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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 July 2020
It has generally been acknowledged that Sayyids, through their real or imagined connection to the Prophet, have represented a key trans-regional dimension of Islam. In the Punjab, the status of the Ashraf has been reinforced by their role as custodians of the Sufi shrines. In the Multan region, Sayyids and Qureshis acted frequently as pir and sajjada nashin for many Sufi dargahs. Their position, however, did not go unchallenged. The Chishti Nizami revival in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century saw the growth of an alternative religious network that competed with older families both religiously and socially. This process directly challenged the idea of inherited charisma and the established social hierarchy. Although reform movements are often considered to represent a shift towards a universal dimension of Islam, connected symbolically to Arabia and to the figure of the Prophet, the Chishti Nizami revival in Multan can be seen rather as a vernacularisation of Islamic authority. The movement favoured the social ascent of local tribes and non-Arab Ashraf families. The alliance between these groups would become a stable feature in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and contributed to the social status of Sayyid families being questioned.
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53 Ibid.
54 MDG 1923–24, pp. 46–47, 111–114.
55 Maclagan, ‘Fragments of the history of Mooltan, the Derajat, and Buhawulpoor’, pp. 559–560.
56 IGI, pp. 2–13.
57 David Gilmartin has argued that the Baluchis of the Lower Indus were the first to attempt artificial irrigation on a large scale, anticipating the canals of the Multani Pathans. See Gilmartin, Blood and Water, pp. 28–40. See also Abenante, ‘Islam, Irrigation and Religious Identity’, pp. 53–56.
58 For example, Chand (Tarikh-e-Multan, pp. 85–100) writes of offerings of animals and breeding products for the dargahs of Pir Ghaib Bukhari at village Halalvaja, and of Qazi Muhammad Issa at Khanpur, both in the Shujabad tehsil.
59 The reference here is to the association between sedentarisation and change of religion developed by Richard Eaton with reference to Bengal and Punjab. See Richard Eaton, ‘The Political and Religious Authority’, pp. 345ff; and Eaton, Richard, ‘Who are the Bengal Muslims? Conversion and Islamization in Bengal’ in Essays on Islam and Indian History, (ed.) Eaton, R. (Oxford, 2000), pp. 249–275Google Scholar.
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63 Government of India, Census of India, 1901, Vol. XVII, “The Punjab, its feudatories, and the North-West Frontier Province”, pp. 156–157. It is noteworthy that the British, who were generally aware of the dangers represented by waves of Islamic reform and of ‘wahabi’ tendencies, in this case, having recognised the local roots of the movement were not apparently alarmed by it.
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66 Ibid.
67 Ibid., pp. 35–38. It is also worth emphasising that in his refusal to accept the Punjabi custom of choosing his family's pir as his own spiritual guide, Jamal was closer to the reformist view. For Deobandi ‘ulama, for example, the choice of a pir had to be made individually, and on the basis of the religious and human qualities of the shaikh; see the suggestions on finding a spiritual master in Metcalf, B., Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanawi's Bihishti Zewar (Berkeley, 1990), pp. 199–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The mystical experience of the dream, however, would not have probably been accepted by a Deobandi.
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70 Metcalf, Perfecting Women.
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73 Jamali, Zuhur-e-Jamal, pp. 36–37; see also Shackle, Nur-e-Jamal, pp. 15ff; D. Abenante, “Nineteenth century Sufi reform and religious boundaries in south-western Punjab”, 18th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, Lund, 6–9 July 2004.
74 Jamali, Zuhur-e-Jamal, p. 16.
75 Ibid., pp. 22–23; see Metcalf, B., ‘Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi and Urdu literature’, in Urdu and Muslim South Asia: Studies in honour of Ralph Russel, (ed.) Shackle, C. (Delhi, 1991), pp. 93–100Google Scholar.
76 Jamali, Zuhur-e-Jamal, p. 23.
77 Ibid., pp. 22–23. Compare, again, Ashraf ‘Ali Thanwi's discourse on the constant need to fight against the lower self in Metcalf, Perfecting Women.
78 Shackle, Nur-e-Jamal, p. 10; Jamali, Zuhur-e-Jamal, pp. 35–36.
79 Ibid., pp. 22–23.
80 Ibid., pp. 46–47.
81 Ibid., p. 47.
82 Ibid., p. 46
83 See Chand, Tarikh-e-Multan, pp. 22–24.
84 Jamali, Zuhur-e-Jamal, pp. 48–49.
85 Ibid., p. 49. This is the only instance where the miraculous power of the saint is directly represented as a manifestation of God, rather than of the saint himself.
86 Ibid.
87 Ibid., p. 46;
88 Shackle, Nur-e-Jamal; C. Shackle, ‘Urdu as a Sideline: the Poetry of Khwaja Ghulam Farid’, in Urdu and Muslim South Asia, (ed.) Shackle, pp. 78ff.
89 Compare with Shackle, C., ‘The Pilgrimage and the Extension of Sacred Geography in the Poetry of Khwaja Ghulam Farid’, in Socio-cultural Impact of Islam in India, (ed.) Singh, D. A. (Chandigarh, 1978), pp. 159–170Google Scholar.
90 Kamran and Shahid, ‘Shariʿa, Shiʿias and Chishtiya Revivalism’, pp. 492ff.
91 Chand, Tarikh-e-Multan, p. 62.
92 Kamal Khan, Fuqaha-e-Multan, p. 44.
93 Ibid., pp. 51–54.