3-10-15 REVISED

Religion W4326: Sufism in South Asia

Spring 2015
Professor Katherine Pratt Ewing
Department of Religion
Columbia University
5:30
Office: 214 Knox Hall
Email: ke2131@columbia.edu
Phone: 212-851-9280

Class time: Wed 2:10-4 PM

Room: 80 Claremont, room 201
Office hours:
Tuesday 4-

Course Description:
Sufism has been described as the mystical side of Islam. Throughout the
history of Islam, Sufi ideas, practices, and institutions have borne a complex,
intimate, and sometimes fraught relationship with other aspects of Islamic
tradition and practice. This seminar for advanced undergraduates and
graduate students will examine Sufism in South Asia as a spiritual, ethical
and self-forming activity that has been profoundly affected by the historical,
sociocultural, political, and everyday environments in which is it experienced
and practiced. Beginning with the initial question of why Sufism has become
such a target of controversy and ambivalence among Muslims in the modern
world, we will consider how modern notions of the self have shaped scholarly
understandings of what Sufism is. Through close reading of selected texts,
we will then trace the interplay between the changing controversies and
tensions that Sufis in South Asia have struggled with over time and their
understandings of self, society and divinity.
The course assumes some familiarity with the history of Islam and the place
of Sufism within the Islamic tradition. The syllabus thus begins with a list of
suggested readings that you may use to enhance your background
knowledge before the course begins.
Course requirements:
1) Three 4 page essays based on course readings, due on the weeks when
you are assigned to lead class discussion with a partner or two. 10% for each
paper/presentation. (Use Piazza on Courseworks to prepare for your class
discussion.)
2) 2-paragraph weekly posts on your Courseworks Blog page that raise and
address a thoughtful question about the weeks reading. Posts are due by
midnight each Tuesday evening, except in the weeks when your
essays/presentations are due. Be prepared to discuss your question in class.
(10%).
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3) 2 page abstract of your final paper, pus list of outside sources and
relevant course readings, due on April 14. (10%)
3) Final 20 page paper on a topic of your own choosing, in consultation with
Professor Ewing. It must draw significantly on course material. (50%).
Policy on academic integrity:
In accordance with the Columbia University Honor Code, you are
required to complete each assignment in this course with academic
integrity. By registering for and participating in this class, you
hereby affirm that you will not plagiarize, use unauthorized
materials, or give or receive illegitimate help on assignments,
papers, or examinations. In turn, your work will be evaluated
equitably and honestly.
Suggestions for background reading before the course begins:
What are the questions/controversies about sufism raised by these authors
and by/within the traditions they describe?

Schimmel,Annemarie.1975.MysticalDimensionsofIslam.ChapelHill:
UniversityofNorthCarolinaPress.
Sells, Michael. 1996. Early Islamic Mysticism. New York: Paulist Press.
(especially Preface and introduction, which are posted on Courseworks)
Ernst, Carl W. 2011. Sufism: An Introduction to the Mystical Tradition
of Islam Boston: Shambala.
Weekly Schedule of readings and assignments:
Week 1, Jan 21: South Asian Sufism and Islamic Traditions: Where do
we begin?
Includes discussion and contextualization of background readings.
Week 2, Jan 28: Controversies and Problematizations of Sufism
De Jong, Frederick and Bernd Radtke. 1999. Introduction. Islamic
Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and
Polemics. Boston: Brill, pp. 1-21.
Safi, Omid. 2000. Review of Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen
Centuries of Controversies and Polemics by Frederick de Jong; Bernd
Radtke. Islamic Studies, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Summer 2000), pp. 325-328.

Keane, Webb. 2002. Sincerity, Modernity, and the Protestants.

