Ziarats, shrines and the urs: saints' graves in Pashtun life

At a glance

• A ziarat (زیارت) is a saint's grave and also the visit made to it. Raverty's dictionary of 1860 glosses it as "A pilgrimage, visiting a shrine. 2. A shrine, the tomb of a saint". [7]

• Most are small. The British gazetteers of Zhob and Loralai, compiled about 1905 to 1907, found a patron saint in almost every village graveyard, marked by a heap of stones, poles and rags, horns and bells. [4, 5]

• The great shrines have keepers who descend from the saint, land or tithes, a free kitchen and a yearly urs. A council of thirteen, one man for each Kakakhel clan, has run Ziarat Kaka Sahib since 2003 without the government's religious department. [8]

• People ask shrines for rain, cures, charms against snake-bite and children. [4]

• Deobandi scholars allow a visit to read the Fatiha but forbid the urs and any building over a grave. Militants went further: Rahman Baba's tomb was bombed on 5 March 2009 and Kaka Sahib's in October 2012. [1, 2, 14, 17]

The grave and the visit

Raverty gives the word its two meanings in one entry, the pilgrimage and the tomb, and lists a phrase for Thursday that he translates "The Day of Pilgrimage". [7] He also lists nazr (نذر) as "A gift, a present, an offering". [7] Thursday is still the night. Social-work researchers from the University of Peshawar, writing in 2022, spent three Thursday nights at Rahman Baba's shrine and describe a mass gathering there after the late night prayer. [6]

Mountstuart Elphinstone, who led the British mission to the Afghan king at Peshawar and published his account in 1815, wrote that the places where holy men are buried, or which their deeds had marked, "are still considered as sacred, and each of the most celebrated is a safe asylum even from revenge for blood". [3] He gave one proof from the Yusufzai country: a clan marching out to battle would leave its women in such a place and trust to their safety if it lost. [3] The holy families who keep the great shrines, and the saints of Swat and Buner, are described in Religion among Pashtuns and the Akhund of Swat.

The small ziarat is plain. The Zhob gazetteer of 1907 says shrines were "ubiquitous", almost every village graveyard having a patron saint who "in his life time was a village or tribal elder". [5] Most consisted of "little more than a heap of stones or a rough mud or stone enclosure", sometimes a mud hut, "surrounded by some poles to which rags, horns or bells are attached". [5] The Loralai gazetteer says the same, and adds that reverence for such saints was strongest among the Kakars. [4] It also lists rag-trees, trees that had come into veneration "for some reason or other" and were covered with rags; one, the Pir Sharawan, stood by the road between Mekhtar and Tor. Heaps of stones at watersheds and tribal boundaries marked where a saint or tribal leader had rested for a while. [4]

The gazetteer's stories show what people said of their saints. Shah Husain Nika, an Isa Khel Kakar buried at Urgassa, was said to have had horns like a goat. [5] Haro Ana, a Tehnri woman who lived a virgin all her life, has a shrine four miles from Chautair marked by a few flags and a wooden shed. The Loralai account says that when some 200 Wanechi men went after a Dumar party of about 1,500 that had taken their cattle, they prayed at her shrine on the way and took the cattle back. [4] Both are given as local tradition.

The shrine of Husain Nika, on the bank of the Kundar river at the northern edge of Zhob, has its own story in the gazetteer. The saint's dog could tell how many pilgrims were coming and barked once for each. When it barked three times and four men arrived, the saint killed it in anger, then learned that one of the four was a Hindu who had pretended to be a Muslim. In remorse he built the dog a shrine and left word that his followers should visit the dog's grave first and his own second, which, the gazetteer says, they still did. [5] The gazetteer gives it as local tradition.

Keepers, land and money

The keeper of Husain Nika's shrine, the Zhob gazetteer says, traced his descent in a direct line through twenty-three generations from the saint. The other men of the shrine lived at Inzar, five miles off, and attended in turn. [5] The shrine held a revenue-free grant of 62 acres at Inzar, 29 of them irrigated. The British granted it, the gazetteer says, at the request of the Sulaiman Khels, "with whom it is very desirable to maintain and cement political relations". [5] It adds that the Powindahs held the shrine in reverence, the Sulaiman Khels most of all. [5]

Dues were paid in the saint's name. At Pir Shah Mahmud's shrine at Dathi, in Barkhan, the Lunis gave his descendants one sheep per flock every year, the Nanda Nahars one-sixtieth of their grain, and the shrine held about 30 acres revenue-free. [4] For Sakhi Sarwar, the great Punjab shrine that Loralai's people also revered, the Loralai gazetteer quotes the Dera Ghazi Khan gazetteer: its guardians descend from three servants of Gannu, the man whose daughter the saint married. [4]

