Mystical missionaries in Hyderabad State: Mu‚n All h Sh h

Mu��n All�h Sh�h and his Sufi reform movement / 187

Mystical missionaries in Hyderabad State:Mu� n All h Sh h and his Sufireform movement

Nile Green

Department of Religion and TheologyFaculty of TheologyOxford

This article discusses the emergence of a Sufi-inspired movement of Muslim reform in theprincely state of Hyderabad during the first half of the twentieth century. Attention is paidto the polemical religious context in which the movement arose, using archival material todiscuss the activities of Christian missionaries in the city in which it first emerged. Locatedin Aurangabad, away from the capital of the Nizam�s State, the history of the rise of Mu��nAll�h Sh�h�s Sufi organisation shows the ways in which pan-Indian religious disputes anddevelopments in Indian Islam were reflected in the provinces of princely India. The modernistcharacter of Mu��n All�h�s Sufi teachings is reconstructed and discussed in detail. Preachinga return to the core tenets of Islam in the villages of Hyderabad, Mu��n All�h and his successorHam�d �Al� nonetheless envisioned this minimalism as central to the mystical rediscovery ofthe pure and unadulterated self. However, since the movement was closely connected to theexpansion of the textile industry in Aurangabad, attention is also paid to its relationshipwith the social and religious effects of industrialisation in a provincial context.

Introduction

Until the latter part of the eighteenth century, many Indian Muslims took thepolitical power of Islam in South Asia for granted, the security of Islam beinglargely beyond question due to the power of the states commanded by Muslims,whether the Mughal empire itself or its vibrant successors. Islam was in manyrespects a less prominent frame of reference in constructions of personal, classand state identity than participation in the education, manners and etiquette ofIndo-Muslim high culture. However, as British power gradually effaced that of

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the Indo-Muslim states which had flourished for centuries, the fate of Islam cameto appear increasingly as being under threat. The subsequent efforts of such Sufischolars as Sh�h �Abd al-�Az�z (d.1239 [1824]) in Delhi to erect intellectual andsocial defence mechanisms to protect Islam in South Asia have been well docu-mented.1 Despite the virulent antipathy towards Sufism, and Sufi shrines in par-ticular, that some of its offshoots would later develop, this widespread and trans-regional movement of an �Islamic revival� had many of its roots in Sufi foundationsin South Asia.2

By the late nineteenth century, the perception of a need to defend Islam hadalso reached the administration of the princely state of Hyderabad, where Britishinfluence had gradually increased since the signing of the Preliminary Treaty in1213 [1798]. During the reign of Mahb�b �Al� Kh�n (1285 [1869]�1329 [1911]),the official character of the state became increasingly Muslim as the prestige andpurpose of Mughal culture slipped further into the past.3 New administrative bodieswere formed to oversee the religious life of Hyderabad�s Muslims, while otherorganisations aimed to propagate Islam among the lower castes and classes of thestate. During Mahb�b �Al� Kh�n�s reign, official emphasis on the Islamic characterof the state began to have a detrimental effect on the relationship between Hindusand Muslims. A number of new laws and regulations made their contribution tothe mass of legalistic and administrative declarations that served increasingly toseparate Hindu and Muslim forms of religious expression.4 Under Mahb�b �Al�Kh�n, laws were also passed to regulate the celebration of Hindu festivals, espe-cially when they coincided with Muslim ones as during the coincidence of Dussehraand Muharram in 1885.5 Given the long history of the common celebration of the10th day of Muharram by Hindus and Muslims in the Deccan, such policies wereof great and incremental significance.

While the broad outlines of these developments are well-documented with regardto the Nizams� capital at Hyderabad, the history and contexts of Muslim revivalismin the provinces of the state remain largely unknown. This article therefore focuseson the evolution of a provincial Muslim revivalist movement in Aurangabad�the second city of Hyderabad State�that upheld the Sufi character of other earlyreformist groups. Given the often reactive character of both Muslim and Hindureform movements at this time, and their clear parallels with and in some casesantecedents in Christian missionary organisations, attention is also paid to thepresence of British missions in this north-western corner of Hyderabad State duringthe same period.6

Alongside growing British political interest in religious activity in HyderabadState, this period saw the introduction to Aurangabad of European missionaries

1 Rizvi, Shah �Abd al-�Aziz.2 Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India and Sanyal, Devotional Islam and Politics.3 Kate, Marathwada under the Nizams and Schwerin, Indirekte Herrschaft.4 Copland, ��Communalism� in Princely India�.5 Kate, Marathwada under the Nizams, pp. 244�46.6 Cf. Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements.




intent on bringing the benefits of civilisation to the Nizam�s State through theconversion of Muslims to Christianity.7 While these missions were far from suc-cessful, the papers of the main missionary to the city, Reverend Henry Smith (laterLane-Smith), provide an unusual perspective on the religious life of Aurangabadin the early twentieth century.8 The Marathi-speaking regions of western Indiahad become important centres of British missionary activity during the secondhalf of the nineteenth century due to their proximity to Bombay. Many of thesemissions were organised and financed under the aegis of the Church MissionarySociety (CMS), founded in London in 1799. In 1859, a branch of the Society wasfounded in Bombay and from here a number of sub-branches spread into thetowns of western India that were under Bombay�s political control. While in termsof conversions the most successful missionary work was to be had in Hindu ortribal environments, the antipathy towards Muslims in British India after the GreatRevolt of 1857 led to the foundation of missions directed especially towardsMuslims, and a �Muhammadan Mission� was founded for this purpose in Bombay.However, since Aurangabad was part of Hyderabad State, any Christian institutionsfounded in its British-controlled cantonment district fell under the jurisdiction ofthe Madras diocese. Nonetheless, the relative proximity of Bombay meant that itwas through the efforts of the CMS�s Western India Mission that the first Britishmissionaries arrived in Aurangabad.

Reverend Henry Smith�s letters and other records are a useful source in recon-structing the religious history of Aurangabad at the turn of the twentieth century,for they provide a sharp insight into the relationship between the Muslims ofAurangabad and the British presence in the city. Smith moved from Bombay toAurangabad in 1902 in order to found a mission in the city�s cantonment district,which had been established in the previous century to station the British officersand Indian soldiers of the Hyderabad Contingent. Since several CMS missionswere already active in the Marathi-speaking countryside, Smith aimed to bringChristianity to the Muslims of the city. Despite having studied Urdu for this purpose,he soon became disheartened by the lack of prospects of success that Aurangabadoffered, and by the considerate but pessimistic advice he received from itsHyderabadi administrators. While, as throughout the territories of Hyderabad,British authority in Aurangabad was reaching its zenith during this period, thefact that the city remained apart from British India lent it a meaningful measureof independence and distance from British influence. On numerous occasions,Smith was told by state officials that preaching in Aurangabad�s old city wouldlead to great trouble; he and his helpers subsequently avoided the main urbancentre of the city, with its high Muslim population, for �fear of molestation�.9

7 For a more upbeat account of the earlier history of missionary activity in western India, as partof which Aurangabad was counted for missionary purposes, see David, Missions.

8 Papers of Rev. Henry Lane-Smith (1901�38). Church Missionary Society (CMS) Collection,Unofficial Papers, Acc. 33. Special Collections Department, Birmingham University Library, UK.

9 Quarterly Letter, 14 July 1904, in Lane-Smith, CMS Collection, file Z2, Urdu Mission Records,Aurangabad (1903�17); J.P. Butlin, �Muhammadan Work in Aurangabad�, in Bombay MuhammadanMission News (29 Nov. 1902). Copy filed in Lane-Smith, CMS Collection, file Z1.



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Such advice in fact echoed the earlier policies of the great Hyderabadi statesmanSir Salar Jung (d.1300 [1883]), which were aimed at minimising British contactwith the people of Hyderabad State. As such, the same prohibition on entry to theold city was also enforced upon Britons resident in the city of Hyderabad forthe same official reason of their own safety.10 Smith�s British co-residents inAurangabad�s cantonment further discouraged him. In 1907, he wrote that �lessthan ten years ago, I am told, the City was so full of Moslem fanaticism and bigotrythat it was unsafe for an unprotected European to venture in�.11

�Fanaticism� and �bigotry� seem in retrospect to have been an unconscious cipherfor a refusal to accept the superiority of Christianity, for by 1907 Smith had stillnot successfully converted a single Muslim resident of Aurangabad. In his officialletters he was keen to blame this on the �bigotry� and �fanaticism� which he singledout as the prime characteristics of the city�s Muslims, though he also admittedthat language problems meant that he tended to be beaten in public disputationsby Muslim preachers. Smith persevered in his work and his unofficial ban fromthe walled old city encouraged him to adopt the methods he had seen used inBombay of addressing crowds at public gatherings. Subsequently, he and hissmall group of Anglo-Indian helpers focused their efforts on the weekly marketin the cantonment and on the shrines of the city�s Sufi saints. Smith�s colleagueMrs Woods thus reported with pride on how she had managed to secretly preachthe Gospel to a group of women resident in the zan�na of an unnamed Muslimshrine (�dargáh�) in Aurangabad.12 However, their efforts met with little successat the shrines as well, as we see from Smith�s own description of a preaching tourto the nearby shrine-town of Khuldabad in 1909.

