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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 August 2023
This article examines the discussion of core Islamic rituals in the writings of the influential eighteenth-century Sufi, hadith scholar, and jurist Shah Wali Allah of Delhi (d. 1762). It brings out the implications of Wali Allah's sustained concern with demonstrating how divinely mandated rituals serve human interests, not just at the individual but also at the societal and political levels. This aspect of Wali Allah's thought has parallels with how many modernists and Islamists in colonial and post-colonial South Asia have sought to explain Islamic rituals in terms of their social ramifications. But there are some significant differences between them, too, and these help shed further light on Wali Allah's distinctive theory of ritual.
1 Robinson, Francis, ‘Other-worldly and this-worldly Islam and the Islamic revival’, in idem, Islam, South Asia, and the West (Delhi, 2007), pp. 171–188Google Scholar, at p. 171. Cf. idem, ‘Secularization, Weber and Islam’, in idem, Islam and Muslim History in South Asia (Oxford, 2000), pp. 122–137, esp. pp. 133–134.
2 Shah Wali Allah, Hujjat Allāh al-bāligha, (ed.) Sàīd Ahmad Pālanpūrī, two vols (Karachi, 2010) [hereafter HA], vol. i, pp. 28–32, 211–227; vol. ii, pp. 184–185, etc.; Marcia Hermansen (trans), The Conclusive Argument from God: Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi's Hujjat Allāh al-bāligha (Islamabad, 2003) [hereafter Hermansen], pp. 3–7, 214–231. Hermansen's translation covers only the first of the two volumes of this work.
3 Robinson has written incisively about processes of ‘rationalisation’ in modern Islam, too, which have involved a critique, in light of the foundational texts, of many customary and Sufi-inflected practices. See, for instance, Robinson, Francis, ‘Islamic reform and modernities in South Asia’, in idem, The Muslim World in South Asia (Albany, 2020), pp. 204–232Google Scholar, at pp. 220–222. Even as they have sought to rationalise Islam in this Weberian sense, many Muslim modernists have also invoked a more familiar sense of the ‘rational’ in asserting that reason and modern science do not contradict the properly understood teachings of Islam.
4 Ghazali's discussion of the core rituals in his magnum opus is organised in terms of ‘the secrets of prayer and its key facets’, ‘the secrets of zakat’, ‘the secrets of fasting’, and the ‘secrets of hajj’. al-Ghazali, Ihyā ̀ulūm al-dīn, five vols (Aleppo, 1998), vol. i, pp. 255–463. These ‘books’ are preceded by one on ‘the secrets of purification’: ibid., pp. 221–254. Another instance is represented by the work of the tenth-century Shāfìī jurist Abu Bakr al-Shashi al-Qaffal al-Kabir (d. 975), Mahāsin al-sharī̀a fi furū̀ al-Shāfìiyya, (ed.) Abu ̀Abdallah Muhammad b. ̀Ali al-Samak (Beirut, 2007), pp. 27–29, 82–84, etc., though it is significantly less developed than what Wali Allah would attempt. For some observations on this work, see Reinhart, A. Kevin, ‘Ritual action and practical action: the incomprehensibility of Muslim devotional action’, in Islamic Law in Theory: Studies in Jurisprudence in Honor of Bernard Weiss, (eds) Reinhart, A. Kevin and Gleave, Robert (Leiden, 2014), pp. 74–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Cf. HA, vol. i, pp. 41, 48; Hermansen, pp. 15–16, 21.
6 HA, vol. i, pp. 455–458.
7 HA, vol. ii, pp. 30–31.
8 Ibid., p. 142.
9 On the four cardinal virtues, see HA, vol. i, pp. 160–164; Hermansen, pp. 156–160. On human nature (fitra) as the composite of these virtues, see HA, vol. i, p. 164; Hermansen, p. 159.
10 HA, vol. i, pp. 167–169; Hermansen, pp. 165–167.
11 HA, vol. i, p. 169; Hermansen, p. 166.
12 HA, vol. i, p. 164; Hermansen, p. 159.
13 HA, vol. i, p. 164; Hermansen, p. 159. On the removal of the impediments, see HA, vol. i, pp. 169–172; Hermansen, pp. 168–170.
14 HA, vol. i, p. 484.
15 Ibid., pp. 485–486.
16 Ibid., p. 208; Hermansen, p. 210. For passages from the Quran, I follow A. J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (New York, 1996), with occasional modification.
17 HA, vol. i, pp. 208–209; Hermansen, p. 210 (with several modifications).
18 HA, vol. i, p. 209; Hermansen, p. 211.
19 Cf. HA, vol. i, p. 209; Hermansen, p. 211.
20 HA, vol. ii, p. 87.
21 HA, vol. ii, p. 93.
22 Ibid., p. 86.
23 HA, vol. i, p. 459. Cf. ibid., vol. i, p. 223 (Hermansen, p. 228), where he uses the word munāfiq (‘hypocrite’) rather than mukhalif. Wali Allah's point about ritual as distinguishing between friend and enemy bears an interesting resemblance to Carl Schmitt's well-known thesis that the friend-enemy distinction is central to the very idea of the political. See Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, (trans.) George Schwab (Chicago, 2007), especially, pp. 25–45. I discuss Wali Allah's view of the political dimensions of ritual later in this article.
