Horse of Karbala

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Horse of Karbala Muslim Devotional Life in India

David Pinault

Palgrave

* HORSE OF KARBALA

Copyright © David Pinault, 2001.Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001 978-0-312-21637-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in

any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case

of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

First published 2001 by

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ISBN 978-1-349-61982-5 ISBN 978-1-137-04765-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-04765-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pinault, David.

Horse of Karbala Muslim devotional life in India / David Pinault.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Shia--lndia. 2. Religious life--Shia. 3. Shia--Customs and practices.

4. Karbala (Iraq), Battle of, 680. I. Title.

BP192.7.I4 P559 2000 296.8'2'0954--dc21

00-024005

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Design by Acme Art, Inc.

First edition: February 2001

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Jody with love

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Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments ........................... ix

Illustrations ......................................... xiii

ONE

Initiation: Hyderabad, 1989 .............................. 1

TWO

An Introduction to the Shia Tradition in Islam ............... 11

THREE

Blood, Rationality, and Ritual in the Shia Tradition ........... 29

F 0 U R

"Would That You Could Bury Me, Too, Beside My Brother!":

Women's Roles in Shia Devotional Literature ................ 57

F I V E

Shia Ritual in a Sunni Setting: Muharram Observances

in the Hill Station of Darjeeling, West Bengal ............... 87

SIX

Horse of Karbala: Ladakh, Shia Ritual, and

Devotional Literature Relating to Zuljenah ................. 109

SEVEN

Muslim-Buddhist Relations in a Ritual Context:

An Analysis of the Muharram Procession

in Leh Township, Ladakh .............................. 133

E l G H T

Shia Lamentation Rituals and

Reinterpretations of the Doctrine of

Intercession: Two Cases from Modern India ................ 157

NINE

The Day of the Lion:

A Ladakhi Shia Ritual Determined

by the Zodiacal Calendar .............................. 1 8 1

TEN

Shia Encounters in the United States:

Notes on Teaching the Shia Tradition

in American Classrooms ............................... 209

Notes .............................................. 225

Bibliography ......................................... 243

Index .............................................. 253

Preface and Acknowledgments

Between 1989 and 1999 I made seven research trips to South Asia. With the exception of a side trip to Pakistan to see Sufi shrines in Lahore and an excursion to Sri Lanka to visit Buddhist pilgrimage centers, I focused on India and its Shia Muslim minority population. In each setting within India I examined religious rituals honoring the memory of the Imam Husain, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, who was martyred in battle in the seventh century A.D., at a place in the Iraqi desert called Karbala. Husain died in the month of Muharram (the first month in the Islamic calendar). Annually Shia Muslims throughout the world set aside this month to mourn Husain and the other Karbala martyrs who died with him.

In my travels I gave particular attention to three locales in the subcontinent. The first was Hyderabad, in south-central India, where Shia liturgical practices (notably with regard to the veneration of alams, copies of the battle-standards carried at Karbala) show influence from Hinduism. My time there gave me the opportunity to study Shia-Hindu interactions in a ritual setting. It was in Hyderabad that I first learned about flagellation as artform and about poetry as a means to personal salvation in the afterlife.

My second worksite was Darjeeling, in the tea-country district of West Bengal's Himalayan foothills. Here Muharram liturgies are arranged by Sunni rather than Shia Muslims. Darjeeling's Muharram is marked by stick-play, joyous drumming, competition-minded processions: carnival rather than mourning.

A few years ago I shifted my focus to a third region: Ladakh, the northeast quadrant of Jammu and Kashmir state, a mountainous frontier realm sharing a border with Pakistan and Tibet. The population includes Buddhists, Sunnis, and Shias. The Indian military presence in Ladakh (which has increased in recent decades because of intermittent conflicts with China and Pakistan) has diversified the region's religious profile further, through the establishment of Hindu and Sikh shrines for the benefit of soldiers garrisoned in Ladakh. While in Ladakh I studied the local Zuljenah processions, in which a horse representing Husain's battle stallion is caparisoned and led riderless through the streets of towns such as Leh, the district capital. In Leh's Zuljenah procession the "Horse of Karbala" has its mane streaked with red paint and its flanks smeared red to recall the

X Horse of Karbala

battlefield wounds of both the animal and its rider. The stallion's appearance triggers outbursts of grief, from weeping to self-scourging, among the crowds on the street. Because the Horse of Karbala procession is public and takes place in Leh's main bazaar, where various populations mingle, this ritual gave me the chance to study the relations of Shia and Sunni Muslims with the region's Buddhist communities.

