Kashmir's Transition to Islam (The Role of Muslim Rishis)

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The book breaks fresh ground in historical research. Based on a critical and empathic understanding of Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian and Kashmiri sources, it provides a critique of Orientalist scholarship against the background of an historical enquiry conducted into the processes of Islamization and its dynamics in relation to the role of Muslim Rishis (Kashmiri Sufis).

Professor Ishaq Khan has brought together a number of perspectives —the historical, the sociological, and the religious. The crux of his argument is that Islam is not merely a matter of theological propositions, but also a historical realization: realizing the Oneness of Allah by total surrender, dedication, service and above all self-sacrifice for the good of humankind.

The Rishi movement is an integral component of the process of Islam-ization that started in the picturesque Valley in the wake of the introduction of Sufi orders from Central Asia and Persia in the fourteenth century. The author particularly focuses on the paradox and tension that the Kashmiri Brahmanic society experienced as a result of the Rishi's advocacy of virtues such as self-imposed poverty, identification with the poor and the down-trodden, and above all opposition to the caste system.

A significant feature of the book is a perceptive analysis of legends and miracles associated with Muslim Rishis.

The author advocates the idea of looking at history from a fresh point of view, and argues in favour of studying the history of human civilization in its totality, involving an interaction between religion and society. The author has shown that the history of human civilization cannot be studied in watertight compartments of matter and faith. The present work is therefore worthy of attention and should be of interest to a wide range of readers, rather than merely to specialists.

Mohammad Ishaq Khan (1946-2013) was Professor of History at the University of Kashmir. Earlier he was the Leverhulme Senior Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and Dean Faculty of Social Sciences and Dean Academics at Kashmir University.

He was the author of History of Srinagar, 1846-1947: A Study in Socio-Cultural Change; Perspectives on Kashmir: Historical Dimensions; Experiencing Islam and Biographical Dictionary of Sufism in South Asia in addition to numerous research articles published in learned journals of international repute.

Kashmir constitutes a special area in the history of Islam considering the spirited response of its people, living in the Hindu-Buddhist environment, to the egalitarian teachings of the Sufis from Central Asia and Persia who began to pour into the picturesque Valley from the fourteenth century. The response, in fact, first came from Lal Ded, the wandering Saivite woman mystic of the fourteenth century and her spiritual offspring, Nuruddin Rishi, the founder of the indigenous order of Muslim Rishis.

The aim of this book is to enable readers to understand and appreciate what Islam meant to the Rishis and their adherents including even the Sufis of the Kubrawi and Suharwardi orders. Islam, as understood by them, sought to subject the felicity of life on this planet to the norms of morality and of responsibility. Man therefore had to regulate the pattern of human life in such a way as confirmed the truth of the Prophet Muhammad's (Peace of Allah on him) saying: "Religion is indeed man's treatment of his fellows."

What has prompted me, over a period of eight years, to make an in-depth study of the spiritual manhood of the Rishis vis-a-vis their social role has been the absence of any serious work which may objectively evaluate the contribution of Kashmir to such a universal movement within the fold of Islam as Sufism. Have endeavoured to bring a new dimension of understanding to the study of Islamic spirituality (Sufism) on careful, critical and empathic analysis of those beliefs, practices, issues, devlopments, and movements that provide some appreciation of that faith which has inspired and informd the lives of Kashmiri Muslims. There is a direct and fundamental relationship between the evolution of Shaikh Nuruddin's religious career and the gradual development of what may be called the Kashmiri Muslim society. For centuries his mystical poetry has remained the Weltanschuung of Kashmiris.

Although I have quoted verses from B.N. Parimoo's English rendering of the Shaikh's poetry wherever necessary, the translations for the most part are entirely my own. I must confess that no translator can reproduce the sublimity and comprehensiveness of the words used by the Shaikh, which mean so much in a single symbol. And this is the reason that at some places I have rendered the meaning of the original in a paraphrase.