Conquest and community : the afterlife of warrior saint Ghazi Miyan

Conquest and Community, by prize-winning historian Shahid Amin, is a kaleidoscopic look into one of the most divisive issues in South Asian history: the Turkic conquest of the subcontinent and the subsequent spread of Muslim rule. Covering more than eight hundred years of history, the book centers around the enduringly popular saint Ghazi Miyan, the youthful and lovable soldier of Islam to whom shrines have been erected all over the country. After detailing the warrior saint s supposed exploits, Amin charts the various ways he has been remembered throughout the last millennium. As he shows, the charming stories, ballads, and proverbs that grew up around him domesticated the bloody conquest and made it appear both virtuous and familial. Amin brings the story of Ghazi Miyan s long afterlife into the contemporary period through his ethnographic analysis of the still-active shrines as sites of interreligious public piety. What is at first glance a story of just one mythical figure becomes through Amin s thoughtful treatment an allegory for the history of Hindu-Muslim relations over an astonishingly long period of time. As the Muslim conquest of India is being mobilized for dangerously polarizing political ends in India today, this nonsectarian account of religious strife will be a timely and sane contribution to the vexed historical debate." Few topics in South Asian history are as contentious as that of the Turkic conquest of the Indian subcontinent that began in the twelfth century and led to a long period of Muslim rule. How is a historian supposed to write honestly about the bloody history of the conquest without falling into communitarian traps? Conquest and Community is Shahid Amin's answer. Covering more than eight hundred years of history, the book centers on the enduringly popular saint Ghazi Miyan, a youthful soldier of Islam whose shrines are found all over India. Amin details the warrior saint’s legendary exploits, then tracks the many ways he has been commemorated in the centuries since. The intriguing stories, ballads, and proverbs that grew up around Ghazi Miyan were, Amin shows, a way of domesticating the conquest—recognizing past conflicts and differences but nevertheless bringing diverse groups together into a community of devotees. What seems at first glance to be the story of one mythical figure becomes an allegory for the history of Hindu-Muslim relations over an astonishingly long period of time, and a timely contribution to current political and historical debates. Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of Maps and Figures 10 List of Abbreviations 12 Storyline 14 Prominent Figures in the Cult of Ghazi Miyan 16 Preface 18 1 Introduction: Sufi and the Ghazi 22 Part One: A Life 38 2 The Hagiography 40 3 An Urdu Mirror of Masud 62 4 The Author as Hero 67 Part Two: Lore 74 5 Tales and the Text 76 6 Reproductive Anxiety 80 7 Zohra Bibi 85 8 Birth–Marriage–Martyrdom 92 9 Ghazi Miyan and Cowherds 100 10 Grey Mare, Lilli 112 11 Cooking for a Turkic Brother 119 12 Idols 129 Part Three: Shrine 136 13 Altars 138 14 Dafalis and Servitors 145 15 The Bahraich Shrine 154 16 Sites and Cenotaphs 167 Part Four: Counter-Histories 176 17 Investing the Ghazi 178 18 Demotic Warfare 184 19 Downplaying the Iconoclast? 195 Part Five: A Long Afterlife 198 20 Everyday Memories 200 21 Epilogue 213 Appendix 1: The Ballad of Basaurhi Dafali, Recorded Near Rudauli, May 1994 219 Appendix 2: The Ballad of Set Mahet, Recorded, c. 1900 by W. Hoey 239 Appendix 3: A Poetical Description of the Ghazi Miyan Fair at Bahraich, c. 1800 by Cazim Ali Jawan 258 Endnotes 267 Bibliography 313 Acknowledgements 329 Index 335