all aspects of life in Iran, including Muharram ritual. My time in Iran was a prelude and preparation for the 18 months of ethnographic and archival fieldwork that I undertook in Hyderabad, India in 2005–2006, studying how hagiographical texts and the rituals of the mourning assemblies, known as the majlis‐e ʿaza, are powerful forms of moral communication in which shared historical memory of the battle of Karbala and the family of Imam Husain engenders shared emotional responses and an ethical worldview that shapes the everyday lives of South Asian Shiʿa.
With the migration of sayyids, that is, the blood descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, especially through his daughter Fatimah al‐Zahra, Sufis, Shiʿas and other Muslim groups devoted to the first Imam ʿAli and his family have been settled in the Indian subcontinent for more than a millennium. The idea that the Indian subcontinent is a particularly hospitable place for Shiʿa is attested in the story of Ruqayyah bint ʿAli, the daughter of Imam ʿAli and Umm al‐Banain, who survived the battle of Karbala, making her way to the Panjab region of contemporary Pakistan, which I discuss in Chapter 1. Seeking intercession (shafaʿa) for illness and other life challenges, Shiʿa and Sunni Muslims claim Bibi Pak Daman, the tomb‐shrine in Lahore where Ruqayyah and her sisters and maid are buried, as sacred and connected to their religious and community histories. These early communities of Muslims who expressed devotion to the Imams and Ahl‐e Bait, which Teresa Bernheimer has described as “ʿAlid devotion” (2013), settled in all parts of the Indian subcontinent.
Many came to India as refugees fleeing persecution for their religio‐political belief in the doctrine of the Imamate and ʿAlid devotion. Many practiced taqiyyah, the Shiʿi theological principle of precautionary concealment in the face of religious persecution. In their new homeland, they identified simply as Muslims, that is, as Sunnis or through the socially acceptable guise of the ʿAlid devotion of Sufism. ʿAli is venerated by Sufis and Shiʿas for his deep spiritual wisdom, love, and steadfast dedication to God. With its origins in the message of the Qurʾan and the pious model of the Prophet Muhammad’s sunnah, a group of Muslims beginning in the seventh and eighth centuries sought more experiential, decidedly renunciant approaches to encounter God. These early renunciants coalesced into a movement in the ninth century known as the Sufiyyah (wool‐wearers), which gradually organized into institutional orders (tariqah), the lineages (silsilah) of which claim ʿAli as their spiritual forefather. There are exceptions, such as the Naqshbandiyyah, who consider the first caliph Abu Bakr (d. 634) to be the forefather of their spiritual order. Nevertheless, love for the Imams and Ahl‐e Bait under the guise of taqiyyah provided one avenue for the solidification of Shiʿism in the Indian subcontinent.
Other Shiʿa found protection and patronage in Sunni courts throughout India, particularly following the Mongol invasions that swept through Iran, Iraq, and parts of Turkey beginning in the thirteenth century. From the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, large numbers of Iranian Shiʿa immigrated to the Deccan region of south‐central India, where the five courts of the Deccan Sultanates embraced Shiʿism to varying degrees, as well as to the princely kingdom of Awadh, in the north. These immigrants came to seek their fortunes, attain fame, and to find courtly service as poets, theologians, soldiers, artisans, cooks, doctors, and bureaucrats.
These Shiʿi and Sufi migrants to the Indian subcontinent did not arrive empty‐handed. As speakers of Persian, Arabic, and various Turkic languages, they brought with them a rich literary repertoire. New genres of poetry focusing on the Imams and Ahl‐e Bait were introduced to the Indian subcontinent. The praise poem known as manqabat focusing on Imam ʿAli was introduced in India in the thirteenth century by Amir Khusraw Dehlavi, who is widely credited for being the “father of qawwali,” a form of Sufi devotional music. Amir Khusraw’s manqabat “Man kuntu mawla fa haza ʿAli‐un mawla” refers to an event at Ghadir Khumm that took place in March 632 during the Prophet Muhammad’s Farewell Pilgrimage. Stopping at the wellspring (ghadir) at Khumm, located at the midpoint between Medina and Mecca, the Prophet gathered together his followers and declared, “Whomever accepts me as master (mawla), accepts ʿAli also as master (mawla).” Amir Khusraw’s hadith‐inspired manqabat‐qawwali instills cultural memory of the Prophet Muhammad’s appointment of ʿAli as his successor and inspires devotion to the first Imam. “Man kuntu mawla” remains a popular qawwali today and has been performed by such legendary singers as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (d. 1997), Abida Parveen, and the Sabri Brothers. Poems eulogizing the sufferings of Imam Husain and the Ahl‐e Bait were widely introduced in South Asia beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Writing at first in Persian and soon after in South Asian regional vernaculars, authors of genres such as the marsiyah, a lengthy poem, transformed the landscape of Karbala from the Iraqi desert into something distinctly Indian. Imam Husain and his family became similarly localized.