We found the people, nearly all Muhammadans, very bigoted and they refusedto hear us, or even to read tracts. One reason for their bigotry is the fact that thetown contains a number of tombs and shrines of famous [Muslim] kings andsaints, and the people of the town, most of whom are attendants at the shrines,live on the extensive endowments of them.13

If we read Smith�s picture of Muslim �bigotry� as a simple determination by theregion�s Muslims to maintain their own faith, then his report carries a suggestionof the role played by Sufi institutions in cultural resistance to British colonialism.Yet Smith also encountered other forms of religious resistance that were indicative

10 Leonard, �Hyderabad�, p. 70.11 Quarterly Letter (25 Mar. 1907). Copy filed in Lane-Smith, CMS Collection, file Z2.12 L. Woods, �Report on the Zanana Mission�, Aurangabad Urdu Mission Annual Report (1910).

Copy filed in Lane-Smith, CMS Collection, file Z2. This use of women missionaries was in fact anexplicit policy of the CMS and other missionary organisations in India. See Williams, �The MissingLink�.

13 Aurangabad Urdu Mission Annual Report (1909), p. 3. Copy filed in Lane-Smith, CMSCollection, file Z2.




of the wider pattern of religious renewal seen in Hyderabad State at this time. InAurangabad, Smith found his Christian message in competition with a variety ofother missions addressed to a Muslim audience, which included the followers ofthe Punjabi visionary M�rz� Ghul�m Ahmad (d.1326 [1908]) from both its Lahoriand Qadiyani branches.14 In 1918, Smith reckoned the proponents of this messianiccolonial offshoot of mystical Islam to be among his chief competitors for thesouls of Aurangabad�s Muslims, though his letters also show how Muslims haddeveloped other responses to the impact of colonisation, and of Christian mis-sionary activity in particular. Writing in 1912, Smith complained that Islam wasitself now being promoted with a �vigorous propaganda� throughout the HyderabadDeccan, while almost all of Aurangabad�s mosques had formulated a response tothe educational and pamphleteering activities of the missionaries by openingschools of their own and posting notice boards beside their main entrances.15 Inthe same year, Smith also detected raucous echoes of Britain�s wider internationalactivities when the number of Muslim boys attending the mission schools inAurangabad suddenly declined, as rumours spread among their parents thatBritain�s role in the Balkan war was being carried out in no less a missionaryspirit than the work of Henry Smith among their own children.16

Eventually, both Smith and his sponsors tired of their lack of success inAurangabad and in 1918 the mission was relocated first to Nasik and then toBombay later the same year, after which time the efforts of the CMS to convertthe Muslims of Aurangabad almost died out. By the late 1920s, the only Britishmissionaries left in the city were Reverend W.H. Bishop and his wife, who in1928 toured a number of parishes in Britain to gather support for their work.When the help of the Worcestershire parish of The Littletons was enlisted, a scrap-book on Aurangabad was prepared for the parishioners in the British Midlands,describing Aurangabad�s inhabitants and the preaching and singing of the mis-sionaries in its bazaars.17 But while the Bishops still tried to sell their scriptureportions to the city�s Muslims, by the end of the 1920s, the mission had come tofocus mainly on Dalits. Far from achieving the success that they had envisaged,Aurangabad�s British missionaries had, conversely, contributed only to Hyderabad�sgrowing Muslim paranoia. Their very presence in Aurangabad demanded a home-grown Muslim alternative, of which there were several versions preparing to fitthe bill.

14 Letter from the Rev. H.J. Lane-Smith (Mar. 1918), in Lane-Smith, CMS Collection, file Z2.On such missionary competition in colonial South Asia, see also Copley, Religions in Conflict andPowell, Muslims and Missionaries.

15 Annual Letter (30 Sept. 1912), in Lane-Smith, CMS Collection, file Z2.16 Aurangabad Urdu Mission Annual Report (1912). Copy filed in Lane-Smith, CMS Collection,

file Z2.17 Anon. [1926] �Notes about Aurangabad in Western India, Compiled for a Missionary Venture

Undertaken by The Littletons�. Unpublished manuscript, Worcestershire County Records Office,UK. Ref. 850, The Littletons/11/1/1�22.



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With the death of Niz�m Mahb�b �Al� Kh�n in 1329 [1911], missionary zeal ofvarious kinds gathered a momentum in Hyderabad that became increasingly dif-ficult to resist. Along with the wider sense of the disenfranchisement of Islam incolonial South Asia, Christian as well as Hindu missionary activity contributed tothe determination of many of the advisors of Niz�m �Usm�n �Al� Kh�n (r. 1329[1911]�1368 [1948]), including the prominent figure Bah�dur Y�r Jang (d.1363/1944), to actively engage in the promotion of Islam�albeit of a modernist andreformist kind�throughout the Nizam�s domains. In 1344 [1926], for example,the Majlis-e-ittih�d al-muslim�n (Council for Muslim Unity) was founded inHyderabad with the blessings of Usm�n �Al� Kh�n.18 The express aim of this or-ganisation was to promote Muslim unity in Hyderabad, though like all calls tounity this effectively meant the promulgation of a particular kind of Muslim religi-osity. Alongside what may be broadly termed an Arabising and scripturalist ap-proach to Islam, the Majlis also seems to have briefly sought to reduce the massiveHindu majority in the state through large-scale conversion to Islam. The activitiespromoted by the Majlis came to reflect the tactics of the Christian missionarieswho were active throughout the state. Religious instructors (mawlw�s) arrangedregular lectures on Islam in the towns, while also promoting the faith among thelow-caste and outcaste Hindus in the countryside where Hinduism of one form oranother massively predominated. For its part, the Religious Department (Niz�mat-e-�um�r-e-mazhab�) of the state appointed teachers of Islam to tour villages inorder to guide new or old Muslim communities and instruct them on the �correct�way to observe the faith. These lessons included the basics of formal worship(sal�t) and fasting (sawm), as well as efforts to instil knowledge of the Quran.

Such efforts to augment and reshape the piety of South Asia�s Muslims were,of course, being reflected at the same time in better-known movements elsewherein South Asia. While some of these movements had a profound antipathy towardsthe popular traditions of Sufi piety, others�like the Bar lw� movement foundedfrom the 1880s onwards and the Tabl�gh� Jam��at founded by Muhammad Ily�s(d.1363 [1944]) near the Sufi shrine of Niz�m al-d�n Awliy� in Delhi in 1344[1926]�had a much closer relationship with the Sufi traditions of South Asia.19

What united all of these movements, however, was a suspicion of the ignoranceand religious instincts of the common man, leading them all to promote changeor reform of one kind or another. As we see below, this pattern was also to becomea feature of one of the new Sufi traditions that emerged in Aurangabad at thebeginning of the twentieth century.

Mu��n All�h Sh�h: A Sufi Life in a Communalist Context

Around 1335 [1916], the Hyderabadi Sufi Mu��n All�h Sh�h arrived in Aurangabadto introduce a new Sufi tradition from the princely capital of Hyderabad into the

18 Kate, Marathwada under the Nizams, pp. 268�70.19 See Sanyal, Devotional Islam and Politics and Sikand, Origins and Development.




second city of the Nizam�s State. Mu��n All�h was a disciple of the HyderabadiSufi master Iftikh�r �Al� Sh�h Watan (d.1324 [1906]). Iftikhar �Al� Sh�h belongedto a Chisht�-Q�dir� tradition of Sufism that was flourishing in Hyderabad duringthis period, and wrote a collection of Urdu poems on mystical themes that waslater published as the D�w�n-e-Watan.20 While part of a growing movement ofUrdu poets in Hyderabad at this time that echoed the triumph of Urdu over Persianas the official language of Hyderabad, Iftikhar �Al� Sh�h remained very much anineteenth-century figure, whose ghazal poetry reflected an older heritage of mys-tical speculation rather than a newer emphasis on core religious doctrines. Afterhis death, Watan�s Sufi lineage was carried on in Hyderabad by his son N�r All�hHusayn�, who established his father�s shrine in the Chisht� Chaman quarter of thecity, where it remains today. However, having already begun to establish himselfas a Sufi master in his own right, Iftikh�r �Al��s Sufi deputy (khal�fa), Mu��nAll�h, left Hyderabad to travel to Aurangabad and set up a Sufi tradition of hisown. While one of his followers, Ja�far �Al�, also travelled with him from Hyderabad,it remains unclear whether Mu��n All�h�s move from Hyderabad was a result ofthe divisions that so regularly lead Sufi orders to bifurcate in the years followingthe death of a commonly acknowledged master.

