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Sayyid-ness beyond the Borders of South Asia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2020
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- Afterword
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- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2020
Footnotes
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I would like to thank Professor Mimi Hanaoka for her great help in editing this afterword. I would also like to gratefully acknowledge the supports I received from JSPS Kakenhi Grants-in-Aid (19H01317, 19H00564, and 15H01895) and Alexander Humboldt Kolleg for Islamicate Intellectual History, Universität Bonn (lead by Professor Judith Pfeiffer) in the preparation of this afterword.
References
1 As explained in the co-editors’ introduction, a unique nomenclature is prevalent in South Asia in which the words ‘Sayyid’ and ‘Sharif’ have two clearly different meanings. While ‘Sayyid’ is used, like in many other regions, as a title to denote the people who claim to be members of the kinfolk of the Prophet Muhammad, ‘Sharif’, in its plural ‘Ashraf’, signifies a wider category, that is, Muslims of foreign origins as a whole. Thus, Sayyids form a part of the Ashraf in South Asia, while the two terms ‘Sayyid’ and ‘Sharif’ can generally be treated as synonyms in relation to Muslim societies elsewhere (I do not believe that the oft-repeated explanation about the differentiation between ‘Sayyid’ as signifying a Husainid and ‘Sharif’ as denoting a Hasanid has widely applicable factual basis). In this afterword, ‘Ashraf’ is used only in its South Asian sense, while ‘Sharif’ in singular or the ‘Sharifs’ in English plural is used in its non-South Asian meaning (in contrast with the rest of the Special Issue, where ‘sharif’ is used in relation to the notion of sharafat, meaning both nobility and good manners).
2 The verse reads “Qul la as'alukum ʽalayhi ajran illa al-mawaddah fi'l-qurba” and is interpreted, when used as a basis for the obligation of love for Sayyids and Sharifs, as “Say, ‘I ask no remuneration for it [i.e., my mission as God's Apostle] except for your love for my close kinfolk’ ” (my own translation). There are, however, other well-known interpretations.
3 See Freitag, Ulrike, Indian Ocean Migrants and State Formation in Hadhramaut: Reforming the Homeland (Leiden and Boston, 2003), p. 42Google Scholar, for this moral standard.
4 For ‘sayyido-sharifology’, which aims at a holistic understanding of Sayyids and Sharifs across regions without ever losing sight of their diversities, see Morimoto, Kazuo, ‘Toward the Formation of Sayyido-Sharifology: Questioning Accepted Fact’, The Journal of Sophia Asian Studies XXII (2004), pp. 87–103Google Scholar; idem, ‘Sayyido-Sharifology: Personal and Collective Endeavors to Define a New Research Field’, in Islamic Studies and the Study of Sufism in Academia: Rethinking Methodologies, (eds.) Tonaga, Yasushi and Fujii, Chiaki (Kyoto, 2019), pp. 47–54Google Scholar.
5 Al-Suyuti, al-ʽAjajah al-zarnabiyah fi al-sulalah al-Zaynabiyah, in idem, al-Hawi lil-fatawi ([Cairo], 1933), ii, pp. 31–34.
6 I have the following two points in mind in my use of ‘conceptual core’ here: (1) no theory for demarcating Sayyids and Sharifs from non-Sayyids and non-Sharifs known to me excludes the Hasanids and the Husainids, while there have been disagreements concerning the rest of the ʽAlids, Talibids or the Hashimids; (2) only the Hasanids and the Husainids are considered entitled to claim direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad (albeit quite irregularly through his daughter Fatima) while the other lines of the Hashimids are related to the Prophet only collaterally.
7 al-Tiqtaqa, Ibn, al-Asili fi ansab al-Talibiyin, (ed.) al-Raja'i, Mahdi (Qom, 1997–98), pp. 239–240Google Scholar.
8 One may recall another well-known case from South Asia in which dreams served as evidence of the Sayyid status of the family of Husain Ahmad Madani, the leader of Jamʽiyyat ʽUlama’-i Hind. See Metcalf, Barbara D., Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton, 1982), pp. 246–247CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I thank Dr. Julien Levesque for bringing this material to my attention.