Immigrants also introduced the foodways of their former homelands, leaving an indelible imprint on the Indian culinary landscape. The delicate kababs, pulaos, and khoresh stews of Iran and Central Asia brought by Iranian immigrants were enhanced by Indian cooks with a rich array of spices, souring agents, and nuts to reflect Ayurvedic and Unani systems of medicine and South Asian culinary sensibilities. South Asian Shiʿism is deeply connected with food and traditions of hospitality, which also weave their way throughout the chapters of this book. The Nawabs of Awadh, whose capital in the North Indian city of Lucknow was an important center of Shiʿi culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were renowned for the delicateness (nazakat) of their cuisine. Awadhi cuisine was famous for its theatrical “riddle” dishes, in which “one food seemed or tasted like another,” or else featured a “spectacle like an opium‐dozed monkey hiding within a fried bread, or puri” (Shaffer 2012, 89).
During Muharram, food takes a prominent role at the end of the mourning assemblies, known in Urdu as majlis‐e ʿaza, when special blessed foods called tabarruk are passed out to those in attendance. Tabarruk may be as simple as a piece of bread or as elaborate and costly as a special spiced rice dish like a pulao or biryani, studded with vegetables instead of meat in fulfillment of vows made during the days of Muharram. Streets are also lined with special stands known as sabil where beverages such as water, milk, and sharbat, cooling drinks made from flower petals, fruits, or seeds, are served to mourners (ʿazadaran). Setting up sabil stalls and serving drinks to mourners during Muharram is not only a popular act of piety for Shiʿa; it is also common to see Hindus and Sunnis participating to show their solidarity with Imam Husain, his family, and to those who mourn during the ten days of Muharram.
For Shiʿa living in the subcontinent, there has been a remarkable degree of continuity in the preservation of identity. Until the relatively recent rise of rapid intercontinental travel by airplane, bus, and train, the geographical and cultural distance of the subcontinent from the major centers of Shiʿi pilgrimage in Qom and Mashhad, Iran; Karbala, Najaf, and Kazmain, Iraq; and Damascus, Syria has encouraged greater integration of Shiʿa in blending their practices – religious, culinary, lifecycle, architectural, material cultural – with local culture. In Chapter 6 I will examine the constellation of pilgrimage (ziyarah) practices that have transformed India into an enchanted Shiʿi landscape, while simultaneously connecting the Shiʿa to the sacred sites of shared historical memory in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and the Arabian peninsula. In Arabic, ziyarah means “visitation,” which in the Shiʿi context has been expanded to refer to the practice of visiting shrine‐tombs and offering recitations to the sacred figures entombed within. Ziyarah is often translated to the word “pilgrimage” as a sort of shorthand for the activities that are performed by these “visitors” to the places of martyrdom (mashhad) of the Imams and members of the Ahl‐e Bait, or to the shrine‐tombs of other Shiʿi saints.
I arrived in Hyderabad in January 2005, just weeks before the start of the month of Muharram, when Shiʿa throughout the Islamic world remember the events leading up to the martyrdom of the third Imam Husain and his troop of 72 men and boys, and the humiliation and suffering of the women and children in his family. I remembered those declarations of my Iranian interlocutors about Indian Muharram ritual. Participating in mourning assemblies, I found such statements, while superficially complimentary, reductive and troubling upon deeper consideration. I was troubled by the ways in which such ostensibly positive statements ultimately placed South Asia at the margins of the Shiʿi world, somehow divorced from broader historical, theological, and political currents. Instead, Shiʿa living in the region that comprises the Indian subcontinent inhabit multiple worlds. Their religious sensibilities are shaped by Islamic laws and norms, the cultural memory of the events of Karbala, and a South Asian or Indic grammar of religion that animates devotional practices and traditions to the Imams and Ahl‐e Bait, which I refer to as “Indo‐Shiʿism.”