Mu��n All�h�s journey from the capital to Aurangabad was part of a widerpattern of travels around Hyderabad State. Mu��n All�h had earlier spent time inAmrauti and had also travelled to a large number of villages in the Aurangabadregion.21 Here Mu��n All�h reflected the travelling activities of other Indian Sufisof the period, using colonial India�s rail network to travel between often widelydispersed congregations of followers. In Aurangabad, Mu��n All�h�s contemporaryShams al-d�n Chisht� (d.1347 [1928]), a Hyderabadi reviver of the cult of theMughal Sufi Sh�h N�r Hamm�m� (d.1104 [1692]), also travelled around the stateon a regular basis to build up a clientele of his own between Hyderabad, Aurangabadand Hospet to the south. The famous Khw�ja Hasan Niz�m� (d.1955) is the best-known example of this pattern in north India. In addition to his mobility, Mu��nAll�h also reflected Khw�ja Hasan Niz�m� in other ways, such as his adaptationof Sufi piety for the purpose of reifying the Islamic affiliation and identity ofrural Muslims.22 In the face of missionary efforts to convert Muslims by not onlyEuropean and American Christian organisations but also such neo-Hindu organ-isations as the �rya Sam�j, a number of Muslim religious societies had emergedin the first decades of the twentieth century, aimed at protecting poor, and par-ticularly rural, Muslims from conversion through programmes of religious

20 This d�w�n has been published, with an account of the life of Iftikh�r �Al� Sh�h by SayyidSh�hid Husayn. See Watan, D�w�n. I am grateful to Syed Anwarullah Hussaini Iftekhari of Hyderabadfor supplying me with a copy of this text.

21 I am grateful to Ghul�m �Al� Sh�h of Aurangabad for information on the life of his father�smaster, Mu��n All�h, and to other members of his Order for permitting me to make interviews duringwinter 1999�2000 and summer 2003.

22 The main source on this figure remains Naqw�, Khw�ja Hasan Niz�m�.



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education.23 Such activities reflected the missionary efforts of various other organ-isations in India during this period, from the numerous Christian missionary organ-isations to the activities of the �rya Sam�j and their shuddh� or �purification�programme aimed at converting Indian Muslims and Christians �back� to Hindu-ism.24 The Sam�j had first arrived in Hyderabad as early as 1872, and over the fol-lowing decades had a considerable effect on the state�s religious policy.25 In effect,the methods adopted by both these Muslim and Hindu organisations to protectwhat they perceived as their own communities involved a process of conversionin its own right, of rejecting traditional and often syncretic forms of worship infavour of ritual and social practices deemed more normative by the proselytes.

Along with Muhammad Ily�s and his Sufi-inspired missionary organisationTabl�gh� Jam��at, Khw�ja Hasan Niz�m� was the most notable of the many figureswho formulated a Sufi response to the perceived Christian and Hindu threat againstIndia�s rural Muslims. His response was to write a vast plethora of Urdu posters,handbills and pamphlets aimed at furthering his preaching and missionary effort(tabl�gh). In a period in which the fate of India�s Muslim community under Chris-tian political and Hindu demographic domination occupied the centre-stage ofMuslim public life, it is perhaps unsurprising that similar efforts to �protect� Islamwere made by a variety of Sufi groups across South Asia during the first decadesof the twentieth century. These included the representatives of a vibrant traditionof Naqshband� Sufism in the Punjab, where the Sufi master Jam��at �Al� (c.1257[1841]�1370 [1951]) in particular was active in urging educated Muslims (andespecially those affiliated to a Sufi order) to energetically preach the tenets ofIslam to prevent conversions to Hinduism.26 Other Punjabi Sufis of the period,such as Sh r Muhammad (d.1347 [1928]), railed against the corrupting influenceof British cultural accretions on Muslims, such as the wearing of English hats andshoes, or perhaps most shocking of all, the eating of English food. Elsewhere innorth India, Sh�h Hab�b Haydar (d.1354 [1935]) of Kakori near Lucknow similarlyobjected to the use of English words in his lodge (kh�naq�h), an objection whosediffusion may be tracked by the relative abundance or absence of English loan-words in Sufi writings of the period in Urdu.27 Under the shadow of Hindu andChristian missionary endeavours, Sufis therefore at times joined other Muslimorganisations in drawing sharper boundary markers between Muslims and non-Muslims in terms of ritual, dress and a host of other cultural practices.

Mu��n All�h reflected these parallel north Indian religious developments in hishome region of Hyderabad. With a firm emphasis on the Islamic foundations ofSufism and the importance of the basic religious duties of the Muslim, Mu��n

23 Sikand, �The Fitna of Irtidad�, pp. 75�77.24 Ibid.25 Raj, Medievalism to Modernism, p. 271.26 Buehler, Sufi Heirs, p. 184.27 On Hab�b Haydar and other north Indian anti-British Sufis, see Nizami, �Madrasas, Scholars,

and Saints�.




All�h�s teaching programme reflected the wider programme we have seen inHyderabad State at this time of sending professional preachers and teachers intothe villages of the Deccan countryside. Mu��n All�h�s missionary travels do notseem to have had any official connection to the activities of organisations thatsought to win converts to Islam from among Hyderabad�s rural Hindu masses,such as the Majlis-e-ittih�d al-muslim�n (which was only founded in the year ofMu��n All�h�s death in 1345 [1926]). However, like that of so many Muslim andHindu religious movements during this period, Mu��n All�h�s work fell into asimilar category through its reinforcement of the religious identity of Muslims asMuslims. Like these other organisations, in addition to preaching in his own rightMu��n All�h also organised small groups of his followers to travel into the townsand villages of the Bombay Presidency and the Central Provinces of British India,as well as into rural areas of Hyderabad State. These preaching groups also com-prised female sections for the instruction of rural women in the proper modes ofMuslim religious practice. As we have seen, Aurangabad�s Christian missionarieshad by this time been targeting both Hindu and Muslim women for several decades,and had focused similarly on rural and lower-class women.28 In these ways Mu��nAll�h�s activities reflected the activities of the succeeding generation of better-known reformers such as Ashraf �Al� Thanaw� (d.1362 [1943]), the writer of theguidebook for women, Bihisht� Zew�r.29

The Sufi as Preacher: The Teachings of Mu��n All�h Sh�h

In addition to his emphasis on the basic requirements of Islam, Mu��n All�h begangathering his followers in Aurangabad every Sunday and Friday for teachingsessions and the chanting of group zikr. These meetings took place on propertyprovided for this use by Mu��n All�h�s disciple, T�hir �Al�, a well-known locallandlord from the Anguri Bagh quarter of Aurangabad in which Mu��n All�h�sgatherings took place. Known as maj�lis-e-yakshamba, these �Sunday meetings�revolved around the recitation of the names of the earlier masters of the order(khatm-e-khw�jag�n), a practice that was an important part of Sufi piety in avariety of other traditions. However, the choice of Sunday as the day for thesemeetings may well have been an attempt to deflect the competition posed by theChristian prayer, educational and social meetings, which were becoming morewidespread in Aurangabad at this time. It was during this period that ReverendHenry Smith described the appearance of posters advertising such Muslim prayersessions in Aurangabad whenever and wherever he tried to advertise his ownprayer meetings. Certainly the hostility that Smith and other Christian missionariesencountered in the old city of Aurangabad seems to suggest a dogged, if at timesrudimentary, mode of cultural resistance among the city�s Muslims. The early

28 For a biography of one such female local convert and subsequent proselyte, see Robertson,Life of Ganga Bai, and note 12.

