INTRODUCTION: BEYOND HAJJ

INTR O D U C TIO N : B E YOND HA J J The annual journey to Islam’s holy city includes men, women, and children of all ages and nationalities. Thousands of tents mark the path, offering everything from food and water to phone stations and resting places. The pilgrims wear veils, turbans, and modest clothing – abayas, jallabiyas, niqabs, and caftans – offering protection from the desert heat. It is important that they approach their destination in a pious state; while some walk, others may crawl. Once they reach their destination, the pilgrims say prayers, read the Qur’an, weep, and ask for forgiveness of their sins. The holy pilgrimage is a major life event, strongly encouraged by religious clerics. It is the largest pilgrimage in the world. This is not hajj. It is arbaeen, the annual pilgrimage to Karbala in Iraq. Over twenty million pilgrims a year travel to the shrine in Iraq where Husayn, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, is buried. For some, the journey to Karbala is secondary to hajj, but for others it supersedes the pilgrimage to Mecca.1 As one popular Shi‘i tradition says, “A single tear shed for Husayn washes away a hundred sins.”2 Husayn’s tomb is rarely mentioned alongside hajj in introductory textbooks on Islam and world religions. Nor is the shrine of Sayyida Ruqayya, or Rumi’s tomb, or the graves found in Damascus where some of the Prophet’s closest companions are interred. Such oversights misrepresent the huge variety of pilgrimage traditions in Islam. This book remedies this problem, providing an expansive study of Pilgrimage in Islam_Final.indd 15 11/04/2017 10:49:07 xvi Pilgrimage in Islam Islamic pilgrimage that is inclusive, geographically diverse, and attentive to the rich traditions that characterize Muslim religious life. The roots of arbaeen and many of the other journeys examined in this book are often, but not always, situated in early Islamic history. For Shi‘i Muslims, the Battle of Karbala is the seminal event that inspires numerous pilgrimages in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and elsewhere. In 680, Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Husayn went to battle against the entire ’Umayyad army at Karbala. The story of this battle is told in great detail on the anniversary of Husayn’s death, the tenth day of the month of Muharram, also known as ‘Ashura’. When pilgrims visit the tombs of Husayn and other members of Prophet Muhammad’s family, they commemorate the past, mourning the death of a pious and just Islam, and pray for the return of the Mahdi, the messiah who announces the End Figure I.0 Sayyida Ruqayya’s Shrine, Damascus, Syria (photo courtesy of author). Pilgrimage in Islam_Final.indd 16 11/04/2017 10:49:07 Beyond Hajj xvii of Days. Husayn’s statement, “I see death as salvation, and life with the oppressors as misfortune,” is apropos here, for Shi‘i pilgrimage is not just about the past but also about the present conditions of life.3 In addition to Husayn and the other martyrs of this battle, survivors of Karbala became the focus of other pilgrimages. Among these was a little girl named Ruqayya – Husayn’s young daughter. Stories of her death include one version I was told when visiting the shrine in 2010. In this telling, Yazid, the ’Umayyad caliph, showed little Ruqayya her father’s decapitated head and she immediately dropped dead. Another version of the story claims that she died at the age of four while imprisoned by Yazid, as a result of her ill treatment at the hands of her captors. The shrine of Sayyida Ruqayya is newer than many Shi‘i sites and probably dates from the ifteenth century. The iconography of the site includes numerous inscriptions that relect Shi‘i beliefs about the Prophet’s family, although non-Shi‘i Muslims also visit the shrine.4 Visitors are often struck by the intense display of emotion for the child buried within the tomb. As is the case for most Shi‘i shrines, men and women have their own sections, allowing for public performances of grief that are unconcerned with expectations and boundaries surrounding gendered behavior. Millions of Muslim pilgrims have visited Ruqayya’s tomb. Within the walls of this shrine, pilgrims have said prayers, mourned the death of the Prophet’s relatives, wept tears of sadness and grief, and asked for healing, relief, and forgiveness. Shi‘i are not the only Muslims who have extensive networks of pilgrimage sites, however. Located near Ruqayya’s shrine is the ’Umayyad mosque in Damascus, which houses the heads of Husayn, John the Baptist, and other martyrs. This is one of the thousands of pilgrimage sites worldwide that are focused