Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T06:32:56.379Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Sovereign Violence: Temple Destruction in India and Shrine Desecration in Iran and Central Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2015

A. Azfar Moin*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

Was the destruction of Sufi and ‘Alid saint shrines as a rite of conquest in Iran and Central Asia a phenomenon comparable to the desecration of temples in war in India? With this question in mind, this essay examines the changing nature of Islamic kingship in premodern Iran and Central Asia and compares it to developments in Indic kingship. It begins with the thesis that the decline of the caliphate and the rise of Muslim saints and shrines in thirteenth-century Iran and Central Asia led to a new form of “shrine-centered” sovereignty practiced by the rulers of these regions. This development, in turn, gave rise to a notable pattern in which Muslim kings threatened or attacked the shrines of their enemies’ patron saints in times of war. A focus on this ritual violence, which remains neglected in the studies of Islamic iconoclasm and jihad, reveals how the protocols of violence and accommodation that governed these Muslim milieus became analogous to those enacted by Indic kings who also sacked temples of rival sovereigns in times of war. With the spread of Muslim shrines and the related belief that the “real” sovereign was not the caliph but the enshrined saint, Islam and Hinduism developed comparable grammars of “gifting” and “looting.” This argument allows for a new, transcultural perspective to examine the premodern history of India, Iran, and Central Asia, connected by the rise of Muslim saints and their shrines.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 A recent survey is in Kumar, Sunil, ed., Demolishing Myths or Mosques and Temples? Readings on History and Temple Desecration in Medieval India (Gurgaon, India: Three Essays Collective, 2008)Google Scholar.

2 Eaton, Richard M., “Muhammad bin Tughluq and Temples of the Deccan, 1321–26,” in Haidar, Navina Najat and Sardar, Marika, eds., Sultans of the South: Arts of India's Deccan Courts, 1323–1687 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011), 178–87Google Scholar; Eaton, Richard M., Temple Desecration and Muslim States in Medieval India (Gurgaon, India: Hope India Publications, 2004)Google Scholar; Flood, Finbarr Barry, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Flood, Finbarr Barry, “Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum,” Art Bulletin 84, 4 (2002): 641–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thapar, Romila, Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History (London: Verso, 2005)Google Scholar.

3 Lutgendorf, Philip, “Imagining Ayodhya: Utopia and Its Shadows in a Hindu Landscape,” International Journal of Hindu Studies 1, 1 (1997): 1954CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Granoff, Phyllis, “Tales of Broken Limbs and Bleeding Wounds: Responses to Muslim Iconoclasm in Medieval India,” East and West 41, 1/4 (1991): 189203Google Scholar; Davis, Richard H., Lives of Indian Images (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Pollock, Sheldon, “Ramayana and Political Imagination in India,” Journal of Asian Studies 52, 2 (1993): 261–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Willis, Michael D., “Religious and Royal Patronage in North India,” in Desai, Vishakha N. and Mason, Darielle, eds., Gods, Guardians, and Lovers: Temple Sculptures from North India, A.D. 700–1200 (New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1993), 4965Google Scholar; Willis, Michael D., The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual: Temples and the Establishment of the Gods (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Inden, Ronald, “The Temple and the Hindu Chain of Being,” Purusartha 8 (1985): 5187Google Scholar.

5 Willis, “Religious and Royal Patronage,” 62.

6 Inden, “Hindu Chain of Being,” 59; Inden, Ronald, Imagining India (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 237Google Scholar.

7 Lieberman, Victor B., Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, Volume 2: Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 715–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pollock, Sheldon, “India in the Vernacular Millennium: Literary Culture and Polity, 1000–1500,” Daedalus 127, 3 (1998): 4174Google Scholar.

8 Inden, Imagining India, 230; Eaton, Temple Desecration, 37; Davis, Lives, 57–84.

9 Willis, “Religious and Royal Patronage,” 59.

10 Arundhati, P., Royal Life in Manasollasa (New Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan, 1994), 66Google Scholar; quoted in Eaton, “Muhammad bin Tughluq,” 187, n. 18.

