THE SHIITES

Also by David Pinault

Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights

THE SHIITES

Ritual and Popular Piety in a Muslim Community

David Pinault

Palgrave Macmillan

© David Pinault 1992 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 978-0-312-07953-6

All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

First published in the United States of America in 1992 First paperback edition 1993

ISBN 978-0-312-10024-7 ISBN 978-1-137-06693-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-06693-0

All photos are by the author

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pinault, David. The Shiites : ritual and popular piety in a Muslim community /

David Pinault. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

I. Shi' ah-lndia-Hyderabad. 2. Shi' ah. 3. Hyderabad (lndia)-Religious life. I. Title.

BP192.7.14P56 1992 297' .82'095484-dc20 92-5210

CIP

To my mother and father

Madeleine Lajoie Pinault

George Joseph Pinault

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CONTENTS

Preface ... . ix

Illustrations ....•.•..•..•... XV

Part I An Introduction to the Shiite Tradition in Islam

1. Shiism: An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2. Essentials of Islam Common to the Shiite and Sunni Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ........ 11

3. Shiite Ta'wil: The Esoteric Dimension of Quranic Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...... 27

4. Variations on the Esoteric Tradition in Poetry and Theosophy: Examples from Attar, Hafez, and Suhrawardi of Aleppo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

5. The Patterns that Inform History: Shiite Worldviews and the Understanding of Past and Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

6. Shiism in India: Historical Background and Cultural Influences . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7. Representations of Muharram in British Fiction and

..... 59

Memoirs from the Raj . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Part II Ritual and Popular Devotion in a Shiite Community:

Muharram Liturgies of Hyderabad

8. Shiite Shrines of the Old City . . . . . . . . . . . 79

9. Shiite Men's Guilds of Hyderabad: An Overview 83

10. Lamentation Rituals: Shiite Justifications for Matam (Acts of Mourning and Self-mortification) . . . . . . 99

11. Lamentation Rituals: Liturgical Forms of M atam . . 109

12. The Majlis Liturgy: Sermon Topics and Shiite Self-definition . . . . . . . . . . . .115

13. The Role of Liturgy in Reinforcing Communal Identity. . 121

14. Preparations for the Moharram Season: Rehearsal Sessions and the Training of the Chorus in a Shiite Men's Guild. . 125

15. Liturgy as Drama: The Seventh of Muharram and the Bridegroom ofKarbala's Procession . . . . . . . . . . . 131

16. Cooperation and Competition Among the Men's Guilds . 137

17. Criticisms Directed Against the Men's Guilds . . . . 147

18. Moharram Liturgies and Hindu-Muslim Relations in Hyderabad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Part Ill Conclusion

19. Hyderabad and the World Community of Shiite Islam .... 169

Glossary .177

Notes .. .183

Bibliography .197

Index ..... . 205

PREFACE

This book grew out of two summers' residence in the Indian city of Hyderabad, where I learned something of the religious practices surrounding Muharram. It is during this liturgical season that Shiite Muslims perform their annual lamentation rituals to commemorate the seventh-century battle­field death of the Imam Husain, beloved grandson of the Prophet Muham­mad. While living in India in 1989 and 1991 I came to know members of six of Hyderabad's numerous matami guruhan, the Shiite men's guilds which organize many of the city's Muharram liturgies and supervise communal expressions of grief in acts of self-mortification.

Numerically Shiites comprise only a small percentage of Hyderabad's population, some eighty thousand in a city of three to four million; but they are a highly visible minority, in part because of their continued custom of gathering for mass liturgical displays of public mourning at Muharram. This is particularly so on Ashura, the tenth day of the month of Muharram, when a procession of thousands of mourners marches through the streets of Hyderabad's Old City neighborhoods, in a parade of camels and horses, elephant-borne battle-standards, and razor-wielding flagellants from the men's guilds. Crowds line the streets; beggars, fruit-sellers, and tradesmen with votive-banners for sale work the throng; and members of other faith­communities-Hindus, Sunni Muslims, Parsees, and Christians-come to the Old City to watch.