29 Metcalf, �Islam and Custom�.



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twentieth-century Urdu hagiography A�zam al-kar�m�t, on the life of Mu��n All�h�sSufi contemporary in Aurangabad, Ban Miy�n (d. 1339 [1921]), is replete withepisodes of implicit competition with the colonial powers in its accounts of thesaint�s deeds in the British cantonment area of the city.30

On the more customary day of Friday, Mu��n All�h also organised regularmeetings known as maj�lis-e-masnaw�, in which he selected lines from theMasnaw�-ye-ma�naw� of the great medieval Sufi poet Jal�l al-d�n R�m� (d.672[1273]), along with lines from the Urdu D�w�n-e-Watan of his own more recentmaster Iftikh�r �Al� Sh�h, for interpretation and instruction on their inner mean-ings. It seems an appropriate reminder of the robustness of the early classics ofSufi literature in the literary milieux of Hyderabad that the same text of R�m�which had been one of the few texts taught in Mughal Aurangabad in the circle ofSh�h Mus�fir (d.1126 [1715]) was still being taught by a new generation of Sufis,albeit in Urdu translation, two centuries later.31 In addition to these twice-weeklymeetings, Mu��n All�h also organised special assemblies at other points in theMuslim calendar. However, unlike the more traditional mode of Deccani pietythat had laid stress on the celebration of saints� days (�ur�s), festivities which typ-ically attracted mixed crowds of Muslim and Hindu devotees, Mu��n All�h onlyemphasised the celebration of events in the calendar of the Prophet Muhammad�slife. Here too, in promoting this Prophet-centred devotionalism, Mu��n All�h swamwith the dominant currents that were emerging in Indian Islam during his lifetime.32

Mu��n All�h left no body of writings of his own from which the precise detailsof his teachings can be reconstructed. Fortunately, however, two important sourcesdo survive, which provide considerable insight into the nature of his message.The first of these is a large piece of calico cloth, inscribed in black and red ink,which Mu��n All�h used to instruct listeners in the basic themes of his teachings.33

As testament to the shift in Sufi pedagogical methods which accompanied themissionary endeavours of early twentieth-century revival movements, the clothis an important example of changes in the material culture of Sufism. The secondand somewhat less direct source on Mu��n All�h�s teachings are the extensivewritings of his disciple and successor in Aurangabad, Ham�d �Al� Sh�h (d.1387[1967]), which in places make explicit reference to the teachings and sayings ofMu��n All�h.

Mu��n All�h�s calico teaching aid seems to have drawn its initial inspirationfrom similar cloths used by Christian missionaries in India. It is unclear whetherHenry Smith and his circle made use of such props, though it seems likely, given

30 Muhammad Ism��l Sh�h Q�dir�, A�zam. For a study of Ban Miy�n and other colonial Deccanifaq�rs, see Green, �The Faq�r and the Subalterns�.

31 Later claims that Mu��n All�h himself translated the Masnaw� into Urdu seem, however, to beincorrect.

32 Cf. Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger.33 Mu��n All�h Sh�h, Handwritten calico preaching cloth.




his penchant for preaching at markets and other public places. However, it alsoremains possible that Mu��n All�h may have drawn upon a more indigenous trad-ition among the region�s Sufis. We know that Iranian Sufis (Kh�ks�r dervishes inparticular) used illustrated cloths to transmit stories adapted from the Sh�hn�maand the poetry of Sa�d� well into the twentieth century, and the practice probablyhad parallels among wandering Indian dervish groups. In both the Sufi and Chris-tian cases, however, such cloths were usually pictorial rather than literary in char-acter, and the fact that Mu��n All�h�s cloth was densely covered in handwrittenUrdu admonitions is symptomatic of the broader modernising character of hismovement. His cloth was divided into three sections, the first of which comprisedan Urdu poem covering the upper third part of the main field or frame (hawz) ofthe cloth. Beneath this was a lengthier Urdu prose section that covered morepedagogic matters. Surrounding the frame in which these two sections were placedwas a third section, written in contrasting red ink and running in diagonal linesaround the margins of the cloth. The cloth in this way reflected the organisationof writing in the traditional Persianate manuscript, with the main body of the textsurrounded by a marginal gloss or commentary. It is unclear whether the poemitself belonged to Mu��n All�h or to his master Iftikh�r �Al� Sh�h Watan, whosepoetical works we have already mentioned. However, the undistinguished prosodyand broader character of the poem vis-à-vis the somewhat more refined poetry ofWatan suggest that it was the work of Mu��n All�h himself.

The opening lines of the poem echo a wider tradition of Urdu religious praisepoetry (na�at). Given that the cloth was designed for the purpose of easy trans-portation and use on preaching tours, it seems likely that the poem�s memorisationand recitation formed an important part of Mu��n All�h�s preaching technique.The poem begins with praise to God (khud�) and his prophet Muhammad, whosecommands the listeners are instructed to obey. Since God has given the listener/recitor life, the poem asks God to also give him knowledge and render him God�sservant. Stressing the importance of understanding, the poem then declares that itis obligatory to learn the foundational beliefs (�aq��id) of Islam, but warns thatthey will not count as beliefs unless they are properly remembered. Cautioningthat the flames of hell-fire flourish for this very reason, the poem again stresses theimportance of understanding beliefs, for without understanding worship (�ib�dat)will not be accepted. Urging the listener/recitor once again to remember his orher beliefs and not forget them, the poem goes on to emphasise the importance ofwork (k�m) as the distinguishing characteristic of humankind, claiming that workis intrinsically good and separates man from both animals and the devil, whoshare the same disinclination towards labour. The poem then makes reference tothe Sufi teacher (khal�fa) before, in a shift of vocabulary, admonishing the listener/recitor to do his/her own spiritual work (�amal). Raising the theme of shame(sharm) before God�a central theme of popular Muslim piety and a bastion ofthe Islamic moral order�the poem ends by expressing a hundred regrets that weuse our resources in this life to do less than we should.



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The poem stands as a kind of creed, declaring the importance of the religiousunderstanding and self-awareness that underwrote the missionary efforts of somany religious groups in South Asia during this period. Its message has little incommon with the often obscure and esoteric language of much Sufi poetry, andindeed, even shares little in terms of vocabulary with such poetry. Its chief asso-ciation with Sufism seems rather its affiliation to a Sufi order, though its call to-wards (religious) action was one similarly echoed by other reformers likeMuhammad Iqb�l, who chose to dress their teachings in a Sufi-inspired idiom. Itscontents, far from revealing the mystical �secrets� (asr�r) associated with the Sufis(and with Iqb�l in their wake), seem only to be concerned with the promotion ofthe basic beliefs of Islam in general. The poem is in this sense most effectivelycharacterised as a call of return to faith. It was an admonishment in verse, urgingthe listener to take a greater interest in his faith and go beyond the mere act ofreligious affiliation and step into the realm of religious understanding. In manyways, this was what made it a typically modernist Muslim document, urging thebeliever to address his own soul and so see to his own salvation; there is no roomfor intercession. In this way it contrasts greatly with the religious model offeredby the contemporary hagiography A�zam al-kar�m�t of the ecstatic Aurangabadifaq�r Ban Miy�n, in which salvation is presented as being effectively procuredon the believer�s behalf so long as he has sufficient faith in the saint.

Like so many documents connected with Muslim revivalist movements, includ-ing those of a Sufi persuasion, the teachings on Mu��n All�h�s cloth thus makemuch reference to Muhammad and the core beliefs (�aq��id) of his religion, andlittle, if any, to Sufism or its saints. Despite this, the message contained in thepoem remained one with great resonance in Sufi tradition, which had so often stressedthe importance of learning and self-examination (muh�siba). As the writings ofMu��n All�h�s disciple (mur�d) and successor (sajj�da nash�n) Ham�d �Al� Sh�hshow, Mu��n All�h�s message here was one which did actually feed into a widerSufi vision of salvation. In the case of both Mu��n All�h and his disciple, however,it was a message of salvation through personal effort�pious behaviour, prayer,and maintenance of the injunctions of the shar��a�that bore little in commonwith the message of pre-communal Hindu/Muslim saintly devotion with whichHyderabad�s Sufi traditions had long been associated.