11 Eaton, “Muhammad bin Tughluq”; and Temple Desecration.

12 Kumar, Sunil, The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, 1192–1286 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007), 7Google Scholar; Flood, Objects of Translation, 156; Lieberman, Strange Parallels, vol. 2, 748, n. 318.

13 Flood, Objects of Translation, 41.

14 Hegewald, Julia A. B., “Domes, Tombs and Minarets: Islamic Influences on Jaina Architecture,” in Hardy, Adam, ed., The Temple in South Asia (London: British Association for South Asian Studies and the British Academy, 2007), 179–90Google Scholar.

15 Bellah, Robert N., Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Strathern, Alan, “Transcendentalist Intransigence: Why Rulers Rejected Monotheism in Early Modern Southeast Asia and Beyond,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, 2 (2007): 358–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 366.

17 Strathern, arguing about the implications for ruler conversion dilemmas in particular, has referred to a certain “transcendentalist intransigence” that results in resistance to conversion. He suggests that all transcendentalist systems share a potential for boundary consciousness, while indicating that there are profound differences between the ways that identities developed in monotheistic, Indic, and Sinic varieties (ibid., 366–67).

18 Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution, 210–323; Strathern, “Transcendentalist Intransigence,” 376–80.

19 Oakley, Francis, Kingship: The Politics of Enchantment (Malden: Blackwell, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A similar perspective on early Muslim kingship is found in al-Azmeh, Aziz, Muslim Kingship: Power and the Sacred in Muslim, Christian and Pagan Polities (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997)Google Scholar.

20 While the place of Hinduism in this scheme, as in many others, is ambiguous (see Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution, 509), the core features of a certain tension between the authority of kings and that of the clerisy are evident even in its case. See Strathern, “Transcendentalist Intransigence,” 360, n. 8, and 67, 78.

21 The “enactive” (mimetic, embodied) and “theoretic” (conceptual, cognitive) cultural forms are extensively discussed in Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution, 13–20, 273–82, passim.

22 Flood, Objects of Translation; Wagoner, Phillip B., “Sultan among Hindu Kings: Dress, Titles, and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara,” Journal of Asian Studies 55 (1996): 852–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Flood, “Between Cult and Culture”; Eaton, “Muhammad bin Tughluq.”

23 Surveys of Ghaznavid history include Bosworth, Clifford Edmund, The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, 994–1040 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; and Nazim, Muhammad, The Life and Times of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna, 2d ed. (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1971)Google Scholar.

24 Gordon, Stewart, ed., Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of Investiture (New York: Palgrave, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gordon builds upon the work on royal rituals of incorporation of Buckler, F. W., “The Oriental Despot,” in Pearson, M. N., ed., Legitimacy and Symbols: The South Asian Writings of F. W. Buckler (Ann Arbor: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, 1985), 176–87Google Scholar.

25 For the Seljuk case, see Safi, Omid, The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry, Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 142Google Scholar. For the Buyids, see the argument below, which is based on Busse, Heribert, “The Revival of Persian Kingship under the Buyids,” in Richards, D. S., ed., Islamic Civilisation (Oxford: B. Cassirer, 1973), 4769Google Scholar.

26 Busse, ibid., 67.

27 Crone, Patricia, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 163Google Scholar.

28 An ‘Abbasid court manual recorded that Mahmud of Ghazni addressed himself in a letter to the ‘Abbasid caliph as “slave, servant, protégé and seedling.” Sabi, Hilal, Rusum Dar al-Khilafah (The Rules and Regulations of the ‘Abbasid Court), Salem, Elie A., trans. (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1977), 86Google Scholar.

29 Shaban, M. A., The ‘Abbasid Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

30 al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship.

31 Calder, Norman, “Friday Prayer and the Juristic Theory of Government: Sarakhsi, Shirazi, Mawardi,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 49 (1986): 3547CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Ibid., 36.