In this book I give attention to three topics in particular. The first addresses the ways in which Muslim communities today make use of, and modify, the Shia religious tradition from the past. As part of this inquiry I study motifs from the classical textual tradition and note how these are deployed in vernacular poetry and present-day devotional practice. To make this material as accessible as possible, I translate into English the various works that I used from sources in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu.

The second topic involves what I see as points of convergence between Islamic and Christian religious sensibility, more specifically with regard to Shia Muslim and Roman Catholic ritual life. I include this topic not only to make Shia liturgy more approachable for at least some readers of non-Muslim backgrounds, but also to suggest ways in which members of the Islamic and Christian traditions might learn from each other. At various points in this book, but especially in the last chapter, I argue that Islam and Christianity, which share with Judaism a common Abrahamic heritage, have the possibility of collaborative spiritual efforts in the twenty-first century.

Finally, in this book I try to convey something of what it was like for me as an American to do research with Shia communities in India. The personal dimension of my experience was worth recording, I decided, not only because it gives me the chance to tell some good stories, but also because it will draw the reader's attention to my necessarily limited perspec­tive as a foreigner and an outsider. To make sense of what I saw in India, I drew on not only my professional training as an Arabist and textual scholar but also my personal background as a Roman Catholic.

In the end, it is the personal aspect, the opportunity for friendship in settings where one as a stranger has to trust in one's hosts for support, that makes fieldwork something pleasant to remember. I am fortunate in that I was welcomed with kindness and acts of generosity everywhere I went in India. In Hyderabad, I was offered hospitality by Mir Sabir Ali Zawar, founder and secretary of the Anjuman-e Ma'sumeen, and Hassan Abbas Rizvi, poet-chanter of the Association of the Moths of Husain. Seyyed Abbas Ali of the lmam-e Zamana Mission offered me an interview that helped lead to my first encounters with the lamentation guilds of Hydera­bad. And I recall with affection the late Ansar Hyder Abedi, who acted as

Preface and Acknowledgments xi

liaison in arranging meetings with Shia community leaders and who in 1991 invited me to serve as a paramedic in his first-aid station at the city's chief flagellation shrine.

In Darjeeling, I received help from a number of individuals: Muham­mad Maqbool Butt Badami and his brother Abdul Rashid, of the Anjuman­e Islamia; the officers of the Saddar Bazaar Muharram Committee and the Doctor Zakir Husain Busti Committee, especially Iltimas Fazli; Habeeb Ullah and Ramzan Butt, of the Indian Tibetan Muslim Welfare Association of Darjeeling; Altaf Fazli, of Jolly Arts Emporium; S. Ahmad Baba, lAS, District Magistrate, West Bengal, who furnished insights on the politics of the region; and Indira Gongba, proprietor ofT rek-Mate Travel, who offered me encouragement and many cups of tea at Glenary's on the Mall.

My trips to Ladakh were made easier through the help of many persons: the members of the Anjuman-e Imamia and the lmamia Youth Federation Leh, especially Ghulam Haider Stalampa, Shaikh Mirza Husain, and Akbar Ali; the members of the Anjuman-e Mu'in-e Islam, especially Muhammad Shafi Vakil; Nasir Muhammad, proprietor of Fantasy Travel; Fidai Husain, proprietor of the Yak Tail Hotel; Tashi Rabgias of the Ladakh Ecological Development Group; Shaikh Ghulam Hadi of the Phyang Matam-Serai; Shaikh Muhammad Ali Zubdavi of Thikse village; and in Chushot, Seyyed Naqi Shah, principal of the lmamia Mission School. In Kargil, Shaikh Anwar Husain Sharaf al-Oin, of the Imam Khomeini Memo­rial Trust, guided me through the fa twas of the Iranian clerical hierarchy. V. K. Singh, lAS, Senior Superintendent of Police, Leh, provided me a memo­rable dinner in the barracks behind the main bazaar. And members of the International Association for Ladakh Studies offered information, sugges­tions, and practical help at numerous points: especially Martijn van Beek, Nicola Grist, Mick Khoo, and Abd al-Ghani Shaikh.