Cultural Anthropology 17,1:65-92.
Green, Nile. 2004. Emerging Approaches to the Sufi Traditions of
South Asia: Between Texts, Territories, and the Transcendent. South
Asia Research 24:123-148.
Suggested:
Van Ess, Josef. 1999. Sufism and its Opponents. Reflections on Topoi,
Tribulations, and Transformations. In Islamic Mysticism Contested:
Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics, pp. 22-44.
Keane, Webb. 2008. The evidence of the senses and the materiality of
religion. JRAI 14:110-127.
Week 3, Feb 4: Early Sufism in India
Al- Hujwiri, Ali bin Uthman. Kashf al-Mahjub. Reynold A. Nicholson,
trans. Scanned pages. (d. 1072)
Nizami, Khaliq Ahmad. 1957. Some Aspects of Khnqah Life in
Medieval India.
Studia Islamica , No. 8, pp. 51-69
Steinfels, Amina. 2012. Knowledge Before Action: Islamic Learning
and Sufi Practice in the Life of Sayyid Jalal al-din Bukhari Makhdum-i
Jahaniyan, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. (A
Suhrawardi master) [book ordered]
Week 4, Feb 11: The Spread of Islam through Sufism
Eaton, Richard. 1993. The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 12041760. Berkeley: University of California Press, ch 5 (Mass Conversion
to Islam: Theories and Protagonists, p.113-134) ch 7 (Mughal Culture
and its Diffusion, pp. 159-193), conclusion (pp. 305-315).
Barbara Metcalf, 2009. Ibn Battuta meets Shah Jalal ud-Din Tabrizi in
Bengal. Metcalf, ed. Islam in South Asia: in Practice, (NJ: Princeton
University Press), pp.138-143.
Stewart, Tony K. 2013. Religion in the Subjunctive: Vaisnava
Narrative, Sufi Counter-Narrative in Early Modern Bengal. The Journal
of Hindu Studies 2013,6:5272.
Bigelow, Anna. 2009. Narratives of the Life of Haider Shaykh in
Punjab. In Metcalf, ed., pp. 144-157.
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Week 5, Feb 18:

The Chishti Order

*Carl Ernst and Bruce Lawrence, Chapters 1-5: The Sufi Martyrs of
Love, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp.1-104. (book ordered)
Week 6, Feb 25: Sufism in Mughal India (1526-1857)
Muzaffar Alam, "The Debate within: A Sufi Critique of religious law,
tasawwuf and politics in Mughal India. South Asian History and
Culture, Vol. 2, No. 2, April 2011, 138159.
Ernst, Carl W. 1996. Sufism and Yoga according to Muhammad
Ghawth. Sufi spring. Pp. 9-13.
*Elias, Jamal J. 1998. Death before Dying: The Sufi Poems of Sultan
Bahu (1630-1691). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 145 pp.
(book ordered)
Week 7, March 4: The Naqshbandi Order
Buehler, A. F. (1998). The Naqshbandi in India from their Foundation
to the Colonial Period (ch 3, pp. 55-81) and Redefining the Shaykhs
Role in the Nqshbandi Sufi Tradition (ch 9, pp. 190-223) in Buehler,
Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: The Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of
the Mediating Sufi Shaykh. Univ of South Carolina Press.
Ernst, Carl. 2009. The Daily Life of a Saint, Ahmad Sirhindi, by Badr alDin Sirhindi, in Metcalf, pp. 158-165.
Digby, Simon. 1975. Review of Friedmann, Y. (1971). Shaikh Ahmad
Sirhindi. An outline of his thought and a study of his image in the eyes
of posterity, Montreal, McGill, Queen's UP.
Buehler, Arthur. 2012. Ahmad Sirhindi: Nationalist Hero, Good Sufi, or
Bad Sufi? in Clinton Bennett abd Charles M. Ramsey, eds. South
Asian Sufis: Devotion, Deviation, and Destiny. London: Bloomsbury,
pp. 141-162.
Week 8, March 11: NO CLASS (cancelled)
Sufism in South India
*Green, Nile. 2006. Indian Sufism since the Seventeenth Century:
Saints, Books and
Empires in the Muslim Deccan. New York: Routledge. (also available
electronically through Columbia Library), preface (pp. xiii-xv), pp. xiii133- (intro, ch 1-3))
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SPRING BREAK: NO class March 18