The prose section of Mu��n All�h�s cloth expounds these teachings more clearly.Written in a familiar and almost avuncular tone, its style seems to reflect thespoken character of Mu��n All�h�s preaching efforts. Reflecting the themes of thepoem which precedes it, it begins with the statement that �We have become ignorantof our Islam and neither test our Islam nor even understand what it means to beMuslim�. Instead, it claims, people just �play at being Muslim�. In an introductionof Sufi terminology, it goes on to speak of the importance of the teachings of aperfect Sufi master (murshid-e-k�mil) and warns against copying the response ofthose infidels who persistently laugh at such words of advice (nas�hat). The themeof laughter and �poking fun� (maskhara karn�) is returned to a number of times,at one point with the warning that when one laughs at such words one acquires




the status of an infidel and is, by implication, no longer a Muslim destined for sal-vation. If such words have a schoolmasterly quality, we can only conjecture as tothe degree to which this emphasis on mockery and laughter reflected the receptionwhich Mu��n All�h and his assistants encountered on their preaching tours of theregion.34

The main message propounded in the prose section of the cloth, however, con-cerns a doctrine of sin (gun�h) and �states of mind� or imagination (khay�l). Mu��nAll�h expounded this doctrine through dividing sin into a great sin (gun�h-e-kab�r) and a small sin (gun�h-e-sagh�r), declaring that while we have all heard ofthese sins, few of us know what they are or what the difference between them is.At this point, he claims that there are in fact four sins in the world, whose presenceis proven by the Quran. In addition to the great sin and the small sin, these sinsalso comprise the intentional sin (gun�h-e-�umd�) and the erroneous sin (gun�h-e-sahw�). Echoing the old theme of the spiritual quest in Sufi literature, Mu��nAll�h explained that the great sin consists of nothing less than refusing to makethe search (tal�sh) for God. The small sin, which is contained within the great sin,consists of such iniquitous deeds as desire for the world, cheating, trickery andother types of fraud. Mu��n All�h also explained the meaning of the two otherkinds of sin�intentional sin consists of ignorance (jah�lat), wickedness (shar�rat),gossiping and otherwise taking away people�s dignity and honour (�izzat). Erro-neous sin, however, is that which happens out of forgetfulness rather than deliberateintent. Mu��n All�h added that while there are certainly hundreds and thousandsof sins in the universe, they all emerge from these four sins, while hundreds ofthousands (l�khs) more lie latent as part of the imagination (khay�l).

Having introduced the theme of the imagination, Mu��n All�h went on to classifyfour types of imagination or �state of mind�, which he declared are always to befound wandering at night in the human breast.35 These are the imagination of theinfidel (k�fir), the hypocrite (mun�fiq), the polytheist (mushrik) and the believer(m��min). The first includes complaining, denial of God, and going back on whatone has accepted (that is, one�s religious commitments). The second comprises suchfaults as lying, listening to lies and taking on dishonest work. Under the rubric ofthe �imagination of the polytheist�, Mu��n All�h advised the listener to treat hisemployer (sar-e-k�m) and his work with respect, as well as to think everyone elsesuperior to himself. By extension, the fourth state of mind, that is, the �imaginationof the believer�, is characterised by thinking everyone better than oneself, standingup for others� dignity and honour, believing oneself imperfect, and looking forgood in everyone else. Mu��n All�h�s examples of behaviour appropriate to this

34 Similar indications of misrule and misbehaviour during sessions of Sufi instruction occurredtwo centuries earlier in Aurangabad in the circle of Niz�m al-d�n Awrang�b�d� (d.1142 [1729]), astestified in his malf�z�t collection, Ahsan al-sham��il.

35 The question of the nature of the imagination (khay�l) had a long history in Sufi thought andwas particularly important in the teachings of Ibn �Arab� (d. 638 [1240]). See Corbin, CreativeImagination. On the influence of Ibn �Arab� in South Asia, see Chittick, �Notes on Ibn �Arab��sInfluence�.



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state of mind echoed the Indian environment of his preaching tours, through recom-mending the giving away of sugar, milk or pepper to neighbours. Given the numberof droughts and famines that the Aurangabad region suffered during the years ofMu��n All�h�s ministry, such acts of neighbourly generosity no doubt carried aspecial weight. Mu��n All�h then added a reminder to his �brother Muslims� thathis advice on these sins had been accepted by the people and that those who laughedat it would be rejected by the �believers (m��min) of the world�. The lesson con-tained on the cloth ends with the maxim that when human beings come to con-sciousness, they find good things within themselves.

On his preaching cloth, Mu��n All�h arguably shows himself more in the guiseof a moralist than a mystic. Yet the issuing of such moral advice (nas�hat), urgingthe believer towards self-reform and the repentance of sinful ways, had from thetimes of the earliest Sufi masters of Baghdad and Khurasan over a millenniumago formed one of the foundations of Sufi literature and instruction.36 It was uponthis tradition that Mu��n All�h drew, as transmitted through the teachings of hisown master Iftikh�r �Al� Sh�h. At the same time, however, Mu��n All�h�s evidentconcern with bringing people to a fuller consciousness of what it meant to be aMuslim�of reforming people�s religious and indeed social lives to the point thattheir practices fitted into his schema of the proper behaviour befitting a Muslim�placed Mu��n All�h within a more contemporary historical movement. His solereference to a supra-personal collectivity is in this sense telling, for Mu��n All�hmade no reference on his cloth to region, state, community or any other collectiveterm other than �[Muslim] believers of the world (m��min-e-duny�)�. His use ofthis phrase is suggestive of the influence of the various shades of pan-Islamismthat had become influential in Hyderabad State by this time, positing Islam as theprimary marker of personal and collective identity over regional, ethnic or nationalties.37 It was, of course, an ideology that was challenged from numerous quartersin the state�both Hindu and Muslim�who regarded the Hyderabad Deccan aspossessing a special (and often expressly composite) religious culture in its ownright, an ideology whose social and cultural roots may be seen in the close attentionto markers of regional identity in oral and written hagiographies of local Sufisaints. In such hagiographies, the image of the local saint as a source of religiousauthority was one of a Sufi devoted to miraculously helping people rather thaneducating or reforming them. As such, the religious activity associated with suchneighbouring contemporaries as Ban Miy�n and S�� B�b� of Shirdi (d.1918),both in life and in their posthumous cults, was one able to cut across religiousboundaries to encompass the shared devotion of Muslims and Hindus. Mu��n All�h�steaching, in contrast, was neither interested in such ambiguities, nor in the possi-bility of a non-Muslim following. What Mu��n All�h offered his listeners (whom

36 Böwering, �The Adab Literature�.37 The great pan-Islamist Jam�l al-d�n al-Afgh�n� (d. 1314 [1897]) had earlier stayed in Hyderabad,

where he published some of his earliest works. On the place of pan-Islamism in the society andpolitics of Hyderabad State during this period, see Leonard, �Hyderabad�.




we must assume were already at least nominally Muslim to begin with) was areturn to the basic requirements of their faith, accompanied by a greater under-standing of what it meant to be a Muslim. There were no ambiguities about thereligious identity of Mu��n All�h himself, his followers or the nature of his mission,for Mu��n All�h was clearly a Muslim preacher instructing other Muslims to returnto what he regarded as the true practice of Islam. It is fitting proof of the power offounders of religious movements to shape the future character of their traditionsthat by the end of the twentieth century all of those associated with the shrine ofMu��n All�h were Muslims, while at least half of those attending the shrine amere mile away of his contemporary Ban Miy�n were Hindus. Before everythingelse, a reformist Sufism was clearly an Islamic Sufism.

While Mu��n All�h belonged to a wider movement of Muslim reform, we shouldnonetheless recognise the validity of his Sufi credentials. From what can be gleanedfrom both the writings of his successor, Ham�d �Al� Sh�h, and the oral traditionpassed on by Ham�d �Al��s own successors at the shrine of Mu��n All�h inAurangabad, Mu��n All�h�s teachings drew greatly on the twin poetic resourcesof Jal�l al-d�n R�m� and Iftikh�r �Al� Sh�h Watan. In the short malf�z�t (�recordedconversation�) collection subsequently entitled Tasawwur-e-shaykh, Ham�d �Al�propounded arguments supporting the Sufi practice of �picturing one�s master�(tasawwur-e-shaykh) alluded to in the title of the collection. This practice, intendedto accompany the chanting of zikr and a host of other activities, involved themaintenance of a mental picture of one�s living Sufi master. By the turn of thetwentieth century it was a doctrine increasingly facilitated through the use ofsmall photographic images of Sufi teachers that could be carried around by dis-ciples. While attracting the strongest censure from many Muslim reformists asbeing tantamount to idolatry and the worship of one�s teacher (p�r parast�), theimportance of the practice among Sufis in South Asia nonetheless spread widelyand rapidly during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.38 In the teachingsessions recorded in 1383 [1963] in Tasawwur-e-shaykh, delivered almost fourdecades after Mu��n All�h�s death, Ham�d �Al� described the doctrine of tasawwur-e-shaykh as being part of the teachings of his master.39 Once again, then, Mu��nAll�h appears to have echoed wider movements in South Asian Islam during hislifetime.

