Sufi Martyrs of Love: Chishti Sufism in South Asia and Beyond (review)

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1 Sufi Martyrs of Love: Chishti Sufism in South Asia and Beyond (review) Amina M. Steinfels Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 74, Number 1, March 2006, pp (Review) Published by Oxford University Press For additional information about this article No institutional affiliation (14 Jun :04 GMT)

2 266 Journal of the American Academy of Religion petitioning mercy, protection, and power... Sacred songs are densely layered artifacts, gathering additional meanings over time (3). Thus Stowe examines such areas as early American Psalmody, the hymnody of Methodists, the compositions of William Billings, the worship music of the Moravians, Ephrata Cloister, Shakers, Mormons, the Gospel hymns of Sankey and Bliss, the Spirituals of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and the African-American Black Gospel of the twentieth century. But Stowe moves beyond familiar Christian parameters to include discussions of the religious music of Native Americans, American Buddhists (in a very interesting chapter titled: Onward Buddhist Soldiers ), and Jewish immigrants. As his book progresses, his field of view becomes ever broader, embracing the religious overtones of various aspects of jazz, such as the famous movie, The Jazz Singer, Duke Ellington s theological symphonic jazz, the music of Herman Poole Blount (under the pseudonym Sun Ra), inspired by ancient Egyptian religion, and the religious jazz of John Coltrane as well as the protest songs of the 1960s, which are linked to the camp meeting hymnody of the early nineteenth century. In his discussions Stowe concentrates on the cultural, political, religious, and social contexts rather than on the character of the music, and tends to talk about the concepts that are expressed in the texts rather than the musical expression of those texts. As he explains in a final note ( ), his method is essentially that of the ethnomusicologist, building on the disciplines of folklore studies and anthropology, among others. The resulting book is therefore a study in phenomenology, a sequence of descriptions of various aspects of religious music in American experience. In the process, the author is sometimes drawn into overstatement or superficial assessment, but in the main has presented a manyfaceted ontology of American religious music that is not easily found elsewhere. The material in these three books significantly assists the task of fitting the historic and cultural pieces together, but the jigsaw puzzle of American religious music in general, and American hymnody in particular, is far from complete: though the edges and corners are mostly in place, we still have to discover more of the pieces. doi: /jaarel/lfj049 Advance Access publication January 10, 2006 Robin A. Leaver Westminster Choir College of Rider University Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and Beyond. By Carl W. Ernst and Bruce B. Lawrence. Palgrave, pages. $ Islam in South Asia has been deeply marked by the mystical and devotional tradition of Sufism, particularly by the Chishti Order, the most widespread and influential Sufi order in the region and the one with the deepest identification with the Indian subcontinent. In this book, Carl Ernst and Bruce Lawrence have

3 Book Reviews 267 collaborated to bring their decades of scholarship on the Chishtiyya to a new height. Sufi Martyrs of Love is an appreciation of a centuries-old spiritual journey (2), bringing to light heretofore untapped texts and figures as well as synthesizing and assessing previous scholarship. The central endeavor of this work is to break away from what the authors see as problematic models of historical scholarship on Sufism. In particular, they reject periodizations of Islam and Sufism which posit a tripartite scheme of Golden Age, decline, and revival. Such periodizations have led scholars to focus on supposedly foundational moments and individuals in the Chishti case, on the revered saints of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. As Ernst and Lawrence point out, this is precisely the time period most poorly documented by contemporary sources and most obscured by hagiographical legend. The authors reject the attempts of scholars such as P. M. Currie to winnow the few pellets of truth lying beneath all the accumulated dross of legend and superstition and of those like S. A. A. Rizvi who excavate and then array massive chunks of obscure information about little-known saints (48). Instead, Sufi Martyrs of Love provides a phenomenological description of the Chishti Order, its practices, and its patterns of mastery and hagiography, down to the present day, both within the Indian subcontinent and beyond. Before entering into the specificity of the Chishti Order, the authors provide an extremely helpful and elegant introduction to the Sufi dialectic of love and knowledge (14) and the quest for fana (annihilation) and baqa (restoration or permanence in God) pursued within the social institution of a Sufi order. The fundamental building blocks of the Sufi orders are the relationships between the disciples or seekers and their masters or guides on the mystic path. The lineages or spiritual genealogies constructed from the master disciple relationship connect the Sufi initiate to the earlier tradition and ultimately to the Prophet Muhammad, thus authenticating the practice of the Sufi order. Having laid out the general pattern of a Sufi order, Ernst and Lawrence turn to the practices that distinguish the Chishtiyya from other Sufi orders: their style of zikr (remembrance of the divine through repetition of his name) and especially their practice of sama. Much more distinctive than Chishti zikr was sama, the controversial practice of listening to music as a way to experience religious ecstasy. Though South Asian Sufi music, particularly the qawwali of the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, has found a worldwide audience, few scholars have adequately dealt with it as part of the Sufi tradition. Ernst and Lawrence s discussion of Chishti theorizing of sama is the most cogent explanation of the underlying philosophical issues in the debate over whether it is permissible and, if so, whether it is merely a step on the path or itself the ultimate mystical experience (34). While earlier Sufi theorists had debated the permissibility and efficacy of sama, the Chishtis adopted it to the extent that it became the marker that distinguished them from other Sufi orders, the preeminent symbol crystallizing their position (36). The authors show how Chishti thinkers used earlier statements on sama from the Sufi tradition to develop the idea that it is inextricably linked to the experience of empathetic ecstasy, itself a threshold experience incumbent on all Sufi aspirants (44).

