InshaAllah, I will be wrapping up the few more select excerpts from this book and then provide my thoughts and rationale in sharing these snippets.
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‘Of bigoted Mussalman’, Bara Banki’s settlement officer conceded, “I have little personal knowledge; these men either stay at their own houses or keep their bigotry to themselves in government service’ [1] This simple observation says a lot about Awadh’s qasba life in the second half of the nineteenth century.
A devout Muslim told Meer Hasan Ali about the strong similarities between his community and the Hindu population: “the out-of-door celebrations of marriage festivals, for instance, which are so nearly resembling each other, in the same classes of society, that scarcely any difference can be discovered by the common observer” More than a century later, a leading scholar at Lucknow’s Nadwat al-ulama opined that social life of India’s Muslims did not present any marked difference from the cultural norms and pattern around them. Distinctive features, customs, and manners, too, like those of their local compatriots, marked their culture [2]
In other words, besides differences and distinctions there were also relationships and interactions.
Today, the history of Islam in South Asia - the writing of which has always been peculiarly susceptible to the climate of current politics - demands a serious intellectual reassessment. The historian Aziz Ahmed (1913-1978) refers to ‘the alternating and simultaneous process of mutual attraction and repulsions’ in medieval Indian society. Steering clear of such generalizations, I suggest that the qasbas predisposed ashraf or families comprising the gentry to the rational and ethical dimensions of Islam, to the virtues of charity, tolerance, generosity, good neighbourly conduct, and to those elements of piety that go into the making of the Perfect Man or Insan -e Kamil. Without denying the existence of negative critiques or the wide gap between ideals and reality, I draw attention to one Weltanschauung of significance, the rationalist and humanist construction of Islam. To be educated in the second half of the nineteenth century meant to be steeped in those values, and promised signity and advancement in life. Hence the comment that, presumably, alludes to such people, especially the aspiring intellectuals: “The Mussalamans of Oudh cannot, as a body, be accused of bigotry or intolerance” [3] This is corroborated by Meer Hasan Ali’s experience in Lucknow, of being received without prejudice, and allowed to observe her European habits and Christian faith. [4] Some, if not all, the men who figure in her narrative thus became typical carriers of moral and ethical piety or akhuwat, in the qasbas.
Excerpted from “Pluralism to Seperatism Qasbas in Colonial Awadh”
Mushirul Hasan - Oxford University Press
[1] Chamier, Report, p51
[2] S.A.H.A Nadwi The Masalman (Luikcnow 1977) p41
[3] Irwin Garden of India, p 38
[4] Ali, Observations on the Mussulmans of India Vol 2. p 424
On many weekends Wliayat Ali and his group took time off from their professional and domestic chores to gather together in Bara Banki. For this they used the loop line of the Awadh and Rhilkhand railway system. It ran from the erstwhile Nawabi capitalto Faizabad, the city founded by Saadat Ali Khan (1772-39) and refurbished by Safdar Jang (vazir from 1748 until 1753), and Banaras, traversed the district from west to east, and passed throguh Bara Banki, Rasauli, Safdarganj, Dariabad, Makhdumpur, Rauzagaon, and Rudauli. En route, they visited the shrine of Shah Abdur Razzaq (1636-1724) at Bansa, who not only won the recognition of his contemporaries but who exerted after his death one of the most powerful influences in Awadh spiritual history. His shrine, a nucleus of ascetic pietism, shelters the devotee, Hindu and Muslim alike, from disease and mental ailments, and offers a place where one seeks refuge from the pressures of everyday life. In the 1870s, the urs at Bansa attracted as many as five thousand devotees. The Shah’s twenty-three immediate successors included at least three members of the Kidwai, and six of the Farangi Mahal family. sitting cross-legged at one of the shrines, they may well have repeated the following lines:
I stood by the Reformer’s tomb: that dust
Whence here below an orient splendour breaks,
Dust before whose least speck stars hang their heads,
Dust shrouding that high knower of things unknown. (Iqbal)
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Excerpted from “Pluralism to Seperatism Qasbas in Colonial Awadh”
Mushirul Hasan - Oxford University Press
Satrikh, the home of several ‘respectable’ Muslim families who had built several mosques of burnt bricks, was the site of a huge fair held in March at the shrine of Sheikh Salat, the father of Ghazi Miyan Salar Masud, whose shrine is at Bahraich. Pilgrims visited the shrine, bringing with them long poles covered in cloth, which is left at the shrine. A leather worker living in Rudauli built the mausoleum in 1799. Sleeman’s Hindu camp followers revered the shrine as much as the Muslims (*) At such sites dotted on Awadh’s graph, and this is indeed a point that needs to be constantly underlined, the ulama and the theologian could scarcely turn against the more emotive and expressive aspects of Sufism. This was true of Rudauli as of Bilgram. The follow statement sums up the overall tone and tenor of Awadh society:
“When the conch sounded in the temples in its notes [in Bilgram], the Muslims heard the voices of unity and kinship. When the call for prayer (azan) sounded, the mellifluous voice entranced the Hindus to accept Allah’s greatness. During Muharram, Hindus and Muslims walked shoulder to shoulder reciting elegies and dirges. Music did not provoke violence nor did the Pipal tree cause conflict. The slaughter of animals during Bakr Id did not lead to human killings. In short, be it matters of religion or matters temporal Hindus and Muslims were like sweetness in milk… This is the atmosphere in which I grew up” -Hosh Bilgrami, Mushahidat p. 3
* Abul Fazl comments on the shrine “The common people of the Muhammadan faith greatly reverence this spot and pilgrims visit it from distant parts, forming themselves inbands and bearding gilded manners.” One day Muhummad Husain Khan asked the Sheikh (Abul Fath of Khairabad) ‘ what sort of man was Salar Masud” The Sheikh replied, “he was an Afghan who met his death by martyrdom”. -Muntakhabu-t-tawarikh pp 46-7
Amoung the many traditions quoted is the following one: ‘Sahu Salar died in Satrikh 800 years ago, was considered as holy man, but probably little would have been known of him but for his son Syud Salar Mahmud Ghazi who was very active in the crusades all over Oudh; and eventually was killed in Bahraich at the early age of 21 years’ Chamier Report p 55,288
As a part of the Islamic service gentry and given their proximity to Nawabganj, then a lively cultural centre, the Kidwais operated beyond the local boundaries, transmitting ilm-e deen (knowledge of Islam) through madaris, mosques, and kanqahs, and providing a local Muslim as well as secular leadership. Doubtless, nascent revivalist assertions and the temple-mosque dispute in 1855 at Hanumangarhi in Ayodhya had heightened Hindu-Muslim consciousness and led to the intervention of the king’s troops under Captain Barlowe near Rudauli. Nevertheless, pluralism, no matter how amorphous, played a significant part in Awadh, both generally and at the qasba level in particular. It is true that religious attributions were by no means uncommon, but more often than not they were banners under which different economic and social groups organized themselves. The point to stress is that their motives had little to do with religion. The occasions when qasba society actually got polarized along the lines of religion were relatively rare.
The gentry’s patronage and the common man’s veneration of Muslim shrines and holy men enhanced, undoubtedly, the qasba’s solidarity as a unique entity. In some ways, the qasbas shaped Lucknow much more than the other way round. Admittedly, divisions existed; for example, intermarriage across religious communities remained difficult and rare, and marks of distinction manifested in the details of dress and food as expressions of personal, familial, caste, and religious taste and identity. Negative social stereotypes and attitudes regarding the other religious group also continued; but specific strategies evolved by individuals enabled them to avoid conflict whilst interacting in mixed social contexts.
Friendship, cooperation and coexistence characterized daily interaction between the followers of Islam and Hinduism. Peasant and craftsmen created bonding through festivals, melas, and shared religious traditions, wheres gentry families, conscious of having fashioned a civilized world as apposed to the chicanery, huckstering, and manipulative materialism of city life, interacted with one another in the high tradition of a specifically Indo-Persian culture. Sharp social divisions and cultural fragmentation marked the city; consequently, the qasba people invoked their unity of experience. What enabled them to do this was the predominance of a typically Awadhi culture expressed through an Awadhi dialect, spoken in Sandila and in Unao, Lucknow, and Sitapur districts. As the temple bells rang and the muezzin’s cadences floated in the air, one of Rudauli’s prominent service families celebrated Basant and Diwali with much fanfare. Among such families there existed a much longer tradition, provided both by structural and liminal artifacts, of aiding the process of acculturation and extending its reach among the masses.
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Excerpted from “Pluralism to Seperatism Qasbas in Colonial Awadh”
Mushirul Hasan - Oxford University Press
Habib ibn Muhammad al-Ajami al-Basri [d.120H/737CE] ‘alayhi al-rahmah wa’l-ridwan
Following from Kashf- al-Mahjub “Unveiling of the Enshrouded” by ‘ALI UTHMAN AL-HUJWIRI (Data Sahib) [Source: Kashf al-Mahjub]
His [al-Ajami] conversion (tawbat) was begun by Hasan of Basra. At first he was a usurer and committed all sorts of wickedness, but Allah gave him a sincere repentance, and he learned from Hasan something of the theory and practice of religion. His native tongue was Persian (’ajami) and he could not speak Arabic correctly.
