Tracing the Inscription of Identity through the Tazkira Tradition in Muslim South Asia
Prof. Marcia Hermansen
DOI:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584482
Abstract:
This article reflects on broad themes of memory, identity, and place running through the South Asian tazkira tradition ranging from pre-modern Persian examples to contemporary Urdu works, with a focus on Sufi works of memorialization.
Keywords:
Tazkira Tradition, Muslim South Asia, Sufi Texts.
Works cited:
Annemarie Schimmel, Classical Urdu Literature from the Beginning to Iqbāl (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1975). Sindhi Literature (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1974).
Annemarie Schimmel, Islamic Literatures of India (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1972).
M. G. Zubaid Ahmad, The Contribution of Indo-Pakistan to Arabic Literature (Lahore: Ashraf, 1968).
Richard Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
Āzād Bilgrāmī, Suḥbat ul-Marjān (Bombay, 1886).
Marcia Hermansen, “The Evolution of South Asian Muslim Tazkiras as Memorials of Places and Persons” Urdu Studies 5 (1, 2025), 69- 93, and Mana Kia, Persianate selves: memories of place and origin before nationalism (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford), 2020.
Christopher Shackle, “Punjabi in Lahore” in Modern Asian Studies 4 (1970): 239-67, and “Rival Linguistic Identities in Pakistan Punjab” in Rule, Protest, Identity—Aspects of Modern South Asia, eds. Peter Robb and David Taylor (London: Curzon Press, 1978), 213-34.
M.G. Kabir, “Religion, Language and Nationalism in Bangladesh” in Religion, Nationalism, and Politics in Bangladesh, ed. Rafiuddin Ahmed (New Delhi: South Asian Publications, 1990), 35-49.
Thomas F. Mayer and D.R. Woolf, eds., The Rhetorics of Life Writing in Early Modern Europe (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1995), 1-19.
George Morrison, Persian Literature from the Earliest Times to the Time of Jāmī (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980), 14.
M. Garcin De Tassy, Histoire de la littérature hindouie et hindoustanie (Paris; A. Labitte, 1870-1871). Farmān Fateḥpūrīri, ed., Nigār-i Pakistān: Tazkiron ka tazkira numbar (May/June 1964).
Jaroslav Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Nejd: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabian Nasib (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1993), and Michael Sells, Desert Tracings: Six Classical Arabian Odes (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1989).
Bruce B. Lawrence, Notes from a Distant Flute. Sufi Literature in Pre-Mughal India (Tehran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, 1978); and Carl Ernst, Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1992), 62-84.
Carl W. Ernst, Eternal Garden, 82-3. See also Carl Ernst, “The Textual Formation of Oral Teachings in Early Chishti Sufism,” in Texts in Context: Traditional Hermeneutics in South Asia, ed. Jeffrey R. Timm (Albany: State University of New York, 1992), 271-97; as well as Nisār Aḥmad Fārūqī, Naud-i Malfūzāt (Delhi: Maktabah-i Jimi’ah, 1989).
Susan J. Lewandowski, “The Built Environment and Cultural Symbolism in Post-Colonial Madras,” in The City in Cultural Context, eds. John Agnew, John Mercer, and David Sopher (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1984), 237-52.
Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
William Chittick, “Notes on lbn ‘Arabi’s Influence in the Indian Sub-Continent,” Muslim World 82 (1992): 218·41.
al-Suyūtī, Alfiyya fī ‘ilm al-ḥadith (Cairo: al-Bābī al-Ḥlalabī, 1934).
J.M.S. Baljon, Religion and Thought of Shāh Wali ‘Allāh of Delhi 1703-1762 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), 12.
V.G. Kiernan, Poems by Faiz (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971), 128-9.
Ernst, Eternal Garden, 67. Nizam ad-Din Awliya: Morals for the Heart, trans. Bruce B. Lawrence (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 214.
Muḥammad Ṣādiq Dihlavī Kashmīrī Hamadānī, Kalimāt al-ṣādiqīn, ed. Muhammad Saleem Akhtar (Islamabad: Iran Pakistan Research Center, 1988).
Kalimāt al-ṣādiqīn, 5. Amīr Khusrau, Qirān al-Sa’adayn (Lukhnow: Nawal Kishore, 1875), 22-23, is the Mathnavi from which these verses are taken. Other features of Delhi, such as the Friday Mosque and minaret, are praised in the same section.
Tarif Khalidi, “Some Classical Islamic Views of the City,” in Studia Arabica and Islamica: Festschrift for Iḥsān ‘Abbās, ed. Widād al-Qādī (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1981), 271.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).
Muḥammad Dīn Kalīm, Madīnat al-Auliyā (Lahore: Ma’arif, 1982), 78-79.
Prof. Marcia Hermansen, former Professor and Director of Islamic World Studies in the Theology Department, Loyola University, Chicago, United States of America. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in Arabic and Islamic Studies. Her graduate training included study of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu through language training in the respective countries. She specializes in Sufism, Islamic thought, Muslims in America, Shah Waliullah, Islam and Muslims in South Asia, and women and gender in Islam. Among her many publications are Muslima Theology: The Voices of Muslim Women Theologians (Peter Lang, 2013); Islam, Religions, and Pluralism in Europe (Springer, 2016); and Religious Diversity at School: Educating for New Pluralistic Contexts (Springer, 2021).
Prof. Marcia is the Lady Fatima Endowed Faculty Chair in Women and Divinity at Habib University Karachi. She previously served as a Professor in the Theology Department and director of Islamic World Studies at Loyola University Chicago.
Email:mherman@luc.edu
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3875-9181
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