4 268 Journal of the American Academy of Religion Chapters 3 to 5 of Sufi Martyrs of Love discuss the basic institutions of the Chishti order: the hagiographical tradition, patterns of sainthood, and the visitation of shrines. Though some of the general theoretical statements on these topics have been made elsewhere, often by the authors themselves, new examples of people, places, and texts are brought forward for examination here. Previously neglected minor figures are highlighted, and the discussions are brought up to date with material from the twentieth century. Thus, in the chapter on The Chishti Masters, the famous early saint Nizam ad-din Awliya (d. 1325) is compared to a relatively minor figure, Ashraf Jahangir Simnani (d. 1425), as well as to a modern master, Sayyid Zauqi Shah (d. 1951). Here and throughout these chapters, Ernst and Lawrence demonstrate the value of their alternative to the rhetoric of a Golden Age and subsequent decline and revival. The last two chapters of Sufi Martyrs of Love bring our knowledge of the Chishti order into the hitherto largely unexplored terrain of the modern period. During the nineteenth century, the two major Chishti lineages, the Sabiriyya Chishtiyya and the Nizamiyya Chishtiyya, continued and preserved the traditions of the order in the changed context of life under British rule. At the same time, they adapted to the new possibilities of modernity, particularly through their use of the technology of modern communications and the literary genres of modernity (126). Descriptions of South Asian Islam in the nineteenth century typically focus on the various reform movements whose ideas have since dominated elite Muslim discourse in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Ernst and Lawrence provide a valuable counterpoint to the facile assumption of a break between the reformers and the Sufi tradition in their discussion of one of the most well-known representatives of the Deobandi school, Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi (d. 1943), his place in the Chishti tradition, and his reformist interpretation of that tradition. To combat the rhetoric of decline and revival, Ernst and Lawrence strive to show the continuity of Chishti spiritual practices and models of sanctity. Though very effective, especially in illuminating the ways in which recent Chishtis, such as Zauqi Shah (d.1951), Wahid Bakhsh Sial (d. 1995), and Hazrat Inayat Khan (d. 1927), have adapted and carried on the tradition, this strategy sometimes appears to be pushing very different and individually fascinating characters into a single mold. It also occasionally leads to a certain defensiveness with regard to potentially negative aspects of Chishti history, such as Zauqi Shah s use of anti-hindu and anti-semitic polemic, or the political and economic entanglements of the major Chishti shrines and their caretakers. However much these ideals were compromised, nevertheless they remained ideals throughout. Some social historians tend to focus on the compromises. [...] The alternative is to point out the persistence of the ideals which is what the sources do and what we, too, will try to do (96). It seems to this reader that ideals are precisely most interesting in the ways in which they are compromised. One of the problems with any attempt to describe a single Sufi order is that it is not a discrete entity with clearly defined boundaries. As Ernst and Lawrence acknowledge, ideas and practices were held in common or adopted from other orders, and initiation into multiple orders was a common practice in certain

5 Book Reviews 269 periods. Some of the individuals who figure prominently in this book, such as Ashraf Jahangir Simnani and Shah Mina of Lucknow, though remembered primarily as Chishti saints, were initiated into multiple orders. There are also those who were initiated and initiated others into the Chishtiyya but are seen as belonging to other orders. The biographies of the early Chishti saints provided in the Appendix are largely drawn from the work of the Qadiri loyalist Abd al-haqq Muhaddith Dihlawi. Ashraf Ali Thanvi, discussed in chapter 6, Colonial Chishtis, is better known as a proponent of the Deobandi tradition of legalistic reform. Such figures pose a challenge to any simple understanding of a Chishti identity. While Sufi Martyrs of Love exposes the complexities of the Chishtiyya, one is still left wondering what it means to be affiliated to a particular Sufi order, or to venerate its saints, within the context of multiple, and often competing, Sufi and Islamic commitments. For further research into such questions, Ernst and Lawrence provide an invaluable resource in the two bibliographies appended to Sufi Martyrs of Love. The first is a comprehensive listing of scholarship and primary source translations in European languages. The second is a selective bibliography of sources in Persian and Urdu, ranging from thirteenth-century Sufi compositions to contemporary scholarship, and including both manuscript and printed materials. These bibliographies are in themselves sufficient to make Sufi Martyrs of Love an indispensable starting point for further study of the Chishti Order. doi: /jaarel/lfj050 Advance Access publication January 25, 2006 Amina M. Steinfels Mount Holyoke College When the Great Abyss Opened: Classic and Contemporary Readings of Noah s Flood. By J. David Pleins. Oxford University Press, pages. $ Pleins is a professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University. His specialty is Near Eastern literature and mythology. The biblical flood account is a fascinating story, and many similar stories are found in the ancient literature around the world. This fact has no bearing on the historicity of the story for Pleins, however. The power of the Flood story is not, in his view, derived from any necessary event. Rather, he reads the Genesis account as a myth that shaped Middle Eastern culture and that continued to frame human history throughout the centuries. Moreover, Pleins remains persuaded that the so-called documentary hypothesis is a valid analytical literary tool, despite the strong criticisms leveled against this hermeneutical methodology in recent years. In Genesis 1 3 the two supposed documentary accounts follow one after the other, but in the Genesis Flood story a surprising intertwining of the two very different J and P stories (which Pleins attempts to separate for us in an Appendix) seems to have been the supposed compiler s approach.