Indian Sufism since the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

Based on his doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of London, the present book is a wonderful study of the Sufis ofAurangabad (and, more generally, in the Deccan realms of Hyderabad’s Nizams) and their consequent legacy in independent India. Green builds upon earlier research on the Muslim Deccan undertaken by Carl Ernst (Sufism at Khuldabad, which is adjacent to Aurangabad) and Richard Eaton (Sufis of Bijapur) and brings to the fore insights from religious studies on the nature of holy men and their interaction with politics, words, and worlds. The Deccan has a rich Muslim heritage: Persianate from the fourteenth century and then dominated by the Mughals and their successor states from the end of the seventeenth century. This heritage also accounts for the significance of Sufis and their shrines in the region: theAurangabad shrines are an important facet of this landscape, and this book is a welcome introduction to them. Green also furthers the theoretical position of Ernst and Eaton: the centrality of the cult of saints for Sufism means that the studies should focus on shrines as “realms of the saint.” Sufism is thus not merely about masters and disciples or obscure and metaphysical arguments about gnosis, enlightenment and themarvellous; rather, it concerns sacred spaces and geographies of spiritual vitality and currency centered on the saints’ shrines. Starting fromAurangzeb’s conquest of the Deccan and establishment of his capital at Aurangabad (the former Khirki of the Nizam Shahs) and following through to the legacy of the Panchakki shrine in the 1990s, Green’s work comprises five chapters that weave together an incisive textual analysis of Persian and Urdu sources, readings of architecture as repositories of Sufi text, and fieldwork among Aurangabad’s Sufis ...