33 Ibid., 42.

34 For instance, Srakhsi, one of the abstaining jurists mentioned in Calder's study, had written his major legal work from prison, where he spent ten years (1073–1084) for giving impertinent advice to a Qarakhanid prince.

35 Busse, “Revival of Persian Kingship,” 66.

36 Donohue, John J., “Three Buwayhid Inscriptions,” Arabica 20, 1 (1973): 7480Google Scholar. Buyid patterns of sovereignty have been analyzed recently in Christine D. Baker, “Challenging the Shi‘i Century: The Fatimids (909–1171), Buyids (945–1055), and the Creation of a Sectarian Narrative of Medieval Islamic History” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2013), 116–62.

37 Di Cosmo, Nicola, “State Formation and Periodization in Inner Asian History,” Journal of World History 10, 1 (1999): 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 32.

38 Hanne, Eric J., Putting the Caliph in His Place: Power, Authority, and the Late Abbasid Caliphate (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), 106Google Scholar.

39 Ibid., 68.

40 Flood, Objects of Translation, 34.

41 Nazim, Life and Times, 97.

42 Hanne, Caliph, 91, 93, 106–7.

43 The “great gift” had arisen in place of the Vedic animal sacrifice of earlier times. Inden, Imagining India, 244–49; Inden, Ronald B., Walters, Jonathan S., and Ali, Daud, Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 184–93Google Scholar; Eaton, Richard M., The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 15Google Scholar.

44 Grabar, Oleg, “The Earliest Islamic Commemorative Structures, Notes and Documents,” Ars Orientalis 6 (1966): 746Google Scholar. For the early opposition by Muslim traditionists and jurists to graves marked with tombstones and inscriptions, and how this opposition was countered in Shi‘i and later Sunni jurisprudence, see Halevi, Leor, Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 3241Google Scholar.

45 Melikoff-Sayar, Irene, Abu Muslim: le “Porte-Hache” du Khorassan dans la tradition epique turco-iranienne. Illustre de 6 reproductions fac-similes de manuscrits persans et turcs (Paris: A. Maisonneuve, 1962)Google Scholar; Yusofi, G. H., “Abu Moslem Khorasani,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica Online (2011)Google Scholar, http://www.iranicaonline.org.

46 Grabar, “Earliest Islamic Commemorative Structures,” 20; Hamid Algar, “‘Atabat,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica Online (2011), http://www.iranicaonline.org.

47 Sindawi, Khalid, “Visit to the Tomb of Al-Husayn b. ‘Ali in Shiite Poetry: First to Fifth Centuries AH (8th–11th Centuries CE),” Journal of Arabic Literature 37, 2 (2006): 230–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 236.

48 Grabar, “Earliest Islamic Commemorative Structures,” 20.

49 Baker, “Shi‘i Century,” 37–70.

50 Allen, Terry, “The Tombs of the ‘Abbasid Caliphs in Baghdad,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 46, 3 (1983): 421–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Makdisi, George, “Muslim Institutions of Learning in Eleventh-Century Baghdad,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 24, 1 (1961): 156CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 20.

52 Grabar, “Earliest Islamic Commemorative Structures,” 37.

53 In the case of Syria, twelfth-century ‘Alid shrines received substantial patronage from Sunni rulers and elites. Mulder, Stephennie, The Shrines of the ‘Alids in Medieval Syria: Sunnis, Shi‘is and the Architecture of Coexistence (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

54 The impact of Mongols and other Inner Asians as central to shaping Eurasian history is a key argument in Lieberman, Strange Parallels, vol. 2, 92–118.

55 Burak, Guy, “The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Post-Mongol Context of the Ottoman Adoption of a School of Law,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, 3 (2013): 579602CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Moin, A. Azfar, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Golombek, Lisa and Wilber, Donald Newton, The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), vol. 1, 5760Google Scholar.