Ham�d �Al��s teachings, as contained in both this malf�z�t and in the largervolume containing the seven parts of his Fahm wa �amal (�Understanding andAction�), make extensive use of the poetry of R�m� and Mu��n All�h�s own master,Iftikh�r �Al� Sh�h, to encapsulate and add credence to various Sufi doctrines.There is little reason to doubt that this was a teaching technique Ham�d �Al� hadlearnt from Mu��n All�h�s preference for these texts during his own twice weeklygatherings (maj�lis). At the same time, Fahm wa �amal shows Ham�d �Al� ascareful to bolster the veracity and Islamic credentials of his teachings by resorting

38 Buehler, �Currents of Sufism� and Sufi Heirs.39 Ham�d �Al� Sh�h, Tasawwur, p. 8.



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constantly to the Quran, which he quoted in Arabic and then paraphrased in Urdu.Given the emphasis on Mu��n All�h�s teaching cloth on the basic elements of theMuslim faith, we may assume that such use of the Quran played as important apart in his own teachings as in those of his follower, Ham�d �Al�. Ham�d �Al��swritings are therefore important in suggesting that Mu��n All�h�s teachings com-prised more than the moralising call for a return to Islam recorded on the calicocloth that he presented at his preaching sessions. For the former�s works suggestthat Mu��n All�h�s call for a return to what he regarded as true Islam formed onlythe initial part of a wider course of instruction and self-reform that drew on im-portant currents in Sufism during his own day. These currents included the practiceof tasawwur-e-shaykh, the recitation of the mystical poetry of earlier generationsof Sufis, and the mystical exegesis of verses of the Quran.

Mystics and Mill-Owners: The Creation of a New Sufi Order

During his years in Aurangabad, Mu��n All�h acquired a number of committeddisciples, whose combination of devotion and capital assets enabled his teach-ings to find more permanent form through the composition and publication ofmystical guidebooks containing his teachings, and the foundation of a Sufi shrineor �lodge� (kh�naq�h) where his message could be permanently expounded afterhis death in 1345 [1926]. The construction of this shrine, which included teachinghalls as well as a mausoleum, was a crucial stage in the success of Mu��n All�h�smission. One of Mu��n All�h�s early disciples in Aurangabad was an importantlocal landowner called T�hir �Al�, who owned a large amount of property in theold Anguri Bagh quarter of the city. Another of Mu��n All�h�s disciples, who wasto reach the Sufi rank of �deputy� (khal�fa), was a local civil servant called Ghiy�sal-d�n, who worked as an accountant in the Nizam�s administration in Aurangabad.However, Mu��n All�h�s most influential deputies were two brothers, Maj�d �Al�Sh�h (d. unknown) and Ham�d �Al� Sh�h (d.1387 [1967]), the latter of whom wehave already seen continuing Mu��n All�h�s teachings after his death. Both ofthese brothers were textile designers from Aurangabad. The brothers operatedartisan handlooms in their family home in the city�s Nawwabpura quarter, wheretheir father and grandfather had woven the same styles of textile before them.40

Aurangabad had been famous for its textiles�its fine embroidered cloths inparticular�since the introduction of Mughal tastes and markets to the city in theage of Awrangzeb, and over time the city had developed two particular forms ofcloth as its specialities. Known as hamr� and mashr�, these woven textiles ofcotton and silk were designed to have the �same appearance� (hamr�) as the lux-urious pure silks and cloth of gold woven in the city for the courts of Awrangzeb

40 I am grateful to Abdul Aziz Momin and family, who have continued the family tradition ofproducing hamr�, via handloom and power loom, for information on the history of the businessventures of their relative, Ham�d �Al� Sh�h.




and the first Nizams. Textile production had slackened during much of the nine-teenth century, though the cottage industry, of which Maj�d �Al� and Ham�d �Al�were a part, seems to have been bolstered by the economic reforms of the modern-ising prime minister of Hyderabad, Sir Salar Jung, which had great effect in thestate from the second half of the nineteenth century. Aided by Aurangabad�s relativeproximity to Bombay, the last decades of the nineteenth century also saw the begin-ning of modern industrialisation in Aurangabad, not least with regard to the textileproduction that had been its most famous industry since the Mughal period. In1306 [1889], Aurangabad�s first cotton-spinning and weaving mill was opened,which by the early twentieth century came to employ 700 workers. In 1318 [1900],shortly after the establishment of the first mills and factories in Hyderabad, theopening of the Hyderabad-Godawari railway that passed near Aurangabad aidedfurther industrialisation in the city.41

According to the reminiscences of various descendants of Mu��n All�h�s fol-lowers, involvement in Aurangabad�s textile cottage industry seems to have beenfairly widespread among Maj�d �Al� and Ham�d �Al��s co-disciples. A considerablenumber of other handlooms were set up around the site of Mu��n All�h�s gatheringsin the Anguri Bagh quarter, where land had been given to Mu��n All�h by T�hir�Al�. However, Aurangabad�s proximity to Bombay seems to have been the mostdecisive element in the transformation of the two brothers� family business, whenHam�d �Al� was able to enter a partnership with a Muslim entrepreneur fromBombay, Muhammad Ya�q�b. Through Ya�q�b�s investment and his contacts inBombay, the brothers were able to purchase a power loom and a semi-automatedJacquard designing machine. In 1344 [1925], they were among the earliest entre-preneurs to introduce this technology to Aurangabad, though due to a combinationof technical and legal considerations they were unable to set up the power loomin the same location as the handlooms in Anguri Bagh. The machine was set up innew premises near the city�s railway station, then a half-hour journey by horse-drawn carriage from the old city. The arrival of such technology in Aurangabad,and the new wealth it created, clearly caused a stir in a city dominated by an olderlandowning social and religious elite. This is seen in a story associated with Mu��nAll�h�s Sufi contemporary Ban Miy�n, which is related to an owner of one ofthe new hamr� and mashr� mills in Aurangabad called Muhammad �Abd al-Q�dir.Ban Miy�n�s early twentieth-century hagiography relates how the grand weddingof 500 guests for the mill-owner�s sister was found to be disastrously lacking incooking equipment and was heading for catastrophe until Ban Miy�n�s mys-terious help brought a sudden, inexplicable supply of cauldrons (d�g).42 If we canclearly see here the rise of the mill-owners as a new Muslim social elite in Aurangabad,Ban Miy�n�s sudden supernatural appearance in this circle only adds furthercontrast to the lack of miracles in the circle of the mill-owning reformist Sufi,Ham�d �Al� Sh�h.

41 On the coming of the railway to Hyderabad, see Ray, �The Genesis of Railway Development�.42 Muhammad Ism��l Sh�h Q�dir�, A�zam, p. 68.



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Despite this absence of miracles, the introduction of the power loom fromBombay soon transformed the fortunes of the two brothers and the Sufi traditionto which they were attached. Before their master Mu��n All�h died in 1345 [1926],he appointed Ham�d �Al� Sh�h to be his successor (sajj�da nash�n). With theincome from the new textile mill, Ham�d �Al� was able to gradually fund the con-struction of a mausoleum for Mu��n All�h on the site of his gatherings in theAnguri Bagh quarter. Over time, the income from the small textile factory thatHam�d �Al� and his elder brother Maj�d �Al� had founded was able to finance theconstruction of a number of other buildings on the same site, including a capaciousmosque and a hall to accommodate the disciples, who continued to attend theweekly meetings which Ham�d �Al� now took over. Inside the tomb of Mu��n All�h,three ostrich eggs were hung from the ceiling in continuation of the old ways ofthe Sufi saints, while the spirit of the new industrial age made its presence felt ina frieze of pink and green Edwardian floor tiles, carefully placed just beyond thethreshold of the shrine. Niz�m al-d�n Wah�d, one of Mu��n All�h�s followers fromHingoli to the east of Aurangabad, wrote a chronogram containing the date of hismaster�s death to celebrate the completion of the shrine:

This is the court of favours (alt�f) and mercy (mihr),The grave of the Gnostic of Truth (��rif-e-haqq), Mu��n All�h Sh�h.

Though hardly a couplet to rival the earlier poetic chronograms penned for thecity�s saints by the likes of the great �z�d Bilgr�m� (d.1200 [1786]), it was none-theless written out in a fine nast�al�q script and hung on the interior wall of themausoleum beside souvenir prints from Baghdad and Madina depicting the tombsof �Abd al-Q�dir J�l�n� and the Prophet Muhammad. A photograph taken a fewyears later, in the 1930s, shows a proud Ham�d �Al� standing beside his brotherMaj�d �Al� outside the mausoleum they had built for their master, both of themdecked out in the finest hamr� shawls from their factory. But if the architecturalstyle of the shrine they had founded reflected those of the earlier Sufi saints of thecity as of South Asia in general, the nature of the teachings of Mu��n All�h andHam�d �Al� had much more in common with the twentieth century than with theSufi traditions of an earlier age.