on the dead. Muslim pilgrims often visit these places to receive a blessing (barakah; pl. barakat) from the saint or holy person, a tradition that dates from the Prophet’s lifetime. Pilgrimage in Islam_Final.indd 17 11/04/2017 10:49:07 xviii Pilgrimage in Islam The association of barakat with pilgrimage traditions was an established practice by the ninth century. When Sayyida Naisa (the daughter of al-Hasan b. Zayd b. al-Hasan b. Ali b. Ali Talib) died in Cairo in 824, the people asked that her body be kept in Fustat so that her blessing/barakah would be present for them.5 Pilgrimage in Islam goes far beyond the great pilgrimage to Mecca, although the rituals performed by Muslim pilgrims at other sites often mirror what happens at hajj, some of which are often rooted in pre-Islamic practices. “Many of the rites associated with the pilgrimage to Mecca and visitation of other shrines parallel funerary and mourning practices attested in other contexts, such as circumambulation of the tomb, the wearing of certain sorts of clothing, and restrictions on certain types of behavior.”6 Muslim pilgrimages also involve religious and cultural traditions adopted from Christianity, Hinduism, and local practices in their rituals, relecting the myriad ways that Muslims adapt to and borrow from the communities they have conquered, or who have conquered them, or, in some cases, communities among whom Muslims live. As one example, in Java, Brawijaya V’s life story employs both Hindu and Islamic beliefs: “the last episode of Brawijaya’s life is depicted both in terms of Javano-Islamic mystical anthropology of sangkan paran as well as in the Hindu understanding of moksa.”7 Indonesia is by no means the only place where there is such a mixture of cultures, practices, and religions. This book includes practices that inform pilgrimages more identiiable with Islam, as well as those more closely aligned with traditions that are associated with non-Muslim igures and historical sites. Muslim pilgrims travel to a wide variety of places. Countless holy sites (mazarat) – graves, tomb complexes, mosques, shrines, mountaintops, springs, and gardens – can be found across the world, in large cities like Mashhad, small villages in Turkey, trade outposts in the deserts of Pilgrimage in Islam_Final.indd 18 11/04/2017 10:49:07 Beyond Hajj xix Samarkand, African metropolises like Fes, and the forests of Bosnia. All of these places are located within an Islamic universe that is present with the spirit of Allah and holds the promise of barakat – the blessings that pilgrims seek. Although monumental sites exist, such as the great shrines at Mashhad, Karbala, and Konya, Islamic pilgrimage sites are more often established according to religious qualities, such as the popularity of a saint, the amount of barakah, and the numbers of miracles witnessed, rather than the magnitude of the site’s architecture. “Muslim writers frequently mention other sacred qualities manifesting themselves at sacred places which were not perceived visually, but spiritually, in particular pilgrimage places possessing a friendly atmosphere (uns), awe (mahāba), reverence (ijlāl), dignity (waqār), and blessing (baraka).”8 This book makes a sincere attempt to be inclusive of the great varieties of Islamic pilgrimage, journeys that cross sectarian boundaries, incorporate non-Muslim rituals, and involve numerous communities, languages, and traditions. In the interest of providing accessibility to a variety of readers, I incorporate the reiied categories of “Sunni,” “Shi‘i,” and “Sui,” while simultaneously observing how scholars attach these identities to Muslim ritual and community in over-simpliied ways. This tension is crystallized when we look at the complexities of Muslim religious experience – a Sunni site visited by Shi‘i, the cohabitation of Shi‘ism and Suism, and the problems inherent in deining who is and is not a Sui. For example, the concept of sainthood is involved in many Islamic movements including those within the Sunni and Shi‘i traditions. “This blurring of lines with regard to deining walāyah [sainthood] has engendered a Sui tradition that celebrates many such igures whose teachings, upon closer inspection, are actually found to be copied word-for-word from the Imams but without any credit or reference given.”9 Shi‘i and Sui pilgrimages – including those popular with Sunni Muslims – have numerous commonalities, Pilgrimage in Islam_Final.indd 19 11/04/2017 10:49:07 xx Pilgrimage in Islam from the belief in the power of the dead to the importance of visiting those close to Prophet Muhammad. These commonalities point to larger questions about the ways in which