Nowadays the arrangements are looser, and communities run their own. Mian Feroz Shah Jamal Kakakhel told Dawn in 2015 that Ziarat Kaka Sahib was "not under the control of any government department including Auqaf" and that the Darbar council ran it. [8] Rahman Baba's shrine at Hazarkhwani, outside Peshawar, followed another course: the complex built there in 1992 at a cost of Rs20 million ran under a trust until 2005, when it passed to the provincial Directorate of Archives and Libraries with eight employees. [11] A union of 400 volunteers, the Khakrob, still serves the shrine. [12]

Offerings and the free meal

The Zhob gazetteer records what was said of the offerings at Husain Nika. The cauldron provided for cooking the sacrificial meat could not be filled, and no length of cloth could wholly cover the saint's grave, except when the votary's request met the saint's approval. [5] The sheep per flock given at Pir Shah Mahmud's shrine are another form of the same giving. [4]

Food is the part of shrine life that is still seen every day. Dawn's account of Ziarat Kaka Sahib lists a langar kitchen as part of the complex, and says the saint himself ran one for thousands of pilgrims, a claim it takes from the Kakakhel writer Bahadar Shah Zafar Kakakhel. [8] At Rahman Baba's shrine, the Peshawar researchers write, breakfast, lunch, dinner and tea were served free to everyone "irrespective of his/her appearance". [6] Two students from a Peshawar seminary eating the free meal there told Dawn in 2013 that they condemned the bombing of shrines of such people. [11] (See also Pashtun food and hospitality.)

Asking for a cure or a child

The Loralai gazetteer says that among the Muslims of the district "there is a general belief in the intervention of ancestors and saints in the pursuits of daily life". Saints "are invoked to cure diseases, to avert calamities, to bring rain, and to bless the childless with offspring". [4] Sayyids, sheikhs and mullas were credited with curing snake-bite, granting children, averting rust and locusts and exorcising evil spirits. [4] The gazetteer calls it "superstition", which is the compiler's word, written as an outsider. (For the spirits and amulets beside this, see Pashtun folk beliefs.)

Specific cases are recorded. Four families of Sheikhs at Hazar Shahr, in Duki, gave "enchanted salt" that was dissolved in water and put on the bite, drunk, and sprinkled over holes where snakes might be; each cultivator's family in Barkhan paid them a path (two seers) of wheat or juari a year. [4] Pir Abdul Hakim, buried at Chotiali, was said to have made all the snakes of Toba Achakzai harmless, and his shrine drew people from the district and from as far as Kandahar. [4] In Zhob the dust taken from the shrines of local saints and the amulets of mullas "play an important part" in the people's own remedies. A patient in Hindubagh with syphilis, the gazetteer says, went to a Sayyid family at Pishin for an amulet. [5]

One modern study looks at the shrine as a place of refuge. Ahmed, Sajid and Shakeel, of the University of Peshawar, call such shrines "informal mental health institutions", where visitors "experience a sense of calm and peace". [6] They describe people with mental illness or intellectual disability among those at Rahman Baba's shrine, and report that the malangs, the wandering mystics there, smoked charas and recited Rahman Baba's poetry together after the night prayer, though never inside the tomb or mosque. [6] The authors write as sociologists; the claim that the shrine works as a clinic is theirs.

The urs

An urs is the saint's death anniversary, kept as a gathering. The one at Ziarat Kaka Sahib is the best recorded. Mian Rahmat Karim Kalakhel told Dawn in 2015 that it ran a week and included "raising of flag (Nishaan), laying of floral wreath on the shrine, Khatmul Quran, Mahafil-i-Zikr, Mehfil-i-Samaa (Qawali) outside the Dargha, distribution of langar and Chiraghaan (illumination)", with sports for the young men. [8] By then, he said, security had cut it to two days. [8] The 2016 urs added a grave-washing and a mela cheraghan, a fair of lamps, with earthen lamps lit around the shrine. [9] The 2019 urs ran a week again, with swings, stunts and a volleyball tournament beside the Quran recitation, qawwali and food. [10] The same Dawn report says many women and girls took part for the first time, and that stalls were set up for women and children. [10] A pilgrim from the Tirah valley, Wali Rehman Afridi, told Dawn that coming every year was "our family tradition". [8]

Rahman Baba's urs grew out of poetry. Dawn gives two dates for the first poetry reading at the grave: 1938, by the Markazi Naukhar Adabi Jirga, and 1940, by Bazm-i-Adab. [11, 12] The yearly recital, it says, "soon turned into annual Urs". [11] Poets composed verses in Rahman Baba's style, seminars took up his work, and rabab players and qawwali singers sang his poems, a custom Dawn says went on for almost seventy years. [12] (See rabab, attan and Pashtun music and Rahman Baba.) A devotee told Dawn that 30,000 to 50,000 people used to come for the three days. [12]