Some onlookers come for more than amusement; as I discuss later in this book, many Hindus visit Shiite shrines during Muharram to offer veneration to Husain. This tradition of intermingling made matters easier for me when I first located the Old City headquarters of the guruhan and asked their officers if I might follow them about and attend their meetings. Many members asked whether I was Muslim; but when I identified myself as Roman Catholic this created no particular problem (and for my part, my own upbringing in an intensely liturgical tradition helped predispose me, I feel, to an interest in a community structured by religious ritual). True, I did occasionally meet men who were suspicious of my presence at the shrines. This was especially so in the summer of 1991, in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, when numerous Shiites in conversations with me voiced their bitterness against the American government for standing by while Saddam Hussein crushed the Shiite rebellion in southern Iraq. Nevertheless, through-

X The Shiites

out my time in India most guild members remained unstinting in their welcome. Thanks to them I was able to interview individual men, attend liturgies of all kinds (private devotions held in members' homes as well as outdoor services held at the great shrines), and even watch the closed rehearsal sessions (perhaps most fascinating of all) where boys and young men are trained in the roles they are to play in the public liturgies supervised by the guruhan. All of this I describe in the chapters that follow.

I have organized this book into two sections. Part I is an introduction to Shiism. It is not an exhaustive treatment; nor is it meant to be so. Instead I limit myself to a discussion of selected essential doctrines, including beliefs held commonly in both the Shiite and Sunni forms of Islam as well as dogmas which differentiate one from the other. Of necessity I devote a good deal of attention to the Quran, the life of the Prophet Muhammad, and commonly shared Islamic views of the nature of prophethood. I have included this material in part to make my subject more accessible for readers with no prior experience of Islam. I go on to an examination of historical events identified as crucially important in the Shiite tradition, especially the question of the Imam Ali's succession to the caliphate and Husain's death at Karbala in the year A.D. 680. From here I discuss the worldviews and interpretations of sacred history elaborated by Shiites of later generations who meditated on the persecutions suffered by the Prophet's family. In the process I describe briefly the various denominations of Shiism-Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaydi­as well as the heterodox sects known collectively as the ghulat or "doctrinal extremists."

I discuss Shiism' s historical legacy at length because a knowledge of the events of the seventh century is essential to any understanding of Shiite liturgy as it is practiced today. Shiite communal rituals are meant to preserve the memory of Karbala and other key historical events and pass this memory on from one generation to the next; furthermore, the form of these liturgies encodes the significance assigned these events by the Shiite community. Part II focuses attention on Muharram liturgies and attempts to show how historical understanding and worldviews are reflected in communal ritual. I do this by describing what I witnessed in Hyderabad among the matami guruhan; wherever possible, I describe not only religious practices but also the meaning given to these rituals by the Shiite men themselves whom I interviewed.

In writing this book I kept in mind the example of Lis Harris, author of Holy Days: The World of a Hasidic Family (Collier: 1985), who used her personal experiences visiting Jewish families in Brooklyn to introduce readers to the tradition ofHasidism. I envision two audiences for this study.

Preface xi

I wrote The Shiites first for the general reader who wishes an introduction to the Shiite form of Islam and who wants to understand something of Shiite religious practices. For this reason I have translated into English all passages cited from Arabic, Persian, and Urdu sources; for simplicity's sake I have also omitted diacritical marks in the terms I have transliterated from these languages. Part II of my work should be of interest as well to scholars concerned with the phenomenology of Shiite devotion. Relatively little has been published to date on this subject in general, and Hyderabad's Shiite community has received almost no scholarly attention at all.

A book of this kind could never be written without the help of many patient and good-natured individuals willing to tolerate at their elbow a notebook-wielding interrogator. I thank first of all the officers and members of the following guruhan: Anjuman-e Masoomeen; Guruh-e Ja'fari; Anju­man-e Parwaneh Shabbir; Guruh-e Husayniyah; Guruh-e Haydariyah; and Anjuman-e Ittihad-e Iraniyan-e Dekkan. Luckily for me, many members of these groups are fluent in English; as an Arabist only recently introduced to India, my facility in speaking Urdu was very limited indeed. Thus almost all my interviews were conducted in English (in a few instances, when chatting with religious scholars, I conversed in Arabic). Officers of the guruhan frequently offered their help as interpreters when I interviewed non-English speaking members of the guilds.

Dr. Omar Khalidi of the Hyderabad Historical Society provided biblio­graphic assistance, and of the many people who granted extensive interviews, these in particular should be singled out: Professor Sadiq Naqvi ofOsmania University; S. Abbas Ali, founder of the Imam-e Zamana Mission; Ali Muhsin Khan of the Elia Theological Association; Allamah Akhtar Zaydi and his son Hyder Zaydi, both well known in the Old City as outstanding Muharram orators; and S. Naimatullah Moosavi, administrator of Hyderabad's Hauzat al-Mahdi religious school.

