Indian Historical Review 2007 Chanana 324 7

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DOI: 10.1177/037698360703400122

2007 34: 324Indian Historical ReviewPriyanka Chanana

The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices of Pakistan and India

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324 The Indian Historical Review1749. After this, the Mughal Empire lost all its credibility and the majorparts of Rajputana were occupied by the Rajput chiefs. Thus the Mughalauthority disappeared from Rajasthan. With this, the author successfullyproves his point that the policy of the Mughal emperors towards theRathors was imprudent and resorted to only in circumstances of urgencyor expediency .

Overall, Sangwan has presented a very coherent picture about therelations of the Rathor chiefs and the Mughal emperors and the prevalentfactionalism at the Mughal court in the first halfof the eighteenth century.However, in his conclusion, he writes about the changes in the Rathorsociety, which are not the part of his study. Besides this overstepping,the book regrettably suffers from numerous printing errors, which couldhave been avoided.

Still the book is well-printed and would be useful for the researchersand students who are interested in the history of later Mughals and theRajputs rulers of Rajasthan.ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITYALIGARH

B.L. H D NI

SHEMEEM URN Y ABBAS, The Female oice in Sufi Ritual evotionalPractices Pakistan and India Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2003).Pp. xxx 209. s 595.00.In the past few years there has been an attempt to restore the voices ofwomen. The present work is an important contribution towards thisdirection. The work comes up as an important challenge to Westernscholarship that describes Islam as a male religion. The Female oice Sufi Ritual contributes to the field of Islam and Sufism in generaland gender studies in particular. In fact, this is a first attempt of itskind ever made. Abbas challenges the Western scholarship, which statesthat no women are observed in the mosques for prayers and that femaleparticipation is lacking during the major religious feasts, by showingnot only the presence of women but also the contributions made bywomen in the Sufi practice of sama Sufism, though based on the Quranicideals, offered a platform where women did have an important role toplay. Abbas book is an attempt to bring a more nuanced understandingof Islam and women s place within it.

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Reviews ooks 325Since Sufism was tolerant towards religion, colour, caste and gender,

Abbas attempts here to bring out the embedded voices o women withinit. She suggests that the important spheres o religious and spiritualinvolvement for the women are the Sufi shrines. Abbas s study is alinguistic and anthropological research o discourse and poetry indevotional settings. Since earlier studies o Islam were based on textualevidence, she adds a new dimension to it by her extensive groundresearch and fieldwork in various Sufi shrines. Abbas attempts here totake her studies away from the mosque as the centre o all Islamicactivities, and instead focuses on the alternative sites o religiouspractices, that is, the Sufi shrines, melas concerts, etc. The text hasbeen an attempt to make the silent voices audible, that is, the femalevoices, which form an important aspect o the Sufi practice o s mwhere both men and women participate in the rituals equally.

Her work largely involves documentation o the performances andinterviewing the renowned singers o Sufi poetry. She thereby traces theso-called voice o women in such discourses. Besides this, she alsodocuments the active participation o women in the support services inthe shrines. The Sufi shrines not only fulfilled the devotional needs othe people who visited them but also provided an outl t from the choreso daily life. The study is largely centred on the oral culture o thesubcontinent. The effort has largely been to bring out the voice o thewomen by references to the mystic veil, to women s work like grinding,husking, sewing, weaving, etc., and also by references to the myths othe female lovers like Hir, Sassi, Layla, Mira Bai and many more. Bysinging in voices, where the narrator is a woman, the poets are able toreach the masses that are generally illiterate. Abbas beautifully attemptsto document the Sufi poetry and especially what the Sufis sang aboutgender, class, caste and colour and how the discourse challenged thepatriarchy through the device o the female speaker. Thus, Abbas claimsthat by using the female voice, the musicians express humility andsurrender to a spiritual force p. 143).

Abbas claims that the work is the result o extensive research basedon the archival materials that were a comprehensive collection o themultimedia resources from Pakistan, India, United Kingdom, France, UnitedStates and Canada from where Abbas found early examples o the women sroles as participants and performers in the Sufi rituals. To this was lateradded the ground research. By this way, The Female oi e in Sufi Ritual



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326 The Indian Historical Reviewis the first work of its kind focusing on the religious expression of women.But if one looks at the text historically, it tends to loose ground. Herunderstanding of the archives is quite different from that of a historian.She also makes no note of the grants given to the women.