If South Asia is situated at some geographical, ideological, and normative periphery of the broader Islamic, and specifically Shiʿi world, then how might we refocus our analytical and theoretical gaze to learn what it means to be Shiʿa in this context? In Everyday Shiʿism, I enact a series of shifts in our analytical gaze. The first such analytical shift takes us from center (the central Arab lands, the Shiʿi heartland of Iran and Iraq) to periphery (the Indian subcontinent). Centers, be they economic, religious, political, educational, or ideological, are sites of power, which radiate in their myriad forms outward to the peripheries. What happens when we turn our attention to Shiʿi religious practice in the Indian subcontinent, perceived to be at the periphery of the broader Shiʿi‐Islamic world? The work of scholar Simon Fuchs, who has studied the ways Pakistani Shiʿi religious scholars (ʿulama) “employ the Islamic scholarly tradition in their arguments, how they tie their claims to centers of scholarship, and how they vow faithfully to uphold such central authority only to subtly rework arguments emanating from there,” is helpful in understanding the creative ways normative claims issued from the center are reworked in the putative periphery (2019, 4). For Fuchs, center and periphery are only understandable when placed in context, which he defines as “transnational impetus and domestic response” (2019, 4). Here, Pakistani Shiʿa are not passive recipients of knowledge and ideology flowing from the religious seminaries (howzah) of Najaf and Qom. Religious knowledge is mediated through translation from Arabic and Persian into Urdu and other vernaculars, the political‐theology of the revolution is often toned down or transformed to speak to local Pakistani concerns – periphery becomes center.
The Hyper‐visible “Invisible” Community
Everyday Shiʿism focuses on the daily, lived experiences of South Asian Shiʿa told through translations of primary source materials, including photographs, material objects, architecture, food, and ethnographic vignettes. I pay exclusive attention to South Asian Shiʿism in this book because it has largely been ignored in previous introductory texts (more on this later in the chapter), despite a long history of ʿAlid devotion in the region. More telling is the 2009 Pew Foundation Report, “Mapping the Global Muslim Population,” which demonstrates a remarkable sensitivity in accounting for and highlighting the distribution of the world’s Shiʿa. The Pew Foundation report does note that their population figures are estimates only, as few censuses include questions about one’s religious identity. When they do, the answers provided do not account for sectarian affiliations; instead they reflect only generic classifications such as Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, depending on the survey and context. Moreover, as we have already noted, in places where religious minorities experience discrimination and persecution, Shiʿa have put into practice the theological doctrine of precautionary concealment (taqiyyah) in order to blend in with the larger Muslim community, further complicating attempts to distinguish and enumerate religiously diverse populations. For this reason, we often have to estimate Shiʿi populations of cities and regions in South Asia.
According to the Pew Foundation report, 75% of the global Shiʿi population lives in the Asia‐Pacific region, which includes the Shiʿi majority country of Iran (2009, 8). Pakistan’s Shiʿi population is approximately 17–26 million (total country population: 174 082 000) and India’s is 16–24 million (total Muslim population: 160 945 000; total population of India in 2018: 1.32 billion). Although the populations for each of these two countries are statistically small, the combined population of Shiʿa in Pakistan and India is between 33 and 50 million, equaling the number of Shiʿa in all of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa region combined, totaling between 36 and 44 million (2009, 13). Iran’s total population in 2020 was 83.7 million, of which 89% are Shiʿa (“Iran Population” 2020). The vast majority – almost 90% – of Iranians are Shiʿa (comprising 74.5 million people), with 10% identifying as Sunni and 1% variously as Zoroastrian, Christian, Baha’i, or Jewish. While countries such as Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain also have Shiʿi majorities, scholars have privileged Iranian Shiʿism.