9 I have, however, no knowledge as to whether or not Rashid Rida linked his Sayyid status with any sense of entitlement or responsibility to reform his ancestor's Umma. For Rashid Rida's own mention of his Sayyid status, see Rida, Muhammad Rashid, al-Manar wa-al-Azhar (Cairo, 2007), pp. 148–152Google Scholar, especially p. 151.
10 I have, however, not been able to figure out whether his claim to be a Sayyid merely formed a part of his faked identity as an Afghan or he sincerely believed himself to be one. See Ignaz Goldziher and Jacques Jomier, ‘Djamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_1963 (accessed 30 August 2019); Nikki R. Keddie, ‘Afḡānī, Jamāl-al-Dīn’, Encyclopædia Iranica, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/afgani-jamal-al-din (accessed 30 August 2019).
11 For C and P, see Ernest Gellner, ‘A Pendulum Swing Theory of Islam’, Annales marocaines de sociologie. 1968 (1968), pp. 5–14, reprinted, in Sociology of Religion: Selected Readings, (ed.) Roland Robertson (Harmondsworth, 1969), pp. 127–139. For my use of ‘intercessional Islam’, see my ‘Introduction’, in Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies: Living Links to the Prophet, (ed.) Morimoto, Kazuo (London and New York, 2012), p. 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar [pp. 1–12].
12 Serjeant, Robert Bertram, “Ḥaram and Ḥawṭa: The Sacred Enclave in Arabia”, in Mélanges Taha Husayn, (ed.) Badawi, A. (Cairo, 1962), pp. 41–58Google Scholar; Freitag, Indian Ocean Migrants, p. 42. Abenante indeed mentions such a role played by dargah-based saintly figures in Multan in his contribution.
13 Of course, it is of utmost importance in this discussion to clarify what institution or discourse one has in mind when we talk about a ‘Muslim caste’ system. Do we talk about, for example, the Ashraf–Ajlaf dichotomy or the quadripartite division of the Ashraf into Sayyids, Shaikhs, Mughals and Pathans, or even a society composed of different descent/occupational groups (zat, baradari and suchlike) whose interrelations are dictated by established social norms?
14 For studies discussing works of this genre, see Morimoto, Kazuo, ‘How to Behave toward Sayyids and Sharīfs: A Trans-Sectarian Tradition of Dream Accounts’, in Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies: The Living Links to the Prophet, (ed.) Morimoto, Kazuo (London and New York, 2012), pp. 15–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘The Prophet's Family as the Perennial Source of Saintly Scholars: Al-Samhūdī on ʽIlm and Nasab’, in Family Portraits with Saints: Hagiography, Sanctity, and Family in the Muslim World, (eds.) Mayeur-Jaouen, Catherine and Papas, Alexandre (Berlin, 2014), pp. 106–124Google Scholar.
15 I thank Professor Ayako Ninomiya for this information. According to her, one of the four manuscripts of the Manaqib al-sadat kept at the Maulana Azad Library, Aligarh Muslim University (MS University Collection, Farsi, mazhab wa tasavvuf 268) is dated in its colophon to 10 Rabiʽ I 1313 AH/31 August 1895. Although I currently have no information as to where and for what purpose the manuscript in question was copied, this would suggest that the work still had an audience towards the late nineteenth century. Ninomiya is currently carrying out a study of the work, without, however, focusing on its reception history in modern times. My knowledge about the Manaqib al-sadat comes mainly from Ayako Ninomiya, ‘Arguing Sayyids in the Frontiers of the Islamic World: The Manaqib al-sadat by Dawlatabadi’, unpublished presentation in Japanese, 6 July 2019, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo, and my own preliminary examination of a manuscript of the work (MS Majles Library 14134). See also Dirayati, Mustafa (ed.), Fihristgan-i nuskha-ha-yi khatti-yi Iran (Fankha) (Tehran, 2011/12–15/16), xxxi, p. 649Google Scholar. I thank Professor Ninomiya for her permission to cite her unpublished work.