Muslim communities and their traditions are constructed in Western scholarship. My work interrogates these constructions through an examination of pilgrimage. Islam encompasses a huge variety of sects, rituals, traditions, languages, and communities. The vast majority of the world’s Muslims go on pilgrimage to places other than Mecca. This has been true from the very beginning, when visiting Jerusalem was viewed as an alternative to Mecca, equal in religious merit.10 Annemarie Schimmel is one of many scholars who point to these replacement hajjs.11 The performance of pilgrimage outside of hajj is not typically an arbitrary choice in which one tradition eliminates the other. For example, Maqbaratu al-Baqi and Masjid an-Nabawi, the cemetery and mosque in Medina that are often part of the great pilgrimage, are also part of a larger collection of sites held sacred by Muslims.12 Hajj is often one of several pilgrimages that Muslims undertake over the course of their lives. Most Muslims never see Mecca during their lifetime, due to inances, geographical distance, or poor health. Many communities have vast networks of pilgrimage sites that function as the central practice in their lives. One example is found in the Ughyur context, where pilgrims frequent shrines ranging from “low mud lumps decorated with rags to monumental mausoleums with green-tiled domes.”13 The large number of these places and traditions means that they cannot all be covered in one volume; however, every effort has been made to include pilgrimages from every region of the world. Scholarship on Islamic pilgrimage is mostly focused on hajj and ‘umrah (the lesser hajj) and occasionally on Shi‘i Twelver traditions, especially in introductory texts on Islam and world religions. I include scholarship from religious studies, anthropology, and other ields to provide an opening Pilgrimage in Islam_Final.indd 20 11/04/2017 10:49:07 Beyond Hajj xxi up to these different scholarly voices, as well as to the great variety of experiences that fall under Islam. Scholars often adopt a myopic focus on their subject, as J.Z. Smith points out when he writes, “We may have to be initiated by the other whom we study and undergo the ordeal of incongruity. For we have often missed what is humane in the other by the very seriousness of our quest.”14 This book is an effort to respond to this critique. Academic studies often classify religious practices into different categories depending on community, but Islamic pilgrimage is often a nonsectarian activity. It is true that Shi‘ism has a distinct set of pilgrimage traditions that surround the tombs of the Prophet’s relatives, but these sites are not as restricted as some would think. Sunnis visit the shrine of Sayyida Zaynab in a suburb of Damascus, although not in the numbers that Shi‘i Muslims do.15 This is far from the only case of mixed intra-religious sites. Sunnis and Shi‘i visit the shrine of Husayn in Cairo and Sunnis visit numerous “Shi‘i” tombs in Syria, Iraq, and Iran. When ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi did a series of ziyarat (pilgrimage; see p. 103) journeys between 1688 and 1701, he did not limit the places he visited by sect (he was a Sunni) nor by tariqah (he was a member of both the Qadariyya and Naqshbandiyya orders), in part because Suis do not perform pilgrimage in these ways.16 This is a problem when considering the ways Islamic pilgrimages are typically represented – the presentations do not accord with history or agree with the realities of Muslim religious life. The vast majority of Islamic pilgrimage traditions are commemorative, focused on the dead and the power of the bodies being visited. This is one reason why the material aspect of pilgrimage is so important. As Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey have written, material objects have a great capacity to “bind the living and the dead, to hold a fragile connection across temporal distance and preserve a material presence in the face of embodied absence.”17 Holy people, including Pilgrimage in Islam_Final.indd 21 11/04/2017 10:49:07 xxii Pilgrimage in Islam Prophet Muhammad and his relatives, Sui shaykhs, and others, remain important after their death because they are believed to have the power to offer blessings to their followers. Pilgrims visit the graves of the dead for a number of reasons. In the case of Chor Bandi and Shahi Zinda in Uzbekistan, sick people (dardmand) go to the graves in search of good health, childless people (bifarzand) ask for fertility, and others go to ask for a successful marriage or business.18 In Islam, bodies and associated relics function as religious and political