24 This evokes the idea, which he adduces elsewhere, of the favour that had been done to people by their being brought into Islam in chains. Shah Wali Allah, Izālat al-khafā ̀an khilāfat al-khulafā, (ed.) Muhammad Ahsan Siddiqi, two vols (Bareilly, reprinted Lahore, 1976), vol. i, p. 47 (quoting Abū Hurayra, a companion of Muhammad).
25 See Mahmood, Saba, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, 2005), pp. 118–152Google Scholar.
26 HA, vol. ii, p. 99.
27 Ibid., p. 85.
28 Muhammad ̀Ashiq Phulati, al-Qawl al-jalī fi zikr āthār al-Walī (Delhi, 1989), p. 449. The point is made with reference to a mystical experience of Wali Allah's disciple Shah Nur Allah. On the Realm of Images, see Fazlur Rahman, ‘Dream, imagination and ̀Ālam al-mithāl’, Islamic Studies 3 (1964), pp. 167–180; on Wali Allah's conception of it, see ibid., pp. 178–179.
29 Phulatī, al-Qawl al-jalī, p. 308.
30 HA, vol. i, pp. 294–295, quotation on p. 295; Hermansen, p. 298. For this report, see Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Kitāb al-musannaf, (ed.) Muhammad ̀Abd al-Salām Shāhīn, nine vols (Beirut, 1995), vol. ii, p. 188 (#7950-1). Wali Allah quotes these reports elsewhere, too. See Izāla, vol. ii, p. 93.
31 Muhammad Shiblī Nùmānī, al-Fārūq, two vols (Delhi, 1915), vol. ii, pp. 187–188.
32 For the reference to siyāsa in this context, see HA, vol. i, p. 294; Hermansen, p. 299.
33 al-Ghazali, Ihyā, vol. i, p. 258.
34 Ibid., p. 264.
35 Ibid., p. 280.
36 Ibid., pp. 280–281.
37 Ibid., pp. 281–282.
38 For a passing swipe at Ghazali's unreliability in hadith, see Shah Wali Allah, Hamàāt, (ed.) Ismā̀īl Muhammadī (Qumm, 2017), p. 67 (#4).
39 Ibid., p. 117 (# 11).
40 al-Ghazali, Ihyā, vol. i, pp. 366–367, 455–456.
41 Ibid., p. 367.
42 Ibid.
43 HA, vol. i, pp. 37–38. Translation based, in part, on Hermansen, p. 11.
44 On the ‘incomprehensibility of Muslim devotional action’, see Reinhart, ‘Ritual action’, especially pp. 69–92 and 76 (on Ghazali's Ihyā).
45 HA, vol. i, p. 295; Hermansen, p. 299.
46 Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford, 1992), pp. 197–223; quotation at p. 197. On ritualisation, see ibid., pp. 7–8, 74, 90. Bell's analysis of power relations is indebted primarily to the work of Michel Foucault.
47 See Muhammad Qasim Zaman, ‘Political power, religious authority, and the caliphate in eighteenth century Indian Islamic thought’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd series, 30.2 (2020), pp. 313–340.
48 HA, vol. i, p. 210; Hermansen, pp. 212–213.
49 HA, vol. ii, p. 160. Cf. ibid., vol. i, p. 223, vol. ii, p. 167; Hermansen, p. 228.
50 HA, vol. ii, p. 100. Wali Allah characterises this show of strength to be among the ‘purposes of the sharia’ (maqāsid al-sharī̀a). Ibid., vol. ii, p. 100.
51 HA, vol. ii, p. 100.
52 al-Ghazali, Ihyā, vol. i, p. 347. I am grateful to Zain Shirazi for his reflections on Wali Allah's use of the term ̀arda and its distinctiveness in comparison with Ghazali.
53 ̀Abd al-̀Alī Bahr al-̀Ulūm, Rasā’il al-arkān (Lucknow, 1910), p. 122, noting the Prophet's varying his route, but without comment on its political significance. On the family of scholars to which he belonged, see Francis Robinson, The ̀Ulama of Farangi Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia (London, 2001).
54 Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Stanford, 2012), p. 75. This work was first published in 1930.
55 HA, vol. ii, p. 96.
56 Ibid., p. 91.
57 Ibid., pp. 86, 100.
58 Vladimir Minorsky, ‘A civil and military review in Fars in 881/1476’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 10.1 (1939), pp. 141–178; on the scholars and Sufis in it, see pp. 152–154, 170; quotation at p. 153.
