Indian Historical Review

http://ihr.sagepub.com/ The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices of Pakistan and India
Priyanka Chanana Indian Historical Review 2007 34: 324 DOI: 10.1177/037698360703400122 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ihr.sagepub.com/content/34/1/324.citation

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1749. After this, the Mughal Empire lost all its credibility and the major parts of Rajputana were occupied by the Rajput chiefs. Thus the Mughal authority disappeared from Rajasthan. With this, the author successfully proves his point that the policy of the Mughal emperors towards the Rathors was imprudent and resorted to only in circumstances of 'urgency' or 'expediency'. Overall, Sangwan has presented a very coherent picture about the relations of the Rathor chiefs and the Mughal emperors and the prevalent factionalism at the Mughal court in the first half of the eighteenth century. However, in his conclusion, he writes about the changes in the Rathor society, which are not the part of his study. Besides this overstepping, the book regrettably suffers from numerous printing errors, which could have been avoided. Still the book is well-printed and would be useful for the researchers and students who are interested in the history of later Mughals and the Rajputs rulers of Rajasthan.
ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY ALIGARH

B.L. BHADANI

The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices ofPakistan and India (Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2003). Pp. xxx + 209. Rs 595.00.
SHEMEEM BURNEY ABBAS,

In the past few years there has been an attempt to restore the voices of women. The present work is an important contribution towards this direction. The work comes up as an important challenge to Western scholarship that describes Islam as a 'male' religion. The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual contributes to the field of Islam and Sufism in general and gender studies in particular. In fact, this is a 'first' attempt of its kind ever made. Abbas challenges the Western scholarship, which states that no women are observed in the mosques for prayers and that female participation is lacking during the major religious feasts, by showing not only the presence of women but also the contributions made by women in the Sufi practice of sama. Sufism, though based on the Quranic ideals, offered a platform where women did have an important role to play. Abbas' book is an attempt to bring a more nuanced understanding of Islam and women's place within it.

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Since Sufism was tolerant towards religion, colour, caste and gender, Abbas attempts here to bring out the embedded voices of women within it. She suggests that the important spheres of religious and spiritual involvement for the women are the Sufi shrines. Abbas's study is a linguistic and anthropological research of discourse and poetry in devotional settings. Since earlier studies of Islam were based on textual evidence, she adds a new dimension to it by her extensive ground research and fieldwork in various Sufi shrines. Abbas attempts here to take her studies away from the mosque as the centre of all Islamic activities, and instead focuses on the alternative sites of religious practices, that is, the Sufi shrines, melas, concerts, etc. The text has been an attempt to make the silent voices' audible, that is, the female voices, which form an important aspect of 'the Sufi practice of sama, where both men and women participate in the rituals equally. Her work largely involves documentation of the performances and interviewing the renowned singers of Sufi poetry. She thereby traces the so-called 'voice' of women in such discourses. Besides this, she also documents the active participation of women in the support services in the shrines. The Sufi shrines not only fulfilled the devotional needs of the people who visited them but also provided an outlet from the chores of daily life. The study is largely centred on the oral culture of the subcontinent. The effort has largely been to bring out the voice of the women by references to the mystic veil, to women's work like grinding, husking, sewing, weaving, etc., and also by references to the myths of the female lovers like Hir, Sassi, Layla, Mira Bai and many more. By singing in voices, where the narrator is a woman, the poets are able to reach the masses that are generally illiterate. Abbas beautifully attempts to document the Sufi poetry' and especially what the Sufis sang about gender, class, caste and colour and how the discourse challenged the patriarchy through the device of the female speaker. Thus, Abbas claims that by using the female voice, the musicians express humility and surrender to a spiritual force (p. 143). Abbas claims that the work is the result of extensive research based on the archival materials that were a comprehensive collection of the multimedia resources from Pakistan, India, United Kingdom, France, United States and Canada from where Abbas found early examples of the women's roles as participants and performers in the Sufi rituals. To this was later added the ground research. By this way, The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual

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is the first work of its kind focusing on the religious expression of women. But if one looks at the text historically, it tends to loose ground. Her understanding of the 'archives' is quite different from that of a historian. She also makes no note of the grants given to the women. Another interesting aspect is the difference between qawwali and the sufiana-kalam traditions, which Abbas brings out in the text. She suggests that qawwali is largely a male domain and requires rigorous training and that in sufiana-kalam females are also involved. During the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, the sufiana-kalam traditions, appeared in Sufism, in which poetry written in vernaculars was used by the Sufi poets. Abbas justifies that, as this model was an indigenous one that required minimal musical skills and resources, women's input in singing this poetry was visible. It is apparent that the present work is that of an anthropologist and thus lacks the insights of a historian. It appears that Abbas fails to trace the history of this 'female voice'. As such, the very understanding of the concept of female voice lacks explanation on its vertical (historical) dimension of origin and growth, though its presence is brought forth. It is also not clear as to what kind of female voice Abbas is trying to trace. Is it the suppressed voice of the grievances of women against the existing social and economic order? Or, is it the voice of the female singers of Sufi poetry, which is generally not written or talked about to avoid shame on the part of their families? Or, is it the voice of the disciple as the lover who sings or expresses her love jas a female lover towards the beloved, who is the murshid, a spiritual mentor, or Prophet, who is a male? Apart from this, the text appears to be too repetitive. It appears as if Abbas has been making a continuous effort to counter and clear the Western misconceptions by stressing on certain things. In a way, the work largely appears to be an answer to the Western scholarly understanding about the position of women within Islam. But the very claim by the author of herself being a 'native' itself gives rise to many questions. She herself has not been able to come out of that colonial hangover by addressing herself as 'native'. Further, if- one is trying to study women in Sufism, one cannot do so without significantly mentioning the contributions made by Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya towards the development of the mystical path and her

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position within Sufism. She was the image of piety and her name stands prominent when one discusses women in Sufism. Abbas does mention Rabi'a and the famous work by Margaret Smith on Rabi'a, but only in passing without significantly pointing to the contributions she made and the esteemed position she holds within Sufi circles. Rabi'a's voice is a prominent female voice, which needs to be significantly acknowledged. Abbas also does not seem to have referred to any of the Sufi tazkirats and malfuzats, where many references to prominent women in Sufism, who were moral binding forces, have been made. No mention is made about Bibi Zulaikha, the mother of Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya, who was very pious and an important voice contributing in the moral and spiritual development of her son. Without bringing out the contributions by women like these, one cannot wholly locate the 'female voice' in the Sufi ritual. In spite of this, the work is worth appreciation, as it not only adds to the body of scholarship on Sufi Islam, but also significantly adds to the work on women and religion. It provides a platform on which further studies can be taken up.
UNIVERSITY OF DELHI PRIYANKA CHANANA

SHIVNATH, Jammu Miscellany (Kashmir Times Publications, Jammu, 2005). Pp. 155. Rs 250.00. This somewhat unusual book is a biographical profile of the state of Jammu. The book is by no means a consistently historical work, a task that has been fulfilled by other historians such as L.N. Dhar, Mohan Lal Kaul and many others who have written the history of Jammu and Kashmir. As a native of Jammu and a scholar-poet of Dogri, Shivnath has written an account of what is embedded deeply in the cultural fabric of the region, enmeshing facets of its history, folklore and literature. The first chapter is titled 'Jammu in Recorded History'. It is based on Persian texts like the Tarikh-i-Ferishta, written in the sixteenth century, the Malfuzat-e-Timuri or the later-day Persian chronicle Mukhtasar Taarikhe Jammu va Ryaasat-haai-maftooha Maharaja Gulab Singh Bahadur, by Maulavi Hashmat Ullah Khan Lakhnavi, as well as Dogri histories. The first historical mention of Jammu is in the Malfuzat-eTimuri, which refers to the defeat of its ruler Maldev in the fourteenth century by Timur.

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