Women and the shrine

Elphinstone's Yusufzai left their women at the shrine for safety, and the gazetteers name women among the saints. [3, 4] Before the 2009 attack, a letter delivered to Rahman Baba's management warned against its promotion of "shrine culture" and noted that women came to pray there. [14] After it, Dawn quoted Sherin Gula Bibi, 70, who had visited with her family and now did not dare: "Baba's shrine was a source of solace for me. I would get mental relief." [12] A devotee said women especially stayed away. [12] At Kaka Sahib in 2019 the visible presence of women at the urs was noted as new. [10]

Those who honour shrines

People who keep shrines put the case in terms of what the saint was. Mian Feroz Jamal of the Kakakhel called Kaka Sahib "a symbol of spirituality and enlightenment". [8] Yusuf Ali Dilsoz of the Rahman Baba Adabi Jirga said the poet's "teachings were for all humanity" and that non-Muslims revered him too. [13] A Peshawar University professor, the Associated Press reported, told a local television station that in many Pashtun homes Rahman Baba's poems were kept beside the Quran. [14] A visitor to the damaged shrine told the AP that trying to destroy the tomb was "a very great shame". [14]

Those who do not

The strictest objection is that grave rituals put something between a believer and God. The Darul Ifta of Darul Uloom Deoband in India gives the Deobandi ruling in two fatwas. One says: "It is not allowed to celebrate the urs of the dead." It quotes a passage of the Tafsir Mazhari, citing the Fatawa Rashidiyya, that forbids what ignorant people do at the graves of saints, such as prostrating and circling them and setting up lamps and mosques, and the gathering after a year, as at festivals, which they call urs. The Darul Ifta adds that it is prohibited to build a shrine or mausoleum. [1] The other says visiting is lawful: "It is lawful to go to the grave of pious elders to read Fatiha etc, and if possible, one should try to stop the bida'h and nonsense done there. It does not imply favouring the Hindu practices and the wrong practices of Barelvis." [2]

Militant groups went from the ruling to the bomb. The Associated Press wrote that hard-line Muslims oppose praying at tombs of holy men as un-Islamic, and that the extremists also hold that Islam forbids men and women to mix. [14] Dawn's wire report of the 2012 Kaka Sahib bombing says the militants "claim visiting shrines is not allowed". [18] An IRNA report of April 2009 says Taliban holding Pir Baba's shrine in Buner banned visitors, "saying they were indulged in acts not allowed in Islam", and that a local Taliban leader said it would stay shut except for prayers in the mosque on its grounds. [15] The Express Tribune in 2010 said Lashkar-e-Islam, "which follows the Deobandi and Panjpiri creeds", had claimed almost all attacks on shrines in Khyber Agency and Peshawar. A member of the Panjpir school told the paper their "aim is to eradicate bidaat (excess in religion)" and denied targeting innocent people. [16]

Other Muslims who share the objections condemned the attacks. The Tribune reported that suicide attacks on shrines "have been condemned by Deobandi and Barelvi scholars", and quoted a Jamaat-ud-Dawa spokesman, whose group follows the Ahle Hadith school, saying they were "a plan to defame Islam by Islam". [16] After the Kaka Sahib bombing in 2012, the procession of protest included men from the Jamaat-i-Islami, the Pakistan People's Party, the Awami National Party, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and the JUI-F. [17] Qazi Hussain Ahmad of the Jamaat-i-Islami called it a conspiracy of anti-Islam elements, while Mian Feroz Jamal said: "It may be Taliban, Americans or Jews, but we warn them against bombing shrines." [17]

The attacks, 2009 to 2012

On 5 March 2009 a bomb went off at Rahman Baba's mausoleum in Hazarkhwani while disciples were preparing for the three-day urs. [12, 14] The AP reported that it damaged one corner of the shrine and hurt no one. [14] The Tribune later reported that the bombs had been planted on the pillars, that the outer structure was torn down and that only the grave stood untouched. [13] The government set aside Rs35 million for rebuilding, Dawn says Presidents Zardari and Karzai both called for the shrine to be rebuilt, and the cost came to Rs39 million; the shrine reopened on 30 September 2012 in a ceremony kept from the media for security. [11, 13] The numbers who came fell: the librarian told Dawn in 2013 that about 1,500 visitors a day had come before the blast and about 800 after, and a 2015 report put the count at about 300. [11, 12] The Tribune's figures were 1,000 to 1,200 before and barely 300. [13]

In April 2009 Taliban took Pir Baba's shrine in Buner. [15] (See Pir Baba of Buner and Buner.) On the second day of Eid al-Adha in 2012, a bomb went off outside the gate of Ziarat Kaka Sahib while pilgrims were there. Dawn counted four dead and 32 hurt, and the wire report said four dead and 23 hurt. [17, 18] The shrine was not badly damaged, and the Kakakhel elders led the protest from the shrine itself. [17] (See Kaka Sahib.)