58 Imam Reza's mausoleum is one of the better-studied shrines of Iran, and its history has been traced in May Farhat, “Islamic Piety and Dynastic Legitimacy: The Case of the Shrine of ‘Ali b. Musa al-Riḍa in Mashhad (10th–17th Century)” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2002).

59 Ghaznavid involvement with the Mashhad shrine is described in ibid., 39–43.

60 al-Athir, Ibn, al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh, 13 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Sadir, 1965)Google Scholar, vol. 9, 401.

61 Ibid., vol. 10, 211. Seljuq patronage of Mashhad is discussed in Farhat, “Islamic Piety,” 44–53.

62 Ibn al-Athir, Kamil, vol. 10, 522–23; Farhat, “Islamic Piety,” 46.

63 Farhat, “Islamic Piety,” 53.

64 Ibid., 48.

65 Around this time, ‘Alid shrines in Syria also gained broad acceptance from the Sunni elite. Mulder, Shrines, 247–66.

66 Hartmann, Angelika, “al-Nasir Li-Din Allah,” in Bearman, P., et al. , eds., The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2013)Google Scholar, http://www.brillonline.nl.

67 Hanne, Caliph, 181–210.

68 Bartol'd, V. V., Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, Bosworth, Clifford Edmund, ed., 3d ed. (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Pub., 1992), 347Google Scholar; Hanne, Caliph, 34. The original Persian is in Muhammad b. Ali b. Sulayman al-Ravandi, Rahat al-Sudur wa Ayat al-Surur dar Tarikh-i Al-i Saljuq (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1364 [1985 or 1986]), 334Google Scholar.

69 Hartmann, “Nasir”; Ibn al-Athir, Kamil, vol. 12, 316–18.

70 Ibn al-Athir, Kamil, vol. 12, 318.

71 Farhat, “Islamic Piety,” 56. Farhat modifies the translation from Arabic of Donaldson, Dwight M., “Significant Mihrabs in the Haram at Mashhad,” Ars Islamica 2 (1935): 118–27Google Scholar, 121.

72 At this time, ‘Alid shrines in Syria were also patronized by Sunni elites in this mode, with prayers inscribed for the prophet's companions who were despised as rivals of ‘Ali by the Shi‘is and ‘Alids. Mulder, Shrines, 96–97. It appears to me that such acts were a ritual means by which ‘Alid saint cults, which had grown popular under the ‘Alid and pro-‘Alid dynasties of the Fatimids and Buyids, could be incorporated by ascendant Sunni powers.

73 Ohlander, Erik S., Sufism in an Age of Transition: ‘Umar al-Suhrawardi and the Rise of the Islamic Mystical Brotherhoods (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 89112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Hartmann, “Nasir.”

75 Elverskog, Johan, Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 169–74Google Scholar.

76 Di Cosmo, “State Formation”; Lieberman, Strange Parallels, vol. 2, 97–107.

77 The Mongols also raided shrines in Syria. Mulder, Shrines, 89.

78 Farhat, “Islamic Piety,” 59.

79 Ibid., 65.

80 Pfeiffer, Judith, “Reflections on a ‘Double Rapprochement’: Conversion to Islam among the Mongol Elite during the Early Ilkhanate,” in Komaroff, Linda, ed., Beyond the Legacy of Genghis Khan (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 369–89Google Scholar.

81 Melville, Charles, “Padshah-i Islam: The Conversion of Sultan Mahmud Ghazan Khan,” in Melville, Charles, ed., History and Literature in Iran, Pembroke Persian Papers (London: British Academic Press, 1990), 159177Google Scholar, 168, 70–71.

82 Farhat, “Islamic Piety,” 61–62.

83 Golombek and Wilber, Timurid Architecture, vol. 1, 49; Pfeiffer, Judith, “Confessional Ambiguity vs. Confessional Polarization: Politics and the Negotiation of Religious Boundaries in the Ilkhanate,” in Pfeiffer, Judith, ed., Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge in 13th–15th Century Tabriz (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 129–68Google Scholar.

