At the Shrine of the Red Sufi

At the Shrine of the Red Sufi
Author: Jürgen Wasim Frembgen
Publisher: OUP Pakistan
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012-04-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780199063079

The annual festival celebrated in honour of Pakistan's most popular Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar is full of spiritual rapture, ecstasy, trance, magic and devotion. In his vividly written narrative the renowned anthropologist and Islamologist, Jürgen Wasim Frembgen, takes the reader along with him to experience this unique ritual event and spectacle with all the senses. Stefan Weidner, a renowned writer and expert on Islam, has judged this book [German language version] as "one of the most exciting reports we owe to German cultural anthropology in recent decades".

The Sufi Saint of Jam

The Sufi Saint of Jam
Author: Shivan Mahendrarajah
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2021-04-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108879497

The Sunni saint cult and shrine of Ahmad-i Jam has endured for 900 years. The shrine and its Sufi shaykhs secured patronage from Mongols, Kartids, Tamerlane, and Timurids. The cult and shrine-complex started sliding into decline when Iran's shahs took the Shiʿi path in 1501, but are today enjoying a renaissance under the (Shiʿi) Islamic Republic of Iran. The shrine's eclectic architectural ensemble has been renovated with private and public funds, and expertise from Iran's Cultural Heritage Organization. Two seminaries (madrasa) that teach Sunni curricula to males and females were added. Sunni and Shiʿi pilgrims visit to venerate their saint. Jami mystics still practice ʿirfan ('gnosticism'). Analyzed are Ahmad-i Jam's biography and hagiography; marketing to sultans of Ahmad as the 'Guardian of Kings'; history and politics of the shrine's catchment area; acquisition of patronage by shrine and shaykhs; Sufi doctrines and practices of Jami mystics, including its Timurid-era Naqshbandi Sufis.

'We Are Lovers of the Qalandar'

'We Are Lovers of the Qalandar'
Author: Jürgen Wasim Frembgen
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2021-07-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9789697340156

This book is about Pakistan's most popular Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar whose shrine in Sehwan Sharif is one of the most fascinating sanctuaries in the Muslim world. At the time of pilgrimage, this flourishing cult centre becomes a vibrant place of ecstatic religiosity marked by intense forms of devotion. The present ethnographic study is organized around three themes: piety, pilgrimage, and ritual. Thus, its focus is first on visual culture and 'material religion' as well as various aspects of religious aesthetics which highlight how sacred spaces are constructed and shaped. Secondly, it deals with the year-round pilgrimage, mainly investigating pilgrims from Punjab (including a unique life history of a female 'Sufi lineage' from Lahore), but also discussing remarkable ritual agents in the cult. The third theme is the spectacular trance dance known as dhamāl. On February 16, 2017, a suicide bomber executed a horrible massacre among the dancing devotees. This work, which is the fruit of the author's field-research between 2003 and 2015 in Sindh and Punjab, aims to contribute to a 'Sufism observed' which often seems to be neglected in mainly text-based Sufi studies. It is an academic companion to his earlier At the Shrine of the Red Sufi (OUP, 2011).

The Red Thread

The Red Thread
Author: Beatrix Pfleiderer
Publisher: Aakar Books
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2006
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9788187879633

Foreword Preface: Two Fables 1. Introduction 2. The Cunning Women 3. The Question, the Journey and the Field The QuestionThe JourneyThe Field4. Mira Datar Dargah ArrivalThe Tomb and its Order5. The Women's Stage Cult and Cure at the Mira Datar Dargah IDramatis Personae IDramatis Personae IIThe Body, its Demon and the Hair: the BallaThe ConfessionThe Curse, the Spirits and their MagiciansThe Female Anthropologist's DreamA Drama: Concerning Bees, Ethnographers andtheir SpiritsThe Goddess and the Human SacrificesThe Punishments: On the Reversal of TimeThe Contest of the DemonsThe Battle: the Sain.

Nocturnal Music in the Land of the Sufis

Nocturnal Music in the Land of the Sufis
Author: Jurgen Wasim Frembgen
Publisher: OUP Pakistan
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012-03-29
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780199065066

In Nocturnal Music in the Land of the Sufis Jürgen Wasim Frembgen takes the reader along on his fascinating mystical journeys into the musical worlds of Pakistan. In dense description he tells about his personal experiences and emotions while participating in ecstatic nights of music at Sufi shrines, attending trance rituals and listening enraptured to sublime and refined classical music in private music rooms in Lahore. In his ethnographic narrative he unfolds authentic cultural contexts and life worlds in which music is deeply embedded, tracing how music is perceived and 'tasted' by listeners.

