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On Syeds & Sufis: Few years ago, I wrote a comment on a popular Pakistani Facebook page that had posted an anti-Ahmadi diatribe. And I was surprised at how many responders were aghast that a Syed could possibly defend Ahmadis. I still get notifications from it. OTOH, a Turk ...>
... friend was surprised when he heard my name, i.e. Syed. According to him, Seyyeds (& Saadat) among Turks have historically been used only by Sufis to indicate descent from Prophet, but not by non-Sufis & it isn’t attached to names. In South Asia, misconceptions abound ...>
... about the lineage traditions of Syeds. Some believe it is an authentic tradition through out the Muslim world though with many modern fake Syeds around (of course they’re themselves originals), others believe it is a legacy of the Indian caste/jati system. I thought that ...>
...the tradition might have come into South Asia via Central Asian Sufis, but even that’s not the complete story. We learn from Enseng Ho’s book The Graves of Tarim that it was the Hadhrami Arabs from Yemen, who had traded all through Indian Ocean since at least 300 BCE, but ...>
... post Islam created this system of hierarchy in which they claimed lineage from prophet to hoist themselves above the natives. It's a fascinating account of the establishment of a religious & economic system organized around “Syed” families who came to control trade ...>
... networks across the Indian Ocean. They consolidated their power by marrying local women. They created a network of Syeds by taking women but only marrying their own women to other syeds who then became connectors in this vast network of kinship across the Indian ocean. ...>
... They drew on the the Sufi theory Nur-al-Muhammadi, the idea that Prophet is made of divine light that is transmitted through the blood line of the Prophet, for their status. This was a patrilineal bloodline which could mix with local women without being contaminated. The ...>
... opposite though was not the case & so Syed women had to marry Syed men. So Syed status is definitely not unique to South Asia, & it became fundamental to Sufi forms everywhere. In his book, A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama & Muslim Origins in South Asia, Manan Ahmed has ...>
... shown that by 13th century this system of hierarchy was firmly established in South Asia, & many even minor sultans, chieftains etc., who had moved from Persia & Central Asia urged their court historians to invent their lineage with, if not Syeds, at least with Arabs. ...>
... Historians weren’t shy of mixing their own lineage in there, & he argues that Ali Kufi’s Chachnama (book on Bin Qasim’s conquest of Sindh) itself was a 13th century text that claimed to be an 8th century text by an Arab to find greater privilege & purchase among the ...>
... aristocrats of his time, & thus much in it couldn’t possibly have been true. (This system of attributing texts to earlier more elite authors or names is ancient, even ancient Egyptians & Mesopotamians did it). Now the whole patrilineal bloodline thing is also another ...>
... ancient legacy. We know through DNA, that Indo-European tribes that moved to South Asia from Central Asia married local women but kept their women to themselves. Similar results in Spain. Many African tribes & even Aztecs were particular about it. In other words, ...>
... throughout human history, dominant tribes have seeked to maintain their dominance via patriarchy & sexual contest. Everybody wants to be associated with the new nobility, many kingdoms only gave their women to kingdoms with greater status, & new kids on the block looked ...>
... for higher status through marrying women from more established powers, like Timur married a minor women who was supposedly a great great grand daughter of Genghiz Khan. Mongols were once looked at as nothing more than barbarian hordes, but once their empire was ...>
... established, everybody wanted to be a Changezid, Timurid, & Khan. Later, Syeds were incorporated into Mughal dynastic structures & then patronized by the British, so they amassed massive landholdings like Pir Pagara types & major landlords of Sindh & Punjab. Even most ...>
... nawabs in Northern India claimed to be Syeds. In conclusion, the religious/political/financial privilege of Syeds became a pretty pervasive theme throughout the Indian Ocean initially via Hadhrami Arabs from Yemen & later via Sufis/kings/nawabs/zameendars looking for ...>
... higher status, & to affirm their supremacy over the natives. It is certainly not attributable to an Indian jati system. Here’s Engseng Ho’s book, cdn.fbsbx.com/v/t59.2708-21/… It's definitely one of the most important books on Islamic history/anthropology in a long time.
... Engseng also shows that the Hadrami Syeds, who once controlled all these trade networks, lost their status in many parts of the world with the rise of nationalism, reformers/wahabis, & other egalitarian forms of Islam. And well, if you're poor, this idea that you ...>
... shouldn’t marry your women out gains more salience. Interesting tidbit: In 19th century, Indian Syeds petitioned the colonial government to stop non-Syeds from taking on the Syed title. (Also somehow Sir Syed Khan was both a Syed & a Khan 🤷🏽♂️). ...>
... Here’s Azfar Moin’s book which shows about how the different models of Islamic authority divided between the khilafat model vs. the Sufi model & how the Sufi model was incorporated into the structure of Mughal rule & became tied to aristocratic ...> books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr…
... power in South Asia.
