Muslim Saints of South Asia: The eleventh to ... - blog blog blog

THE INDIAN TOMB
In contrast to Christianity, in Islam there did not exist any official
canonization of saints. An actually existing person, a legendary
character or folk-lore hero was canonized by force of the general
opinion of the faithful, and religious authorities were sooner or later
compelled to accept the spontaneously established tradition of
veneration, trying to make it conform with the norms of Islam. 3 Such
initiatives from the lower strata of society were bound to impart to
the veneration of saints features alien to Islam, which provoked
theologians to protest.
The innermost stirrings of the heart of a true believer should be
directed towards Allah and his Prophet, whereas veneration of saints
divided and fragmented this aspiration into a multi-coloured kaleidoscope
far removed from Islamic ceremonies, rituals and customs.
Permeation of all the spheres of human existence by religion in
these conditions led not only to the spirituality of the worldly but also
to the profanation and secularization of the spiritual. In the
unsophisticated consciousness of ordinary believers, most of them
newly converted to Islam, favourite saints were endowed with a
certain authenticity. The saints deaths as martyrs and the miracles
wrought by them were of the utmost importance in the people’s
imagination, and recourse to them for help was something more
intelligible and usual than faith in one invisible God, devoid of
anthropomorphic features.
Veneration of a saint is almost always the veneration of his tomb
in which, side-by-side with the buried remains, some material evidence
of his temporal life like dress, turban, sandals, staff, weapons and
beads are preserved, acquiring the status of relics. Such an attachment
to things material was bound to have a certain corporeal influence
upon the spiritual sphere, at times leading to quite unexpected
extremes.
Popular religion in the lower social strata, with its inherent
occultism condemned by Islam, countenanced veneration of corporal
remains of saints, which imparted a particular materiality to their
images. The most well-known example of veneration of such corporal
remains is the numerous cultic memorials in which hair or a footprint
of the Prophet or the members of his family were preserved. These
memorials were built on the model of tombs, like the famous dargāhs
of ‘the sacred hair’ War Mubarak (in Rohri) and Hazrat Bal (in
Srinagar), and also memorials of the ‘Prophet’s footprint’ (qadam
Rasūl) 4 in Nabiganj, Dhakka and Lucknow. In addition the miraculous
property of multiplying themselves was ascribed to the
Prophet’s hair. Ignaz Goldziher, one of the pioneers in the field of
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