84 Blair, Sheila S., “Sufi Saints and Shrine Architecture in the Early Fourteenth Century,” Muqarnas 7 (1990): 3549CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hillenbrand, Robert, “Turco-Iranian Elements in the Medieval Architecture of Pakistan: The Case of the Tomb of Rukn-i ‘Alam at Multan,” Muqarnas 9 (1992): 148–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 Farhat argues that Mashhad became the main urban center of eastern Iran because the Mongols had destroyed or diminished the major cities of the region; “Islamic Piety,” 59. Another well-studied case of a shrine that spurred urban development is that of Mazar-i Sharif in Afghanistan; see Subtelny, Maria E., Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 208–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 Golombek and Wilber, Timurid Architecture, 1, 328–31.

87 Woods, John E., “Timur's Geneology,” in Mazzaoui, Michel M. and Moreen, Vera B., eds., Intellectual Studies on Islam: Essays Written in Honor of Martin B. Dickson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990), 115–17Google Scholar.

88 For a study of how this happened in Punjab, see Eaton, Richard M., “The Political and Religious Authority of the Shrine of Baba Farid,” in Metcalf, Barbara D., ed., Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 333–56Google Scholar.

89 Farhat, “Islamic Piety,” 77.

90 Ragib, Yusuf, “Les Premiers Monuments Funéraires de l'Islam,” Annales Islamologiques 9 (1970): 2136Google Scholar, 32; al-Qazwini, Zakariyya, Athar al-Bilad wa Akhbar al-‘Ibad (Tehran: Amir Kabir Publications, 1994), 462Google Scholar.

91 Battuta, Ibn, Voyages d'Ibn Battuta, Defrémery, Charles François and Sanguinetti, Beniamino Raffaello, trans., 4 vols. (Paris: Éditions Anthropos, 1968), vol. 3, 7779Google Scholar; quoted in Farhat, “Islamic Piety,” 68–69.

92 See, for instance, Woods, John E., The Aqquyunlu Clan, Confederation, Empire: A Study in 15th/9th Century Turko-Iranian Politics (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1976)Google Scholar; Amoretti, B. S., “Religion in the Timurid and Safavid Periods,” in Avery, Peter, Hambly, Gavin, and Melville, Charles, eds., The Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 610–55Google Scholar.

93 Amoretti, “Religion.”

94 Bashir, Shahzad, Messianic Hopes and Mystical Visions: The Nurbakhshiya between Medieval and Modern Islam (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003)Google Scholar; and Fazlallah Astarababi and the Hurufis (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005)Google Scholar.

95 Shahzad Bashir, “Between Mysticism and Messianism: The Life and Thought of Muhammad Nurbaks (d. 1464)” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1997), 8–77; Arjomand, Said Amir, “Religious Extremism (ghuluww), Sufism and Sunnism in Safavid Iran: 1501–1722,” Journal of Asian History 15 (1981): 135Google Scholar.

96 On buruz, see Bashir, Messianic Hopes, 98–99; Gimaret, D., “Tanasukh,” in Bearman, P., et al. , eds., The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2011)Google Scholar, http://www.brillonline.nl.

97 Digby, Simon, “The Sufi Shaykh and the Sultan: A Conflict of Claims to Authority in Medieval India,” Iran 28 (1990): 7181CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 71, n. 12.

98 Bashir, “Muhammad Nurbaks,” 35–45; Ranjbar, Muhammad Ali, Musha'sha'iyan (Tehran: Intisharat-i Agah, 1382 [2003])Google Scholar.

99 ‘Abbas ‘Azzawi, Tarikh al-’Iraq bayn Ihtilalayn, 5 vols. (Badhdad: Matba'at Baghdad, 1935–9), vol. 3, 142–45Google Scholar; Bashir, “Muhammad Nurbaks,” 39.