Ham�d �Al� was more than a shrewd industrialist and in time proved himself aninspired leader of the tradition he inherited from Mu��n All�h Sh�h. As we haveseen, he was also a prolific writer and the seven part collection of his Urdu teachingsknown collectively as Fahm wa �amal (�Understanding and Action�) show a teacherdetermined to imbue his followers with what he regarded as the core message ofSufism as tasawwuf, the active Arabic verbal noun that literally denotes �becominga Sufi�. One cannot imagine a greater contrast between Ham�d �Al��s writings andthe A�zam al-kar�m�t on the life of Ban Miy�n written by his local contemporary,Muhammad Ism��l Kh�n (d.1376 [1956]), who became the spiritual heir (sajj�danash�n) of the ecstatic dervish Ban Miy�n only five years before Ham�d �Al�assumed the same position as the first successor of Mu��n All�h. For Ham�d �Al��s




writings contain no stories or references to miracles whatsoever. Unlike A�zamal-kar�m�t, the message of Fahm wa �amal was not one of the importance ofdevotion to the saint as the path to mystical experience, but rather one of individualpiety and spiritual exertion, a message compounded by constant reference to theorthodox touchstone of the Quran. Neither in oral nor written tradition were thereany stories of miracles associated with either Mu��n All�h or Ham�d �Al�. Yet thecontemporaneous traditions of Mu��n All�h and Ban Miy�n both claimed torepresent the true path of Chisht�-Q�dir� Sufism. As ways to God, they representedradically different temperaments and strands of Muslim religiosity, one harkingback to a pre-scientific age while the other stared into the heart of the industrialpresent to find a core set of spiritual values capable of guiding the Muslim soul ina modern India.

Ham�d �Al� continued to lead the tradition of Mu��n All�h for almost two decadesafter the collapse of Hyderabad State in 1368 [1948]. In doing so, he significantlycontinued Hyderabad�s Sufi traditions when the territories of the former state fellout of Muslim political control for the first time in centuries. But while the privatespiritual commitment of Ham�d �Al� and his followers should not be underesti-mated, it is also important to draw attention to the economic underpinnings of thetradition that he represented. For with the sole exception of the shrine of Mu��nAll�h, all of the other Sufi shrines in Aurangabad drew their income from irregulardonations and, more importantly, from land grants (j�g�rs) that, like so manyMuslim institutions throughout Hyderabad, they had received from rulers andnotables over the centuries since their foundation. In contrast, the shrine of Mu��nAll�h and the Sufi tradition it hosted had its chief source of income in the textilefactory opened by Ham�d �Al� and his brother Maj�d �Al�. In being founded andfunded chiefly through industrial wealth rather than through the receipt of royalor aristocratic land grants, it was in this sense a uniquely modern shrine tradition.At a time when so many of Hyderabad�s Sufi shrines found themselves quicklydivested of their traditional income with the Jagirdari Abolition Act of 1949, theheirs of Mu��n All�h in Aurangabad were able to ride the storm of Hyderabad�sdissolution far better than most. In this way, Mu��n All�h�s shrine maintained itssource of income and conventions of teaching as Aurangabad passed into the handsof the new nation of India.43 The association with the textile factory of Ham�d �Al�became so distinguishing a characteristic of the shrine of Mu��n All�h, that intime it came to be known simply as the Silk Mills Shrine (silk mills k� darg�h).

Seeking the Pure Self: The Teachings of Ham�d �Al�

Until the dissolution of Hyderabad State, Ham�d �Al� and his own deputies(khulaf�), along with a number of female followers, continued Mu��n All�h�spractice of travelling to the countryside to spread their teachings on Islam to rural

43 On the effects of this Act in Hyderabad, see Khusro, Economic and Social Effects.



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Muslims, whom they considered as lacking in a proper understanding of theteachings of their faith. Ham�d �Al� similarly continued the custom of holdingregular teaching meetings and meditational sessions of chanting zikr at Mu��nAll�h�s shrine. Despite the genealogy that we have seen of Mu��n All�h�s traditionin a wider movement towards Muslim renewal which was in some cases encour-aged by state officials, it was this tradition that was nonetheless better prepared towithstand the blow when Hyderabad was finally dissolved than many other Sufitraditions in the Deccan. As we have seen, the principal reason for the robustnessof Mu��n All�h�s order was the economic self-sufficiency that, through its con-nection to the textile mill established by Ham�d �Al� and Maj�d �Al�, made theorder financially independent from land revenues and so ultimately from the state.If many shrine traditions spent the decades after the Jagirdari Abolition Act of1949 embroiled in litigation with the state to recover or augment incomes basedon landholdings, that of Mu��n All�h was free to concentrate on continuing theteaching efforts that had been its original mission. As the years went by, membersof Ham�d �Al��s extended family set up other textile mills in what became a hugefamily compound on the southern edge of the city. Part of the profits from thesemills was sown back into the shrine and its activities.

For two decades after the dissolution of Hyderabad, Ham�d �Al� continued topromulgate and refine the teachings of his master in the Friday and Sunday meet-ings he convened at Mu��n All�h�s shrine. Ham�d �Al��s teachings are preserved inFahm wa �amal and in the shorter volume entitled Tasawwur-e-shaykh (�Picturingthe Master�). For the most part, these works reflect Ham�d �Al��s teachings fromthe later part of his career, though there is no reason to suspect that they do notalso reflect the tenor of his earlier teachings. The publishing of both of Ham�d �Al��sworks was overseen by his son and successor, Ghul�m �Al� Sh�h (born c.1940),who was active in recording his father�s teachings at the gatherings (majlis) heconvened at the shrine. Tasawwur-e-shaykh, for example, consists of Ham�d �Al��steachings at two of these gatherings on 16 Jam�d� al-s�n� 1383 [4 November 1963]and 2 Sha�b�n 1383 [23 December 1963]. For its part, Fahm wa �amal consistspartly of the writings of Ham�d �Al� and partly of the recorded oral teachings ofsimilar majlis sessions. Since Ham�d �Al� died before completing the written text,its last four sections comprise a record of his oral teachings. The composition ofboth these texts reflected a twentieth-century approach to a much older problem.For centuries, the genre of the �recorded conversation� or malf�z�t was much fa-voured by Indian Sufis as a means of trying to capture the true character, in letterand spirit, of a master�s teachings. While we should not always take the rhetoricalclaims of the genre too seriously, they did at least reflect the serious epistemologicalproblem of the preservation of certain knowledge in the absence of an inspiredliving teacher.44 Attentive to the nature of this problem, and keen like generationsof disciples before him to preserve the teachings of his master, Ghul�m �Al� informs

44 For more discussion of this question, see Green, �Translating the Spoken Words�.




us that many of the majlis sessions preserved in Fahm wa �amal (and presumablyalso in Tasawwur-e-shaykh) were the result of tape-recordings made of Ham�d�Al� teaching at the shrine of his dead master.45

Reflecting his master�s teachings on the nature of sin (gun�h), Ham�d �Al� placedgreat emphasis in his writings and sermons on control of the lower self (nafs).Echoing a much older Sufi heritage, he counted the battle or jih�d against one�sown passions as far greater than the �lesser jih�d� against other people fought inthe name of Islam.46 He also emphasised the importance of non-attachment to thethings of this world and the importance of passing through life as one would passthrough a guest house (mihm�nkh�na).47 Yet the core of his teachings lay in thetrue nature of the self, hidden from consciousness by its attachment to worldlydesires and its negligence in the performance of the religious duties that couldremedy its predicament. The remedy Ham�d �Al� proposed drew in large part ondutiful attention to the commands of the religious law (shar��a), which was inturn seen to reflect the universal role of the intellect (�aql) and its capacity tocontrol (kontr�l) man�s base desires.48 As well as liberally quoting from the Quranand Hadith, Ham�d �Al� also quoted a great deal from the poetry of Jal�l al-d�nR�m� and Muhammad Iqb�l (d.1357 [1938]).49 Ham�d �Al��s frequent quotationsfrom R�m� seem to reflect Iqb�l�s influential reading of the Persian poet as a pro-ponent of an activist religiosity of self-reform and individual development. Inmany ways, the activist vision of an ideal combination of spiritual understanding(fahm) and righteous activity (�amal) that was summed up in the title of Ham�d�Al��s main work closely reflected the spiritual and ethical vision of Iqb�l.50 Mu��nAll�h�s movement therefore reminds us of the fact that Iqb�l had a considerableinfluence on Muslim reform movements throughout South Asia and, indeed, cannotbe entirely separated from them. For it was his vision of an activist Muslim knowerof his own self that was reflected in the work of Ham�d �Al� and his circle.51 At thesame time, the years that Ham�d �Al� spent as a popular preacher in the countrysidewere no less an influence on the style of his sermons and writings. While Ham�d�Al� was by no means the first Sufi to have a morbid obsession with death, henonetheless drew gleefully in his teachings upon popular Muslim fears of thetortures of the grave and the pains of the sundering of the body and soul.52 Har-anguing his listeners with descriptions of such terrors seems to have been one ofhis principal means of encouraging them to pursue their spiritual exercises withdiligence.53

45 Ham�d �Al� Sh�h, Fahm, Pt. V, p. 1.46 Ibid., Pt. V, pp. 5�12.47 Ibid., Pt. I, pp. 16�17.48 Ibid., Pt. II, p. 2.49 Iqb�l�s influence on other Muslim writers in Hyderabad is discussed in Anon., Armagh�n.50 On Iqb�l�s religious thought, see Schimmel, Gabriel�s Wing.51 Cf. Schimmel, �Iqbal in the Context�.52 Cf. Smith and Haddad, Islamic Understanding of Death.53 Ham�d �Al� Sh�h, Tasawwur, pp. 2�11; Ham�d �Al� Sh�h, Fahm, Pt. III, pp. 6�15.