59 Bell follows Foucault here, who predicated the space for resistance on a clear distinction between power and coercion. As he put it, ‘without the possibility of recalcitrance power would be equivalent to a physical determination’. Michel Foucault, ‘The subject and power’, in idem, Power, (ed.) James D. Faubion (New York, 2000), p. 342; quoted, from a different edition, in Bell, Ritual Theory, pp. 200–201. One need not, however, agree with Foucault's view of power as necessarily distinct from coercion to take his point about resistance.
60 Abhishek Kaicker, The King and the People: Sovereignty and Popular Politics in Mughal Delhi (New York, 2020), pp. 227–255.
61 Syed Ameer Ali, The Spirit of Islam (London, 1922), p. 162.
62 Ibid., pp. 172, 162, respectively, for the two quotations.
63 Ibid., p. 182.
64 Khalifa Abdul Hakim, Islamic Ideology, 2nd edn (Lahore, 1953), p. 122. On Abdul Hakim, see Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Islam in Pakistan: A History (Princeton, 2018), pp. 58–59, 208–209.
65 Abdul Hakim, Islamic Ideology, p. 123.
66 See Iqbal, Reconstruction, pp. 71–75; and the quotation above, n. 54.
67 Fazlur Rahman, Islam, 2nd edn (Chicago, 2002).
68 Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an (Chicago, 2009), p. 62; first published in 1980. Cf. ibid., p. 29, on worship as ‘service to God’, discussed in the context of the Quranic idea of taqwa, which he understands as conscience.
69 Sayyid Abul-Àla Mawdudi, Risāla-i dīniyyāt, 4th printing (Pathankot, 1943; first published in 1939), pp. 108 (on the daily prayers); 109 (on the Friday prayer); 110–111 (on fasting); 113 (on zakat); 117 (on hajj).
70 Sayyid Abul-Àla Mawdudi, Khutbāt (Lahore, 2012), pp. 105–106.
71 Sayyid Abul-Hasan Ali Nadwi, ̀Asr-i hāzir main dīn kī tafhīm wa tashrīh (Karachi, n.d.), pp. 85–91.
72 Ali, Spirit, p. 186. Ghazali's Ihyā is among the works Ameer Ali had used in his Spirit of Islam.
73 See Ali, Syed Ameer, The Spirit of Islam or the Life and Teachings of Mohammed (Calcutta, 1902), pp. xii–xiiiGoogle Scholar; Smith, W. C., Modern Islam in India: A Social Analysis (London, 1946), p. 49Google Scholar.
74 HA, vol. ii, pp. 118–120.
75 Abdul Hakim, Islamic Ideology, pp. 277–278. Though he does not identify his source, Abdul Hakim is referring here to HA, vol. ii, pp. 118–120.
76 Phulati, al-Qawl al-jalī, pp. 320–321.
77 See the anonymous manuscripts included in Islamic Manuscripts, new series #662, Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library, ff. 240b–251a (on the 10 religious [dīnī] and 30 worldly [dunyā’ī] benefits of reciting the Sayfī prayer); ff. 251a–253b (the guidelines for this recitation); ff. 263a–280b (the text of this prayer); ff. 280b–290a (the supplicatory prayers that are to follow this recitation).
78 Phulati, al-Qawl al-jalī, p. 382.
79 Ibid., p. 321. It is worth noting that Wali Allah, too, had received the authorisation for the Sayfī prayer from a Shattārī Sufi master in Lahore, while returning from the Hijaz in 1732. See Allah, Shah Wali, Intibāh fi salāsil awliyā Allāh (Delhi, 1893), p. 138Google Scholar.
80 Cf. Rahman, ‘Dream’, pp. 178–179.
81 Nasim Ahmad Faridi (ed.), Makātīb-i Hazrat Shāh Wali Allah Muhaddith Dihlawī, two vols (Rampur, 2004), vol. i, part 2, p. 329 (#85). Though this work has been published in two volumes, the first volume itself comprises two parts and all of Wali Allah letters published here are to be found in that two-part first volume.
82 Faridi (ed.), Makātīb, vol. i, part 2, pp. 331–332 (#87). The letter is addressed to his disciple Baba ̀Usman Kashmiri.
83 Humphrey, Caroline and Laidlaw, James, The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship (Oxford, 1994), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; emphasis in the original. Cf. ibid., p. 89.
84 Powers, Paul R., Intent in Islamic Law: Motive and Meaning in Medieval Sunni Fiqh (Leiden, 2006), pp. 61–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; quotation at p. 73.
85 Humphrey and Laidlaw, Archetypal Actions, p. 187.
86 Allah, Shah Wali, al-Khayr al-kathīr (Dabhel, 1933), p. 102Google Scholar. Under the regulation of the household, he notes the unifying function of ritual; under politics, its ability to restrain people from oppression through its constant reminders of God.