symbols: “Objects that confer legitimacy may do so merely because they belong, or once belonged, to a person whose sanctity inheres in his possessions as well as in himself.”19 Other sacred places visited by Muslims include those associated with births, miracles, and other wondrous events, such as the dreams associated with Khidr/Hizir in Turkey, in which pilgrims go on dream-quests (istikharah) in the hopes of encountering the mysterious igure of Khidr.20 Pilgrimages may also involve shared sites, including Mary’s house near Ephesus and John the Baptist’s tomb in Damascus, also visited by Christians. Furthermore, pilgrimages may be more seriously focused on ecology and the natural world. In Bangladesh, several shrines are associated with wildlife, resulting in pilgrimages that involve not just the memory of the saint but the preservation of animals and entire ecosystems, and the Muslims, Christians, and others visit these sites and feed and observe the wildlife – ranging from monkeys to birds – all in the hope of gaining a blessing from God.21 In addition to physical pilgrimages like hajj and the visitation of tombs, graveyards, shrines, and nature reserves, this book includes traditions that imitate these journeys, often described as symbolic substitutions or virtual pilgrimages. These cases are not to be confused with cyber-pilgrimages, journeys involving technology like computers, the Internet, and mobile devices, which are also part of this study. Virtual pilgrimages and cyber-pilgrimages are distinct categories of Pilgrimage in Islam_Final.indd 22 11/04/2017 10:49:07 Beyond Hajj xxiii experience. Virtual pilgrimages are physical activities that reenact or imitate the pilgrimage to which they correspond. One example is the Hussainiya that Shi‘i sometimes construct in their homes or communities that serve as miniature replicas of Karbala. Cyber-pilgrimages use the worldwide web to journey to a pilgrimage site, often through a live camera feed or virtual landscape. All of these journeys – physical, virtual, and cyber – represent some of the different ways that people perform Islam, conduct ritual, and perform pilgrimage. Islamic pilgrimages number in the thousands. In the Kotan prefecture in China alone, there are more than two thousand mazars and of these, only a small number, perhaps twenty, are known to Muslims outside the region.22 Due to the fact that this book covers such a large corpus of material, I have made an effort to organize the subject in a way that gives equal weight to the experiences of different Muslim communities. I admit this is not perfect, but I have made considerable effort to include a geographical and cultural diversity of sites and traditions. In this spirit, I begin with a discussion of Islamic pilgrimage and its examination in the ield of religious studies. This includes a discussion of some of the challenges faced by scholars who study Islam or pilgrimage, issues that are revisited in the afterword. Chapter 2 examines the holy cities of Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina and includes a lengthy discussion of the importance placed by Muslims on Jerusalem in Islam, hajj, ‘umrah, and related traditions in Medina. Chapter 3 examines the pilgrimage traditions surrounding Shi‘i Muslims, including Zaydis, Isma‘ilis, Twelvers, and two groups that are associated with Shi‘ism – the ‘Alawis and Alevis. The following chapter focuses on Sui pilgrimages, traditions that exist in many corners of the world and are undertaken by Sunnis, Shi‘i, and other Muslim sects. This chapter addresses the problems in studying Suism, a ield of enquiry inluenced by Orientalist notions of “mysticism.” This chapter also looks at some of the pilgrimages that are shared among Muslims and other groups, Pilgrimage in Islam_Final.indd 23 11/04/2017 10:49:07 xxiv Pilgrimage in Islam such as Christians, Hindus, and Jews. Chapter 5 focuses on the topics of materiality and modernity – commodiication, tourism, pilgrimage mementos, and virtual pilgrimages. It also examines the topics of technology and cyber-pilgrimage, offering a relection on the ways in which modernity is changing Islamic pilgrimage and offering new ways of experiencing sacred sites. A careful relection on the entire project, including some of the theoretical issues it presents, is contained in the afterword. These chapters are designed to be used independently or collectively in academic courses. As a whole they present a comprehensive study of the topic, one that I hope engenders more discussion both in the classroom and in academia on the subject of Islamic pilgrimage. Pilgrimage in Islam_Final.indd 24 11/04/2017 10:49:07