Sufi Encounters

Sufi Encounters
Author: Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2019-05-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1786783444

An unparalleled exploration of Sufism as it is practised around the world, describing meetings with today's enlightened teachers as well as including wonderfully inspiring translations of the great Sufi masters of the past. Ultimately, this book acts as a guide to the Sufi path and offers wise insight into the meaning and purpose of life. A compelling view of Sufi history together with vivid personal remembrances of living mystics. This is an inspiring and at the same time beautifully subtle book, with light-filled insights on every page." – Saadi Shakur Chishti, author of The Sufi Book of Life The Sufi path described in this book leads the seeker past ordinary states of consciousness towards a new experience of infinitude that is the source of the universe. In this stage there is no duality or otherness, but instead infinitude, the Original Oneness, from which all dualities and attributes emanate. The book is at once an autobiography, a didactic treatise and a literary opus full of wonderful translations of the words of earlier Sufis, as well as the author's own poetry. It describes Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri’s life quest to connect today’s world with classical times, especially through his meetings with enlightened Sufis all over the globe. Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri also addresses profound Sufi teachings concerning the nature of humankind, the cosmos and God, using clear and simple language to address difficult doctrinal issues as only a master who has digested fully such knowledge could do. The book also reveals much about the present-day Islamic world where, despite the tragedies that are to be seen everywhere, tradition and spirituality survive. This is a metaphysical and spiritual guide to the Sufi path that ultimately offers insight into the meaning and purpose of life.

Sufi Women of South Asia

Sufi Women of South Asia
Author: Tahera Aftab
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 619
Release: 2022-05-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004467181

In Sufi Women of South Asia. Veiled Friends of God, Tahera Aftab, drawing upon various sources, offers the first unique and comprehensive account of South Asian Sufi women, from the eleventh to the twentieth century.

Historical Dictionary of Sufism

Historical Dictionary of Sufism
Author: John Renard
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 583
Release: 2015-11-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0810879743

The most broadly accepted explanation of Sufism is the etymological derivation of the term from the Arabic for “wool,” ṣūf, associating practitioners with a preference for poor, rough clothing. This explanation clearly identifies Sufism with ascetical practice and the importance of manifesting spiritual poverty through material poverty. In fact, some of the earliest “Western” descriptions of individuals now widely associated with the larger phenomenon of Sufism identified them with the Arabic term faqīr, mendicant, or its most common Persian equivalent, darwīsh. Sufism, as presented here embraces a host of features including the ritual, institutional, psychological, hermeneutical, artistic, literary, ethical, and epistemological. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Sufism contains a chronology, an introduction, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1,000 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, major historical figures and movements, practices, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Sufism.

Sufis

Sufis
Author: Idries Shah
Publisher: eBook Partnership
Total Pages: 540
Release: 2020-06-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1784790052

The Sufis is the best introduction ever written to the philosophical and mystical school traditionally associated with the Islamic world.Powerful, concise, and intensely thought-provoking, it sums up over a thousand years of Eastern thought - the product of some of the greatest minds humanity has ever produced - into a single work, presenting timeless ideas in a fresh and contemporary style.When the book was originally published in 1964, it launched its author, Idries Shah, on to the international stage, attracting the attention of thinkers and writers such as J. D. Salinger, Doris Lessing, Ted Hughes and Robert Graves.It introduced to the Western world concepts which have subsequently become commonly accepted, varying from the psychological importance of attention and humour, to the use of traditional tales as teaching instruments (what Shah termed 'teaching-stories'), and the historical debt owed by the West to the Middle East in matters scientific, literary and philosophical.As a primer for the many dozens of Sufi books that Shah later produced, it is unsurpassed, offering a clear window onto a community whose system of thought and action has long concerned itself with the advancement of the whole of humankind, and whose ideas about individuals and society, their purpose and direction, need to be understood now more than ever before.

The Cambridge Companion to Sufism

The Cambridge Companion to Sufism
Author: Lloyd Ridgeon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107018307

This book traces the evolution of Sufism from the formative period to the present.