100 ‘Azzawi, Tarikh, vol. 3, 145; Bashir, “Muhammad Nurbaks,” 40, n. 76.

101 For a detailed study of the rise of the Safavids and their messianic ethos, see Babayan, Kathryn, Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

102 Quoted in Arjomand, “Religious Extremism,” 10.

103 Newman, Andrew J., “The Myth of the Clerical Migration to Safawid Iran: Arab Shiite Opposition to ‘Ali al-Karaki and Safawid Shiism,” Die Welt des Islams 33, 1 (1993): 66112Google Scholar. 79.

104 Babayan, Kathryn, “Sufis, Dervishes and Mullas: The Controversy over Spiritual and Temporal Dominion in Seventeenth-Century Iran,” in Melville, Charles P., ed., Safavid Persia: The History and Politics of an Islamic Society (London: I. B. Tauris, 1996), 124Google Scholar.

105 Bashir, Shahzad, “Shah Isma‘il and the Qizilbash: Cannibalism in the Religious History of Early Safavid Iran,” History of Religions 45, 3 (2006): 234–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106 On the political and economic importance of the Naqshbandis, see Paul, Jurgen, “Forming a Faction: The Himayat System of Khwaja Ahrar,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 23, 4 (1991): 533–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Jami's relationship with Timurid establishment and his views on Shi‘ism, see Algar, Hamid, Jami (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013), 4061CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

107 Zayn al-Din Mahmud Vasefi, Badayi‘ al-Vaqayi‘, 2 vols. (Tehran: Bonyad-e Farhang-e Iran, 1349 [1970]), vol. 2, 248–50Google Scholar.

108 Saljuqi, Fikri, Khiyaban (Kabul: Anjuman-i Jami, Vizarat-i Matbu'at, 1343 [1964]), 9395Google Scholar. The rescue of Hindu temple images is discussed in Davis, Lives, 91.

109 Rizvi, Kishwar, The Safavid Dynastic Shrine: Architecture, Religion and Power in Early Modern Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011)Google Scholar; Farhat, “Islamic Piety,” 121–30.

110 Farhat, “Islamic Piety,” 180–83.

111 For descriptions of Hindu rajas looting one another's temples and icons as trophies of war, see Davis, Lives, 57–84.

112 Siddiqui, Iqtidar Husain, “The Early Chishti Dargahs,” in Troll, Christian W., ed., Muslim Shrines in India: Their Character, History, and Significance (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 123Google Scholar.

113 Kumar, Emergence, 226.

114 Ibid., 295, 352.

115 Eaton, Rise of Islam, 40.

116 Ernst, Carl W., Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 4041Google Scholar.

117 See, for instance, Eaton, “Shrine of Baba Farid.”

118 Green, Nile, Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3364CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

119 Siddiqui, “Muslim Shrines,” 7–10.

120 Currie, P. M., The Shrine and Cult of Muin al-Din Chishti of Ajmer (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 97Google Scholar.

121 Green, Making Space, 21.

122 Currie, Shrine and Cult, 99.

123 Siddiqui, “Muslim Shrines,” 9; ‘Abd al-Haqq al-Dihlavi, Akhbar al-Akhyar: Ma‘ Maktubat (Gambat, Zila’ Khairpur, Pakistan: Faruq Academy, 1977), 292Google Scholar.

124 Moin, Millennial Sovereign, 70–74.

125 Babur, Zahir al-Din Mirza and Thackston, W. M., The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor (New York: Modern Library [paperback ed.], 2002), 263–69Google Scholar.

126 Ibid., 269.

127 Ibid., 377–84.

128 Hegewald, Julia A. B., Water Architecture in South Asia: A Study of Types, Development, and Meanings (Leiden: Brill, 2002)Google Scholar.

129 Archaeological records show that the statues were “beheaded” with the bodies left intact. Flood, “Between Cult and Culture,” 647.

130 Babur and Thackston, Baburnama, 416.

131 Davis, Lives.

132 Ibid., 108.