Closer to home, I received encouragement and support from many friends and mentors, especially Wilma Heston and William Hanaway of the University of Pennsylvania, and Michael Peletz of Colgate University. Mary Hegland, the author of groundbreaking and insightful studies on Shia women's rituals in Pakistan, has been an inspiration and a generous source of ideas. My thanks to them all. I am also grateful to Phil Erskine of Information Technology Services at Santa Clara University, who handled last-minute difficulties involving formatting and other issues of computer recalcitrance.

Since 1990 I have taught courses on the Shia tradition in several Gettings, at Colgate University (in upstate New York), the University of Pennsylvania (in Philadelphia), Loyola University (in Chicago), and Santa

xii Horse of Karbala

Clara University (in California). !learned more about Shia Islam each time that I taught the subject, thanks in large part to my students, who offered insightful comments and challenging discussions in the classroom. I acknowledge with gratitude their contribution. In particular I thank my student Huda Al-Marashi from Santa Clara University, who generously arranged for me to give a presentation in December 1997 to the Shia congregation at the As-Sadiq Foundation and the City of Knowledge School in Pomona, California.

Portions of several chapters appeared in preliminary form in various publications. Part of chapter two was published in The Muslim World 87 ( 1997), 235-57. Part of chapter seven was originally published in Martijn van Beek, Kristoffer Brix Bertelsen, and Poul Pedersen, eds., Ladakh: Culture, History and Development Between Himalaya and Karakoram (Recent Research on Ladakh, 8 ), Aarhus, Oxford, Oakville, CT: Aarhus University Press and New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1999; reprinted by permission of Aarhus University Press. Part of chapter eight was published in the journal History of Religions 38 ( 1999), 285-305; copyright 1999 by The University of Chicago, all rights reserved. And part of chapter nine first appeared in Ladakh Studies 12 ( 1999), 21-30. I thank all of these publishers for their permission to make use of this material.

Numerous sources funded my repeated trips to India. I acknowledge the generous support of the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Academy of Religion, as well as the Internal Grants program at Loyola University, Chicago. In particular I thank Santa Clara University's College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Religious Studies for the ongoing support they have given me in the form of both encouragement and grants for travel and research.

My biggest thanks, however, are reserved for my wife, Jody Rubin Pinault, who accompanied me on two trips to India and who saw me through all the difficult patches in the making of this book. Some men are lucky in their partners. I know I am.

Santa Clara August 2000

Illustrations

NB: All photographs are by the author.

1. Cover of the poetry chapbook of the Anjuman-e Ma'sumeen (The Association of the Immaculate Ones)

2. Cover of the poetry chapbook of the Parwaneh-ye Shabbir (The Moths of Husain)

3. Chapbook cover of a collection of Shia lamentation verses by the poet Ali )avid Maqsud

4. Shia poster art: map of Karbala

5. Shia poster art: a legend of Karbala

6. Shia poster art: the Horse of Karbala

7. Shia poster art: the Horse of Karbala

8. Lighting of candles before tazia

9. Drummers awaiting start of tazia procession

10. Girls carrying tazia in nighttime procession

11. Zuljenah, the Horse of Karbala

12. Mourners striking themselves in lamentation during the Horse of Karbala procession

13. Horse of Karbala procession

14. Votive wall-hanging

15. Votivewall-hanging

16. Votive wall-hanging

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1. Cover of the poetry chapbook of the Anjuman-e Ma'sumeen (The Association of the Immaculate Ones), purchased in Hyderabad, India, 1989. Within the medallion is a talismanic panje (protective hand) surrounded by the names of the "Fourteen Immaculate Ones": the Prophet Muhammad, his daughter Fatima, and the twelve Imams.

