Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

Between Spirituality and Resistance: The Sufi Pilgrimage Town of Ajmer under British Rule

In March 1920, a three-day conference was convened at the dargah (shrine complex) for the Sufi saint Muinuddin Chishti (d. c.1230) in Ajmer in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan. More than 10,000 people attended, and various political speakers discussed the question of whether to support the Khilafat movement, which existed between 1919 and 1923 and opposed the removal of the Ottoman sultan. The British administration of Ajmer recorded such politically motivated activities in detail and, in light of the conference, deemed the shrine a ‘peculiarly fertile centre for political and religious propaganda’.1 These politically ambitious gatherings were observed and classified, and the details passed on to the India Office. A Sufi shrine as a centre of propaganda? How could this have happened?

Continue reading Between Spirituality and Resistance: The Sufi Pilgrimage Town of Ajmer under British Rule
  1. Continuation of Home Department telegram of 2 Feb. 1920, Political and Secret Department Records, IOR/L/PS/10/798, British Library. []

An Intellectual Sufi between Empires: Muhammad Tawfīq al-Bakrī (1870–1932)

Public performance of the dawsa, a traditional Sufi ritual, was an inseparable part of the traditional mawlid festival1 held every year in Cairo. Mainly affiliated with and performed by the Saʿdiyya Sufi order, the ritual had several phases. The most striking part of the ritual was when the Shaykh of the Saʿdiyya Sufi order rode his stallion, on his way to his tent, over the backs of hundreds of dervishes (disciples) lying face-down in the streets of Cairo. According to some historical accounts, the Shaykh (Master) was also accompanied by other dervishes who performed various ‘radical’ practices such as piercing their bodies, eating broken glass, or swallowing burning coals.2

Continue reading An Intellectual Sufi between Empires: Muhammad Tawfīq al-Bakrī (1870–1932)
  1. The celebration of the birthday of the Prophet Muḥammad. []
  2. Frederick de Jong, Ṭuruq and Ṭuruq-Linked Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Egypt: A Historical Study in Organizational Dimensions of Islamic Mysticism (Leiden, 1978), 91. []