Muharram is a hyper‐visible ritual in South Asia with its large‐scale processions of ʿalams and taʿziyas, and men’s performance of bloody self‐flagellation (khuni matam) on ʿashura. India and Pakistan’s minority communities cannot help but be seen during Muharram (see Chapter 5), yet the longue durée of their historical presence in the subcontinent (Cole 1989; Hollister [1953] 1979; Rizvi 1986; Shurreef 1991), and the religious influence of Shiʿism on literature (Bard 2002; Hyder 2005; Kugle 2016), architecture (Allan 2012; Naqvi 2006), politics (Eaton and Wagoner 2014; Fischel 2012; Sherwani 1974), and the arts (Haidar and Sardar 2011, 2015; Wagoner and Weinstein 2017) remains an emergent field of exploration. Refocusing our analytical gaze enables us to be attentive to the long, complex history of Shiʿism in the subcontinent, while also problematizing the idea of center and periphery, particularly when we take into consideration the combined Shiʿi population of India and Pakistan.
Redefining Norms: Shiʿi/South Asia/Everyday
Al‐Muntazar,3 the journal put out by the Association of Imam Mahdi, based in Mumbai, India, published an article in its 1994 Muharram issue on the permissibility of making replicas (taʿziya) of Imam Husain’s shrine‐tomb in Karbala (al‐Muntazar 1994). In the article’s introductory paragraph, the author describes the situation thus, “The Shias of India and Pakistan, place effigies of the shrines of their Imams (a.s.) and more particularly of Imam Husain (a.s.) in their homes and Imambaras. This custom has come under critical attack by some Sunni scholars and also some so‐called enlightened Shias, who question the religious legality of this practice and look at it through skeptical eyes. In this article, we shall produce those references and extracts which shall silent [sic] them and prove their skepticism like a design on the water” (al‐Muntazar 1994). The installation of objects of cultural memory, such as taʿziya, in homes and religious buildings, the criticism of this practice, and the response by the author of the article in al‐Muntazar reveals the discursive processes by which Shiʿi normative categories are created and contested.
In describing the formation of the institution of the position of the most learned of Shiʿi religious scholars, the marjaʿ al‐taqlid in the nineteenth century, Sabrina Mervin explains,
Religious authority depends on doctrines, norms and concepts of fiqh that have their own histories and fields of application … Defining these doctrines, as much for those within the faith as outside it, allowed the ʿulama to set limits around the community for which they acted as spokesmen. At the heart of the system lay the religious rules and norms and the usages that ruled the lives of the faithful. These rules also determined their relationship to the religious authority along with the access of the experts, the ʿulama, to that authority. Some of these usages became norms in due course.
Source: Sabrina Mervin, “Writing the History of Religious Authority in Najaf: The Marjaʿiyya as Apparatus,” in Najaf: Portrait of a Holy City, ed. Sabrina Mervin, Robert Gleave, and Géraldine Chatelard (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 2017), 171, 173.
For Mervin, Shiʿi normativity is directly connected to the office of the marjaʿ, rooted in the jurisprudential tradition, and mediated by religious scholars. This is a normativity situated directly within a legal‐textual tradition whose authority to set limits resides with an educated, clerical class.
In his recent study of theological debates and competing visions of the Prophet Muhammad in nineteenth‐century India that shaped the Sunni discourses of Deobandi and Barelvi thinkers, Sherali Tareen’s theorization of Islamic normativity balances religious authority with the everyday. Tareen observes, “Central to theorizing the category of normativity in Islam is the question of how a set of authoritative religious discourses become embodied in a community’s practice of everyday life” (2020, 185). Tareen engages the French sociologist‐anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of habitus and doxa to show how the presence of past experiences (such as the use of reminding objects and the associated rituals that sediment cultural memory) are “deposited in each organism in the form of schemes of perception, thought and action, tend to guarantee ‘correctness’ of practices and their constancy over time, more reliably than all formal rules and explicit norms” (Bourdieu 1990, 54; quoted in Tareen 2020, 184). The constancy established by the sedimentation of past perceptions or memories in the present as habitus assume bodily form in Bourdieu’s concept of doxa, which are “a collection of bodily rhythms and dispositions that come to be taken for granted by members of a community as an established cosmological order, perceived not as arbitrary (i.e. as one among others) but as a self‐evident natural order recurrently reproduced without any questioning or second‐guessing” (Tareen 2020, 185).