Shrine of Habib al-Ajami
One evening Hasan of Basra passed by the door of his cell. Habib had uttered the call to prayer and was standing, engaged in devotion. Hasan came in, but would not pray under his leadership, because Habib was unable to speak Arabic fluently or recite the Qur’an correctly. The same night, Hasan dreamed that he saw Allah and said to Him: “O Lord, wherein does Thy good pleasure consist?” and that Allah answered: “O Hasan, you found My good pleasure, but did not know its value: if yester-night you had said your prayers after Habib, and if the rightness of his intention had restrained you from taking offense at his pronunciation, I should have been well pleased with you.”
It is common knowledge among Sufis that when Hasan of Basra fled from Hajjaj he entered the cell of Habib. The soldiers came and said to Habib: “Have you seen Hasan anywhere?” Habib said: “Yes.” “Where is he?” “He is in my cell.” They went into the cell, but saw no one there. Thinking that Habib was making fun of them, they abused him and called him a liar. He swore that he had spoken the truth. They returned twice and thrice, but found no one, and at last departed. Hasan immediately came out and said to Habib: “I know it was owing to thy benedictions that Allah did not discover me to these wicked men, but why didst thou tell them I was here?” Habib replied: “O Master, it was not on account of my benedictions that they failed to see thee, but through the blessedness of my speaking the truth. Had I told a lie, we both should have been shamed.”
Habib was asked: “With what thing is Allah pleased?” He answered: “With a heart which is not sullied by hypocrisy,” because hypocrisy (nifaq) is the opposite of concord (wifaq), and the state of being well pleased (rida) is the essence of concord. There is no connection between hypocrisy and love, and love subsists in the state of being well pleased (with whatever is decreed by Allah ). Therefore acquiescence (rida) is a characteristic of Allah’s friends, while hypocrisy is a characteristic of His enemies. This is a very important matter. I will explain it in another place.
Habib al-Ajami passed away in 120 after Hijri, his shrine is in Baghdad.
Exposition of the Hadith, “The parable of my community is the parable of the Ship (Ark) of Noah: whoso shall cleave to it is saved, and whoso shall hold back from it is drowned.”
On this account the Prophet said, “I am as the Ship (ark) in
the Flood of Time
I and my Companions are as the Ship of Noah : whoso clings
(to us) will gain (spiritual) graces.”
When you are with the Shaykh you are far removed from
wickedness : day and night you are a traveller and in a ship.
You are under the protection of a life-giving spirit : you are
asleep in the ship, you are going on the way.
Do not break with the prophet of your days (1) : do not rely on
your own skill and footsteps (2).
Lion though you are, you are self-conceited and in error and
contemptible when you go on the way without a guide.
Beware! Do not fly but with the wings of the Shaykh, that
you may see (received) the aid of the armies of the Shaykh.
At one time the wave of his mercy is your pinion, at another
moment the fire of his wrath is your carrier.
Do not reckon his wrath to be the contrary of his mercy : be-
hold the oneness of both (these qualities) in the effect.
At one time he will make you green like the earth, at another
time he will make you full of wind, and big.
He gives the quality of inorganic things to the body of the
knower (of God), in order that gay roses and eglantines may
grow on it ;
But he (the Shaykh) alone sees (them), none sees but he :
Paradise yields no scent but to the purified brain.
Empty your brain of disbelief in the Friend, that it may feel
sweet odours from the rose-garden of the Friend;
So that you may feel the scent of Paradise from my Friend,
as Mohammad the scent of the Merciful (God) from heaven.
If you stand in the rank of those who make the spiritual
ascension, not being (self-naughtedness) will bear you aloft, like
Buraaq.
Tis not like the ascension of a piece of earth (an earthly being)
to the moon; nay, but like the ascension of a cane to sugar.
Tis not like the ascension of a vapour to the sky ; nay, but
like the ascension of an embryo to rationality.
The steed of not-being (self-naughtedness) became a goodly
Buraaq : it brings you to (real) existence, if you are non-existent
(self-naughted).
Its hoofs brushes the mountains and seas till it puts the world
of sense-perception behind.
Set your foot into the ship and keep going quickly, like the
soul going towards the soul’s Beloved.
(With) no hands and no feet, go to Eternity in the same fashion
as that in which the spirits sped from non-existence.
IF there had not been somnolence (dullness and inattention)
in the hearer’s hearing, the veil of logical reasoning would have
been torn asunder in the discourse.
O Heaven, shower pearls on his (the Shaykh’s) rede! O
World, have shame of (be abashed by) his world!
If thou wilt shower (pearls), thy substance will become (in-
creased in splendour) hundredfold : thy inorganic (matter) will
become seeing and speaking.
Therefore thou wilt have scattered a largesse for thine own
sake, inasmuch as every stock of thine will be centupled.
1) i.e. the Sufi Shaykhs who are the spiritual heirs and representatives of the PRophet
2) Reading
The Mathnawi of Jallaulddin Rumi Tr Books III and IV pg 308, tr: Nicholson
