Muhammad Mubeen
PhD
Thesis defended in December, 2013
Professional contact information
mubeen_kamboh2000[at]yahoo.com
Dissertation director: Denis Matringe
PhD program: EHESS - History and Civilizations
Initial registration: 2008
The Shrine and the City: Pakpattan (Punjab, Pakistan), 19th and 20th Centuries
Pakpattan, (literally, the “pure ferry”) in Punjab—now part of Pakistan—owes much of its sense of self to the fact that it is home to the mausoleum of one of the Indian Subcontinent’s most important ancient Sufi masters, Farīd al-Dīn Mas ͑ ūd Ganj-i Shakar (d. 1265), commonly known as Bābā Farīd. The presence of Bābā Farīd’s shrine in Pakpattan has played a significant role in the economic, social, political, cultural, and religious development of the city in the 19th and 20th centuries. On the one hand, visits to the city by the faithful and pilgrimages have had positive effects on local society. But on the other, the authoritative and economic control practices of the shrine overseers have contributed to prolonging the social relationships of almost feudal dependence inherited from the mediaeval period and kept the city on the sidelines of some of the main trends in social and economic development that have characterized the history of cities of the same size during the period in question. We propose to devote our dissertation to the study of the relationship between Pakpattan and its region and the Bābā Farīd shrine in the 19th and 20th centuries. Several questions will be examined, starting with that of the role of the dīvāns (as Farid’s descendants are called) in the political and administrative development of the city. What was the nature of their relationship to political authority in the colonial period, and how did it evolve after independence? How much influence did they have within the Auqāf Department after its creation in the 1960s? Have the forms of authority exerted by the divans over the Pakpattan region changed, and how can we characterize the link between the exercise of their spiritual authority and their control of agricultural income? How can we trace the history of the succession to supreme spiritual authority within the family of Baba Farid’s descendants within our time period? To what extent has the prestige of the dīvāns been diminished by reform movements on the one hand and the policy implemented by the British after 1857 to reduce the influence of Muslim religious institutions? All these questions require an in-depth study of the role of the divan’s family and of shrine culture in the political development of the city. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Bābā Farīd’s descendants had tremendous authority in the city and the surrounding region, an authority based on their control over a political system centered on the shrine.
Presentations
- “The Shrine and the Chishtīs of Pakpattan (Pakistan): An Historical Analysis,”International Conference entitled “Shrines, Pilgrimages and Wanderers in Muslim South Asia,” September 24, 2010 in Paris
- “Local Authority of the Shrine of Bābā Farīd in Pakpattan: A 19th and 20th Century Scenario,” CEIAS PhD Workshop, May 31, 2011, Paris
- “Colonialism and the Shrine Culture of Punjab: A Case Study of Pakpattan,” Fifth European PhD Workshop in South Asian Studies, September 22-24, 2011, Paris
- “Islamic Reformism and Chishtī Shrines in Punjab,” Workshop entitled “Pilgrims and Politics in Pakistan: Sufism in an Age of Transition,” May 21, 2013, L'Institut d'études avancées (IEA) de Paris, Paris. http://paris-iea.fr/evenement/pilgrims-and-politics-pakistan-sufism-age-transition
Last update: 15 February, 2016
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