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Yet Ham�d �Al��s fondness for the poetry of Iqb�l was by no means his onlyconnection to the wider religious currents of mystical Islam in South Asia duringthis period. More significant in some ways was his espousal of the importance ofmeditating on the image of one�s spiritual master, the practice of tasawwur-e-shaykh, which was expounded in the two teaching sessions preserved in the bookby the same title. Here Ham�d �Al� contributed to the spread of a practice we haveseen enjoying especial prominence among Naqshband� masters in the Punjab duringthe nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, before becoming one of the dominantspiritual disciplines of Sufis in South Asia and beyond.54 Ham�d �Al��s writingssimilarly reflected the widespread tendency of twentieth-century Sufi treatisesfrom South Asia of citing the Quran and Hadith in superabundance, attempting tojustify every doctrine or practice by reference to scripture in order to avoid theaccusation of �innovation� (bid�a) and emphasise the Muslim credentials of Sufitradition.55

Like so many other manifestations of the fracture of the Muslim self in SouthAsia, this tendency towards excessive scriptural propriety reflected a loss ofMuslim self-confidence in the region, which was concomitant with the loss ofpolitical power and the linguistic and wider intellectual alienation from the sourcesof Indo-Muslim cultural tradition. For, among other things, scripturalism is anoutcome of a loss of tradition that involves the neglect of the centuries of ruminationand commentary that stand between the reader and the moment of revelation.Tying ends and beginnings together, the scripturalism of movements such as thatof Ham�d �Al� is therefore deeply anti-historical, seeking to move the believerthrough time directly to the moment of revelation in a precise echoing of the mys-tical impulse towards a direct experience of the timeless realms of �truth� (haqq).It was ultimately this mystical motivation towards direct religious understanding(fahm) that was able to tie together the scripturalist and Sufi elements in Mu��nAll�h�s movement, while other Indo-Muslim reform movements gradually cameto eschew their Sufi origins.

The Sufi tradition of Mu��n All�h Sh�h and his heirs was thus one which boremany of the hallmarks of developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.On the one hand, Ham�d �Al��s teachings reflected the �mediatory Sufism� basedaround ritual concentration on the image of the master (tasawwur-e-shaykh) thathad come to dominate many teaching traditions of Sufi spiritual exercise over theprevious century. The unambiguously Islamic character of the tradition�reinforcedby perpetual references to the Quran and Hadith in both the written and spokenteachings of the order�s representatives�reflected similar developments in twentieth-century Sufism in South Asia which had emerged in reaction to the criticisms of

54 Buehler, Sufi Heirs. The practice is also widespread among modern Iranian dervish orders(author�s personal observation).

55 Cf. Buehler, Sufi Heirs, pp. 170�71. On wider critiques of Sufism as innovation, see Sirriyeh,Sufis and Anti-Sufis.




Muslim reformists. On the other hand, as an example of a learned tradition ofSufism that laid emphasis on the performance of spiritual exercises, Ham�d �Al��stradition also bore much resemblance to the circle that had gathered around theearlier Chisht� master of Mughal Aurangabad, Niz�m al-d�n (d.1142 [1729]), whosemeditational textbook Niz�m al-qul�b reflected the emphasis placed on spiritualdiscipline in Ham�d �Al��s writings.56 Yet in spite of these similarities, the contextin which Mu��n All�h�s movement emerged reminds us of the importance of Chris-tian missionary activity as both local model and antagonist. While a hermeticallysealed Islamic genealogy for Mu��n All�h�s movement could easily be construed,we cannot ignore the local missionary milieu in which his activities took shape.With its mixture of missionary style, mystical substance and communalist milieu,Mu��n All�h�s movement is a classic example of the complexity of the religioushistory of colonial South Asia.

Conclusions

For all the changes in state and city that Mu��n All�h�s order reflected, his Sufiorder and shrine institution played an important part in the handing over of earliertradition. Amid the industrially-funded buildings of Mu��n All�h�s shrine and theindividualist emphasis on self-modelling that was taught there, it was from theincome drawn from the production of copies of Aurangabad�s Mughal periodtextiles that new insights could be deduced from the same Masnaw� of R�m� thatwas read by the city Sufis in the early years after Aurangabad�s foundation threecenturies earlier. Despite the vestiges of tradition that Mu��n All�h�s teachingssought to hand over, modernity was nonetheless imbued throughout the Sufi orderof Mu��n All�h and his successors. This was apparent in the character of theiractual teachings, in their relation to a wider movement of Muslim reform, and intheir shift towards boundary-marking at a community and individual level throughthe promotion of explicitly Islamic modes of dress and ritual behaviour. It was noless apparent in the connections Mu��n All�h�s tradition had to the forces of industri-alisation that were appearing in Aurangabad for the first time during his lifetime.

It is tempting to draw a connection between these industrialising and modern-ising elements, for in addition to Ham�d �Al�, many of Mu��n All�h�s other followerswere also involved in the city�s textile industry. It is known that a number of theseearly followers worked their own handlooms and while it is difficult to be certain, italso appears that some of these followers were drawn into factory work as the in-dustry changed under Ham�d �Al��s leadership. Significantly, Mu��n All�h�s teach-ing cloth had made several admonishing references to what might be regardedas an emerging industrial relationship between employer and employee. In themain section of the cloth, Mu��n All�h urged listeners to treat their employers(sar-e-k�m) with respect; the importance of work (k�m) itself was also stressed

56 For a study of Niz�m al-qul�b, see Ernst, �Chisht� Meditation Practices�.



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several times over in the poetic creed. To draw too direct a connection betweenthese elements would surely be facile, and yet the concurrences between the broadlymodernist ideology of Mu��n All�h�s teachings and their social context among anemerging industrial Muslim bourgeoisie are too apparent to ignore. Like othermanifestations of modernist �this-worldly� forms of Islam, the religiosity preachedby Mu��n All�h bore a strong work ethic that fortified the emerging relationshipbetween the industrial workers and other employees among Mu��n All�h�s fol-lowers and their employers. Here, perhaps, in a local context of nascent industri-alisation, was a Sufi reply to the colonial and reformist critique that had paintedSufis as the lazy and work-shy culprits of Muslim �backwardness�. Given the classcharacter of Mu��n All�h and Ham�d �Al��s followers, this sanctification of therelationship between employer and employee is likely to have been effective. Forcompared to other Sufi cults or associations in Aurangabad during this period, theorder founded by Mu��n All�h possessed a strong association with the city�s grow-ing urban Muslim lower middle class. While many of the city�s older Sufi shrinesattracted rural Hindu followers alongside large numbers of non-literate Muslimsfrom the city itself, the circle of Mu��n All�h and his successors was able to maintainits class and religious character throughout the twentieth century.

Here, then, was a characteristically Sufi response to modernisation. Thoughshaped by the specific historical forces at work in its local context, Mu��n All�h�sorder nonetheless placed central emphasis on meditative practices that were aimedat the transcendence of historical change. For central to the order�s teachings wasthe axiomatic role of a timeless mystical experience of the true self. Like othermystical doctrines, the teachings of Mu��n All�h and Ham�d �Al� were in this wayat once a response to and an escape from history. Amid the political and religiousturmoil of Hyderabad State during the final half-century of its existence, Mu��nAll�h initiated a provincial movement that sought to harness the epistemologicallucidity of a direct mystical experience of an ideal and unadulterated Muslimself. Aimed at peeling back both collective and personal time, it was a visionwhose fruits were hoped to bring forth not merely the reform of Islam, but alsothe pure seeds of its renewal.

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Documents

Mystical missionaries in Hyderabad State: Mu‚n All h Sh h