2. Cover of the poetry chapbook of the Parwaneh-ye Shabbir (The Moths of Husain). Illustration shows moths circling a candle flame. Purchased in Hyderabad, 1989.

3. Chapbook cover of a collection of Shia lamentation verses by the poet Ali]avidMaqsud. Purchased in Hyderabad, 1989.

4. Shia poster art: map of Karbala. On the left, Husain's riderless horse; on the right,

the Euphrates River and the water flask of Abbas. Note the arrow-pierced roses

symbolizing Husain and the other Karbala martyrs. Purchased in Delhi, 1991.

5. Shia poster art: a legend of Karbala. On the right, the martyrs' tents in flames. On the left, two doves, which are said to have dipped their wings in Husain's blood. Thereafter they flew over the city of Medinah. The blood dripping from their wings announced the

Imam's death. Purchased in Delhi, 1989.

6. Shia poster art: the Horse of Karbala. Zuljenah, the Imam Husain's white stallion, is shown

arrow-pierced on the battlefield. The text reads, "Hail, Husain, Martyr of Karbala." In the upper

right, in both Arabic and Urdu, is a hadith or saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad:

"Husain proceeds from me, and l proceed from Husain." Purchased in Delhi, 1989.

7. Shia poster art: the Horse of Karbala. The text in the upper right corner reads, "Zuljenah, the Winged One, of Lord Imam Husain." Note the mountains and domed pavilions in background. Purchased in Delhi, 1991.

8. Lighting of candles before tazia. Darjeeling, Muharram 1995.

9. Drummers awaiting start of tazia procession. Tazias are representations of the tombs of the martyred Imams. Darjeeling, Muharram 1995.

10. Girls carrying tazia in nighttime procession. Darjeeling, Muharram 1995.

11. Zuljenah, the Horse of Karbala, being led through the streets of Leh township, Ladakh, in a Muharram procession. Day of Ashura, 1996.

12. Mourners striking themselves in lamentation during the Horse of Karbala procession. Leh township, Ladakh, 1996.

13. Horse of Karbala procession. Note peacock feathers adorning Zuljenah, as well as tethered doves, Qur'an atop saddle, and turban stained red to represent Husain's blood. Leh township, Ladakh, Day of Ashura, 1996.

14. Votive wall-hanging. Top center, the Euphrates River and the desert sun of Karbala, flanked by two figures on horseback. To the right, Husain holding his infant son Ali Asghar; to the left, Husain's bodyguard and half-brother Abbas. The text at the bottom identifies the donor as "the pilgrim Ya'qub Walad Safar Ali." Photographed at the Shia matam-serai (lamentation shrine) of Phyang village, Leh district, Ladakh, May 1996.

15. Votive wall-hanging. On the right, the arrow-pierced Horse of Karbala; to the left, the severed arm of Abbas. The text within the circlet of flowers reads, "Hail, Abu ai-Fadl ai-Abbas." In the upper right corner is a Persian text: "The afternoon of Ashura at Karbala." Within the cartouche is the donor's name, "The pilgrim Akhun Mirza Mehdi, of Chushot." Beneath this IS stitched the date 13-7-97. Displayed at the matam-serai of Chushot Yoghma, Leh district, Ladakh, on the "Day of the Lion," August 8, 1999.

16. Votive wall-hanging. On the right, Zuljenah, the Horse of Karbala1 on the left, the severed arm of Abbas and the water flask he carried in his attempt to bring water from the Euphrates to the Imam Husain's children. In the center, above the chainmail headdres~, is the phrase, "Hail, Abu al-Fadl [al-Abbas]." The donor, Azima Bano, is the president of the Women's Welfare Society of Chushot Yoghma. Displayed at Chushot Yoghma's matam­erai on the "Day of the Lion," August 8, 1999.