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

THE INDIAN TOMB
As a scholarly problem the cult of the saints attracted the attention
of the researchers in the last century itself: many pioneers in the
field of the study of culture and the literature of the subcontinent,
including the outstanding French scholar Garcin de Tassy, German
missionary Ernst Trump and the brilliant English anthropologist
Richard Burton wrote about it. Naturally, the most significant
contribution to the scientific study of the cult of saints was made by
the scholars of India and Pakistan, who have published monuments
of Sufi literature in Persian and Indian languages: poetical works
(kalām) and theological tracts (risāla) of saints, voluminous hagiographic
literature, including discourses (malfūz˝āt), epistolary heritage
(maktūbāt), saints’ lives (manāqib), collections of saints’ biographies
(t.abaqāt al-awliyā) and also historical chronicles (tawārīkh), which
are the most authentic source of information about saints and the part
they played in medieval society.
A special role in attracting Western scholars to this field of science
was played by the works of the outstanding researcher of the history
and culture of Islam, Annemarie Schimmel. Her numerous books and
articles retrace the ‘generic’ characteristics of South Asian Islam
and the cult of saints as well as their ‘specific’ local characteristics.
Schimmel was one of the first to look at the history of Indian Islam
and, in particular, its syncretic forms, from the point of view of typology,
as mutually identified concepts, ‘facts with twin motivation’,
and not as the result of external influences. She also has precedence
in the study of ziyārat in India and Pakistan: it can be said that she
detached this problem from the field of ethnology and brought it to
the arena of the science of religion.
Studies of the saints’ cult belong to the different fields of humanities.
In the first instance these are Islamic and Sufi studies, for which this
problem is important but nevertheless peripheral. Then follows
ethnology, which studies popular religion with reference to its
modern practice and rituals. Philology has made its own contribution
in the study of Sufi literature and hagiography. Art criticism has
also not remained aloof since many mazārs and dargāhs are of
considerable interest as architectural monuments. To me, probably
by force of personal predilections, a holistic approach of cultural
anthropology seems to be most fruitful, which allows determining the
place of the cult of saints in the culture of South Asia and its
connection with other forms of spiritual and social life.
For the arousal of interest in the tombs of Muslim saints I am
obliged to the lasting impression left on me many years ago during
my first visit to the dargāh of Nizamuddin Awliya in Delhi. It happens
31