Another interesting aspect is the difference between qawwali and thesufiana kalam traditions, which Abbas brings out in the text. She suggeststhat qawwali is largely a male domain and requires rigorous trainingand that in sufiana kalam females are also involved. During the fourteenthand the fifteenth centuries, the sufiana kalam traditions, appeared inSufism, in which poetry written in vernaculars was used by the Sufipoets. Abbas justifies that, as this model was an indigenous one thatrequired minimal musical skills and resources, women s input in singingthis poetry was visible.

It is apparent that the present work is that o f an anthropologist andthus lacks the insights of a historian. It appears th at Abbas fails to tracethe history of this female voice . As such, the very understanding ofthe concept of female voice lacks explanation on its vertical historical)dimension of origin and growth, though its presence is brought forth. Itis also not clear as to what kind of female voice Abbas is trying totrace. Is it the suppressed voice of the grievances of women against theexisting social and economic order? Or, is it the voice o f the femalesingers o f Sufi poetry, which is generally not written or talked abo ut toavoid shame on the part of their families? Or, it the voice of thedisciple as the lover who sings or expresses her love s a female lovertowards the beloved, who is the murshid a spiritual mentor, or Prophet,who is a male?

Apart from this, the text appears to be too repetitive. It appears asif Abbas has been making a continuous effort to counter and clear theWestern misconceptions by stressing on certain things. In a way, thework large ly a pp ea rs to be an answer to the Western scholarlyunderstanding about the position of women within Islam. But the veryclaim by the author of h erse lf being a native itself gives rise to manyquestions. She herself has not been able to come out o f that colonialhangover by addressing h erse lf as native

Further, if- one is trying to study women in Sufism, one cannot doso without significantly mentioning the contributions ma de by Rabi aal - A dawi yy a towards the development of the mystical path and her



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Reviews Books 327position within Sufism. She was the image of piety and her name standsprominent when one discusses women in Sufism. Abbas does mentionRabi a and the famous work by Margaret Smith on Rabi a, but only inpassing without significantly pointing to the contributions she made andthe esteemed position she holds within Sufi circles. Rabi a s voice is aprominent female voice, which needs to be significantly acknowledged.Abbas also does not seem to have referred to any of the Sufi tazkiratsand malfuzats where many references to prominent women in Sufism,who were moral binding forces, have been made. No mention is madeabout Bibi Zulaikha, the mother of Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya, who wasvery pious and an important voice contributing in the moral and spiritualdevelopment of her son. Without bringing out the contributions by womenlike these, one cannot wholly locate the female voice in the Sufi ritual.

In spite of this, the work is worth appreciation, as it not only addsto the body of scholarship on Sufi Islam, but also significantly adds tothe work on women and religion. It provides a platform on which furtherstudies can be taken up.UNIVERSITY OF DELHI PRIY NK H N N

SHIVN TH Jammu Miscellany Kashmir Times Publications, Jammu, 2005).Pp. 155. Rs 250.00.This somewhat unusual book is a biographical profile of the state ofJammu. The book is by no means a consistently historical work, a taskthat has been fulfilled by other historians such as L.N. Dhar, Mohan Lal auland many others who have written the history of Jammu andKashmir. As a native of Jammu and a scholar-poet of Dogri, Shivnathhas written an account of what is embedded deeply in the cultural fabricof the region, enmeshing facets of its history, folklore and literature.

The first chapter is titled Jammu in Recorded History . It is basedon Persian texts like the Tarikh i Ferishta written in the sixteenth century,the Malfuzat e Timuri or the later-day Persian chronicle MukhtasarTaarikhe Jammu va Ryaasat haai maftooha Maharaja Gulab SinghBahadur by Maulavi Hashmat Ullah Khan Lakhnavi, as well as Dogrihistories. The first historical mention of Jammu is in the Malfuzat e-Timuri which refers to the defeat of its ruler Maldev in the fourteenthcentury by Timur.


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Indian Historical Review 2007 Chanana 324 7