Norms shape the worlds of South Asian everyday Shiʿism. Normativity and the everyday are not antagonistic categories. In their essay, “Rediscovering the ‘Everyday’ Muslim: Notes on an Anthropological Divide,” Nadia Fadil and Mayanthi Fernando rightly critique the recent turn in the anthropology of Islam that has placed the everyday and normativity at odds in Muslim life. According to Fadil and Fernando, recent scholarship by scholars such as Samuli Schielke (2012, 2009), Magnus Marsden (2010, 2005), and Liza Debevec (2012) have imagined the Islamic everyday “as a site of creativity, individuality, and transgression, a space in which Muslims negotiate and, importantly, contest the normative requirements to which they are subjected by enacting a set of alternative desires. Everyday practices thereby appear as moments of disruption, of not conforming to religious norms. But this invocation of the everyday as only a site of contingency or resistance can lead to an oppositional distinction between domains that are saturated by power and social conventions (Islamic doctrine and morality) and those that are not (everyday practices)” (Fadil and Fernando 2015, 69). The everyday Shiʿism that I describe in this book is certainly defined by its creativity, and the norms that establish its boundaries while allowing for contestation and a multiplicity of voices.
The presumption of an agonistic relationship between norms and the everyday begs us to ask the question, why should everyday life not be considered an equally constitutive element in the formation of Islamic‐Shiʿi norms as are scriptural hermeneutics and debates? We might instead ask how the everyday and the normative might be symbiotically related, which we aim to do both conceptually and strategically by linking together the categories, “Shiʿi/South Asia/everyday,” which are often imagined as peripheral to the dominant Islamic studies categories, “Sunni/Arab/scriptural.” South Asian everyday Shiʿism finds its basis in the normative model of the Imams and the family of the Prophet Muhammad. The different genres of literature about the Karbala events, poems praising the Imams and Ahl‐e Bait, prayers, miracle stories, as well as material objects such as ʿalams and taʿziyas that are the subject of this book, all find their spiritual inspiration and derive their doctrinal legitimation from deep traditions of textual authority. These include records of the words and actions of the Imams (akhbar) and the Prophet Muhammad (hadith), hagiographies, and theological and legal treatises.
The everyday is symbiotically intertwined with normative sources that shape the tradition. As such, the everyday is shaped by elite and grassroots actors, not all of whom are explicitly Shiʿa or even necessarily religious, yet they are influenced by the theme of Karbala and the moral and ethical message of Imam Husain’s sacrifice (see Chapter 2). Some aspects of the everyday are the product of specialist knowledge, such as the epic marsiyah poems, which can span hundreds of stanzas, and often spin across its lines complex linguistic imagery and metaphors. The literary skill required of the author displays vast knowledge of Sufism, Shiʿi hadith, the Qurʾan, and the considerable body of hagiographical texts about the Imams, Ahl‐e Bait, and Karbala that have proliferated since the tenth century. The majlis orator is likewise required to be able to master a similar textual corpus that she can recall instantly in order to extemporize based on the reaction of the participants in a mourning assembly to the particular theme or use of sources.
Shiʿi cultural memory is shaped by these specialists but they do not hold exclusive claim. While the construction of a permanent taʿziya requires lengthy training and specialized knowledge in how to carve the intricate designs decorating a tomb replica and to assemble it into a fantastical multi‐story structure, families and members of neighborhood associations collaborate to create ephemeral models with bamboo frames covered with tinsel, flowers, and colored paper. Although Shahab Ahmed’s proposed Balkans‐to‐Bengal complex focuses on the pre‐modern period, 1350–1850, some of the observations he makes with regard to the experimental and expressive modes of being Islamic loosely apply to our Shiʿi/South Asia/everyday configuration: “the Muslims of the Balkans‐to‐Bengal complex did not feel the need to articulate or legitimate their Muslim‐ness/their Islam by mimesis of a pristine time of the earliest generations of the community (the salaf). Rather, they felt able to be Muslim in explorative, creative, and contrary trajectories” (Ahmed 2016, 81). While Karbala, the Imams, and the Ahl‐e Bait shape much of everyday Shiʿi religious life, the impetus is different for South Asian Shiʿa who do not attempt to recreate a lost past, but rather find in the model of these exemplary individuals consolation, hope, and a focus for their intense love. Rather, it is the spirit of creative exploration that animates the cultural memory of Karbala, the Imams, and Ahl‐e Bait that shapes everyday South Asian Shiʿism.