Throughout my two summers' stay, numerous individuals of Hyderabad' s Shiite community supported me with their friendship and lively interest in my work. Ansar Hyder Abedi acted as liaison in arranging interviews and invited me to serve as a paramedic at his first-aid station outside the Hazrat Abbas shrine on Ashura 1991. I was able to interview the Iranian vice-consul in Hyderabad only through the very active intercession of Agha Mohammed Hussein. Shaukath Husain of A. A. Husain Booksellers gave me some memorable motorcycle rides through Hyderabad and very kindly invited me to liturgies held by the Nimatullahi Sufi order. Hasan Abbas Rizvi, poet and chanter in the Anjuman-e Parwaneh Shabbir, wel­comed me to his home with great hospitality, and S. Ahmed Ali, president

xii The Shiites

of Parwaneh Shabbir, answered endless questions with great patience and unfailing good humor. Mir Sabir Ali Zawar, founder and secretary of Anjuman-e Masoomeen, talked with me at length and allowed me to observe rehearsal sessions at his guild's headquarters.

Hyderabad's Henry Martyn Institute of Islamic Studies played a special role in my research. It was an article by the Institute's former director, the Reverend David Lindell, that first drew my attention to the matami guruhan. The Institute's present associate director, Dr. Andreas D'Souza, and his wife Diane D'Souza offered encouragement, affection, and active support in both 1989 and 1991. Andreas accompanied me on many visits to the Old City and acted as interpreter in several interviews. I am not alone in attesting the D'Souzas' generosity of spirit: during the Old City riots of December 1990 Andreas and Diane worked at considerable personal risk to build interfaith reconciliation in the Muslim and Hindu neighborhoods of Hyderabad.

Closer to home, David Hughes and Ann Ackerson of Colgate University's Interlibrary Loan Division expedited hair-raising last-minute bibliographic requests with aplomb. Technical support was cheerfully provided by Darryl Simcoe, director of Colgate's Audio-Visual Services, who helped in the preparation of photographic material, and by Peter Jorgensen, microcom­puter specialist at Colgate, who answered a number of questions concerning the text's format.

Colgate's Research Council awarded me a Picker Grant in 1991, thereby facilitating a return to Hyderabad for a second season of work. I acknowledge with gratitude the Council's generosity. A Fulbright grant for Arabic and Persian manuscript research, awarded by the Indo-U.S. Subcommission, made possible my initial visit to India.

The work of composing this book in the fall of 1991 was made easier because of the encouragement I received from many friends, especially John Shuler, Karen Gegner, and Constance Harsh, all of the Colgate community. Michael Coyle of Colgate's English Department acquainted me with the writings of A.E.W. Mason and the 1938 film version of The Drum. I thank him for several enjoyable conversations on British imperial fiction. In particular I thank my colleague Steven Kepnes from Colgate's Philosophy and Religion Department for a suggestion made one day over lunch at the Merrill House faculty club, a suggestion which led to the writing of this book.

Theodore P. Wright, Jr., professor of political science, State University of New York at Albany, gave very valuable bibliographical suggestions with regard to the political history of Hyderabad State.

Enduring the copy editing and production stages of publication was made easier by the courteous, ongoing help of senior editor Simon Winder and

Preface xiii

editorial assistant Laura Heymann, both of the Scholarly and Reference Division at St. Martin's Press. In 1990 Simon took the initiative to approach me with the idea of a volume on Shiite piety; his enthusiasm and imaginative vision helped bring this project to completion.

Bibliographic advice and helpful suggestions came from old friends in Philadelphia, most notably Frank Korom and Basilides Elatinos. I salute my Urdu tutors in Philadelphia, Iffat Farah and Aliya Azam Khan, for their patience and skilled teaching. Wayne Husted of Pennsylvania State University offered very valuable suggestions for improving my translations of Urdu lamentation chants; I thank him for his generosity and enthusiastic help. And reading Persian poetry some years ago with Birch Miles of the University of Pennsylvania helped stimulate many ofthe ideas to be developed in the writing of this book; I recall with gratitude our evenings working on Hafez and Firdawsi.

Under fatiguing field conditions moral support is everything. That I per­severed is a blessing I attribute to my wife, Dr. Jody Rubin Pinault, who accompanied me to Hyderabad on my first visit in 1989. Some of my com­ments on women's rituals stem from her observations when she sat in purdah attending liturgies with Shiite women acquaintances. The text of each chapter benefited from her perceptive and sensitive comments. To her more than anyone else I owe thanks.

Hamilton, New York December 1991