Week 9, March 25: Debates about Sufism and the position of
Muslims in colonial India.
* Ewing, Katherine. 1997. Saddhus and Faqirs: The Sufi Pir as a
Colonial Construct. In Arguing Sainthood, pp. 41-64.
Gaborieau, Marc. 1999. Criticizing the Sufis: The Debate in EarlyNineteenth Century India. In Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke, eds.
Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and
Polemics. Leiden: Brill, pp. 452-467.
Ingram, Brannon. "Sufis, Scholars and Scapegoats: Rashid Amad
Gangohi (d. 1905) and the Deobandi Critique of Sufism." The Muslim
World 99.3 (2009): 478-501.
*Green, Nile. 2006. Indian Sufism since the Seventeenth Century:
Saints, Books and
Empires in the Muslim Deccan. New York: Routledge. (also available
electronically through Columbia Library), pp. 82-161.
*Iqbal, Muhammad. 1930 (new edition 2013). The Reconstruction of
Religious Thought in Islam. Stanford University Press, intro, ch 4, 6
(pp. xi-xxx, 76-98, 116-142)
Schimmel, The Age of Iqbal. In Islam in the Subcontinent. Pp. 216247.
SCANMaududi,SayyidAbulA`la.1963.AShortHistoryoftheRevivalistMovement
inIslam.Lahore:IslamicPublicationsLtd.(shortexcerpt)[wholetextonscribd:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/77813944/AShortHistoryoftheRevivalistMovementin
IslambyMaulanaMaududi(chapter3,pp.4478;appendix23,pp.122139)
How some recent scholarly questions shape the Study of sufism
Week 10, April 1: Sufism and the Body
*Kugle, Scott. 2007. Sufis and Saints Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality,
and Sacred Power in Islam. University of North Carolina Press.
Introduction, Conclusion (pp. 1-42, 265-294); choose one of 5
chapters to read closely and present in class.
Week 11, April 8: Sufism and Women.
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Pemberton, Kelly. 2006, Women Pirs, Saintly Succession, and Spiritual

Guidance in South Asian Sufism. The Muslim World, 96: 6187
(compare for overlap with book)
Pemberton, Kelly. 2010. Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in
India (University of South Carolina Press.) Introduction and ch 1, pp. 166. (Columbia library: online),
Netty Bonouvrie, Female Sufi Saints on the Indian Subcontinent, in Female
Stereotypes in Religious Traditions, edited by Ria Kloppenborg and Wouter J.
Hanegraaff, (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1995), pp. 109-122.
Hermansen, Marcia. 2009. Two Sufis on Molding the New Muslim
Woman: Khwaja Hasan Nizami (1878-1955) and Hazrat Inayat Khan
(1882-1927) in Barbara Metcalf ed. Islam in South Asia in Practice
Princeton, , 326-338.
April 14: ABSTRACT OF FINAL PAPER DUE
Week 12, April 15: Sufi Shrines and the Problem of Communal
tensions in India today
*Flueckiger, Joyce Burkalter. In Amma's Healing Room: Gender and
Vernacular Islam in South India.
Bellamy, Carol. 2006. Smoking is Good for You: Absence, Presence,
and the Ecumenical Appeal of Indian Islamic Healing Centers. Hindu
Studies 10:207224.
Bigelow, Anna. Sharing the Sacred: Practicing Pluralism in Muslim
North India. NY: Oxford University
Week 13, April 22: Sufis, Salafis and Islamic Reform in Pakistan
today
*Ewing, Katherine Pratt. 1997. Arguing Sainthood: Modernity,
Psychoanalysis and Islam. Duke University Press, chs 1, 3, 4 (pp. 1-40,
65-127).
* Robert Rozehnal, 2007. Sufism and the politics of Islamic identity.
In Islamic Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in Twenty-First Century
Pakistan. New York, Palgrave Macmillan.
Philippon, Alix. 2014. The Role of Sufism in the Identity Construction,
Mobilization and Political Activism of the Barelwi Movement in
Pakistan. PARTECIPAZIONE E CONFLITTO, North America, 7, mar.
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2014. Available at: <http://sibaese.unisalento.it/index.php/paco/article/view/13757>.

MalikJamal.1990.TheLuminousNurani:Charismaandpoliticalmobilizationamong
theBarelwisinPakistan,in:specialissueonPerson,MythandSocietyinSouthAsian
Islam,Socialanalysis,28:Werbner,P.,ed.,pp.3750.
Hicks, Rosemary R. 2011. "Comparative Religion and the Cold War
Transformation of Indo-Persian "Mysticism" into Liberal Islamic
Modernity." in Markus Dressler and Arvind Mandair, eds. Secularism
and Religion Making. Oxford, pp.
Week 14, April 29: South Asian Sufism goes transnational.
* Ernst, Carl W. Ernst and Bruce B. Lawrence. 2002. The Chishti Niche
in the Global Sufi Network. In Sufi Martyrs of Love: Chishti Sufism in
South Asia and Beyond. Palgrave Macmillan, pp.