To consider the interrelationship between the everyday and normativity, I now return to the introductory paragraph of the article published in the 1994 issue of al‐Muntazar, which sought to prove the permissibility of erecting taʿziyas in one’s home and imambaras. For this Mumbai‐based, Shiʿi religious association, their objective was to unequivocally establish the legality of creating taʿziyas of Imam Husain’s shrine‐tomb using “references and extracts” of authoritative religious texts in order to silence “some Sunni scholars and also some so‐called enlightened Shias” and “prove their skepticism like a design on water” (al‐Muntazar 1994). In this case, the Association of Imam Mahdi, which received its permission (ijazat) to issue legal opinions (fatwa) from the Najaf‐based marjaʿ Grand Ayatollah ʿAli al‐Sistani, used its normative authority to identify and delimit two groups of Muslims as internal “others” – some Sunnis and some “so‐called enlightened Shiʿas” – for their rejection of erecting taʿziyas. They use authoritative Shiʿi texts, including Muhammad Baqir Majlisi’s seventeenth‐century monumental hadith compilation, Bihar al‐anwar (Oceans of lights) and Zad al‐maʿad (Provisions for the heavenly journey), and the eleventh‐century Iraq‐based scholar al‐Shaikh al‐Tusi’s legal compendium al‐Mabsut fi fiqh al‐imamiyya (An exposition on Shiʿi jurisprudence). Recourse to these authoritative sources is intended to silence these critics by proving the veracity of erecting tomb replicas as based on the practice of the Imams. The author of the article further situates his argument in the nexus of normativity and the Shiʿi/South Asia/everyday in the first concluding point: “There is no harm in making effigies of the shrines of the Imams (a.s.), if intended to recite Ziyarat from distance, rather great traditionalists have found it to be an authentic practice” (al‐Muntazar 1994).
The everyday is integral to the normative, just as the textual is integral to the ritual performances that shape everyday Shiʿism. I hope that the reconceptualization of Shiʿism that I propose in this book will enable us to return our gaze to other parts of the Shiʿi world with the ability to see it “in a new light and with the benefit of a new perspective which will enable us to see things that we have been unable to see before” (Ahmed 2016, 82).
Representing Shiʿism
This book considers the ways in which Shiʿism adapted to the cultural, religious, political, and aesthetic diversity of the subcontinent. In writing this book I have made several choices with regard to representation and scope. I focus here on the Ithna ʿAshariyyah, more commonly known as the “Twelver” Shiʿa for their recognition and acceptance of the spiritual and political leadership of the twelve Imams who succeeded the Prophet Muhammad after his death in 632.
In addition to the Twelver Shiʿas, diverse Shiʿi groups have made the subcontinent their home. There are thriving communities of Ismaʿili Muslims in Gujarat, India and Karachi, Pakistan. The early Shiʿi community divided over the question of succession following the death of the sixth Imam, Jaʿfar al‐Sadiq (d. 765). The majority recognized the Imamate of Musa al‐Kazim as the seventh Imam and his successors through the twelfth Imam, al‐Mahdi, who is in a state of occultation known as al‐ghaybah al‐kubra. These followers of Imam Musa al‐Kazim and his descendants are the Twelver Shiʿa. A smaller group, who came to be known as the Ismaʿilis, recognized his elder son Ismaʿil, whom they believe Jaʿfar al‐Sadiq designated (nass) to be his successor. Ismaʿil died before his father, and many of his supporters believed he was in Occultation. Two branches of Ismaʿilism are found in South Asia today, the Nizaris, who follow the 49th Imam, Aga Khan IV, Prince Shah Karim al‐Husayni (Khan 2004; Marsden 2005; Nanji 1978; Purohit 2012; Steinberg 2011). The Daʾudi Bohras are a sub‐branch of the Tayyabi Mustʿali Ismaʿilis who follow the 53rd Syedna Dr. Aliqadr Mufaddal Saifuddin (Blank 2001; Qutbuddin 2011). The Daʾudi Bohras settled in Gujarat from Yemen in the sixteenth century; their name, Bohra, comes from the Gujarati vehru
