The Muslim Communities of Medieval Gujarat

with Jyoti Balachandran

hosted by Shireen Hamza

| How did Sufis shape the identity of Gujarat, a region in northwest India? Gujarat is best known for its ancient port cities and its connectivity to the broader Indian Ocean world. It is also the site of some of the oldest Muslim settlements in the Indian subcontinent. In this interview, Jyoti Balachandran traces the way Sufi saints and communities settled the region in the fifteenth century, with lasting impacts for Gujarat's regional identity. Taking us on a tour of the vast Sarkhej tomb complex outside Ahmedabad where Sufis and Sultans are buried side by side, and through a variety of historical texts from the Sultanate to the Mughal periods, Balachandran explores the many layers of this story of Muslim belonging.

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How did Sufis shape the identity of Gujarat, a region in northwest India? Gujarat is best known for its ancient port cities and its connectivity to the broader Indian Ocean world. It is also the site of some of the oldest Muslim settlements in the Indian subcontinent. In this interview, Jyoti Balachandran traces the way Sufi saints and communities settled the region in the fifteenth century, with lasting impacts for Gujarat's regional identity. Taking us on a tour of the vast Sarkhej tomb complex outside Ahmedabad where Sufis and Sultans are buried side by side, and through a variety of historical texts from the Sultanate to the Mughal periods, Balachandran explores the many layers of this story of Muslim belonging.

Contributor Bios

Jyoti Gulati Balachandran is Assistant Professor of History at Penn State. She is a historian of medieval and early modern South Asia and the Indian Ocean world, focused on social and cultural histories of Muslim communities in Gujarat and the western Indian Ocean. Her next project is a history of Muslim scholarly networks in the sixteenth century, using a variety of Arabic narrative texts produced in Gujarat and the Hejaz. She serves on the editorial board of The Indian Economic and Social History Review.

Shireen Hamza is a doctoral candidate in the History of Science department at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the history of medical exchange in the medieval Indian Ocean world.

Credits

Episode No. 516
Release Date: 8 January 2022
Recording Location: State College, PA / Chicago, IL
Sound production by Maryam Patton
Additional thanks to Faisal Husain

Music: Rajna Swaminathan, Rajas, Of Agency and Abstraction: "Chasing the Gradient"
Bibliography and images courtesy of Jyoti Balachandran

Further Listening

	Olly Akkerman	394 12/23/18	Secret Archives and Sacred Texts in Gujarat
	Manan Ahmed Asif	330 8/25/17	Muslim Origins in South Asia
	Sunil Sharma	442 12/16/19	Mughal Persian Poetry and Persianate Cultures
	Zeynep Oktay Uslu	359 4/20/18	Dervish Piety and Alevism in Late Medieval Anatolia
	Nancy Um	453 3/6/20	Indian Ocean Exchange in Early Modern Yemen
	Mohamad Ballan, Joshua White, Zoe Griffith, Aslıhan Gürbüzel, Neelam Khoja, Fahad Bishara, Maryam Patton, Jeannie Miller	489 1/16/21	The Early Modern Islamic World The Making of the Islamic World

Images

Late 16th-century Mughal-era painting depicting teacher with pupil. Source: Cleveland Museum of Art


Shrine of Shaykh Ahmad Khattu, Sarkhej (credit: Jyoti Balachandran)


Entrance to the shrine of Shaykh Ahmad Khattu, Sarkhej (credit: Jyoti Balachandran)


View of the interior of Shaykh Ahmad Khattu's tomb (credit: Jyoti Balachandran)


Intricately carved jaalis (stone latticework windows) adorn the walls of Shaykh Ahmad Khattu's shrine (credit: Jyoti Balachandran)


One of the pillared corridors at the shrine of Shaykh Ahmad Khattu (credit: Jyoti Balachandran)


Tomb of the Gujarat Sultan Mahmud Begada (middle) flanked by the tombs of his son Sultan Muzaffar Shah II and great grandson Sultan Mahmud Shah III. (credit: Jyoti Balachandran)


Royal palatial structures within the Sarkhej complex

Select Bibliography

‘Abd al-Ḥaqq Muḥaddis̤ Dehlawī. Akhbār al-akhyār, translated into Urdu by Maulana Muhammad Fazil. Karachi: Madina Publishing Company, n.d. 

Jahāngīr. The Jahāngīrnāma: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, translated, edited, and annotated by Wheeler M. Thackston. NY: Oxford University Press, 1999. 

 

Maḥmūd ibn Sa‘īd Īrajī. Tuḥfat al-majālis, translated into Urdu by Maulana Sayyid Abu Zafar Nadvi. Ahmedabad: Pir Mohammed Shah Library and Research Institute, 2005, third edition. 

 

Muḥammad Qāsim. Mirqāt al-wuṣūl ila Allah wa al-Rasūl, edited with an introduction by Nisar Ahmad Ansari. New Delhi: Kitab Bhawan, 2004; translated into Urdu by Maulana Sayyid Abu Zafar Nadvi as Sirat-i Aḥmadiyā. Gandhinagar: Urdu Sahitya Academy, n.d. 

 

Sikandar ibn Muḥammad alias Manjhū ibn Akbar. Mir’āt-i-Sikandarī, edited with introduction and notes by S.C. Misra and M.L. Rahman. Baroda: Maharaja Sayajirao University,1961.  

Desai, Ziyauddin A. “The Major Dargahs of Ahmadabad.” In Muslim Shrines in India: Their Character, History and Significance, 76-97, edited by Christian W. Troll. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989. 

A Quest for Truth: A Collection of Research Articles of Dr. Z. A. Desai. Ahmedabad: Hazrat Pir Mohammed Shah Dargah Sharif Trust, 2004. 

 

The Triumphal Sun: A Collection of Z. A. Desai’s Research Articles and Inscriptions. Ahmedabad: Hazrat Pir Mohammed Shah Dargah Sharif Trust, 2014. 

Green, Nile. Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012. 

Kapadia, Aparna. In Praise of Kings: Rajputs, Sultans and Poets in Fifteenth-century Gujarat. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Kumar, Sunil. “Transitions in the relationship between political elites and Sufis: the 13th and 14th century Delhi Sultanate.” In State Formation and Social Integration in Pre-modern South and Southeast Asia: A Comparative Study of Asian Society, 203-238, edited by Karashima Noboru and Hirosue Masashi. Tokyo: Toyo Bunko, 2017. 

Orsini, Francesca and Samira Sheikh. After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century North India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014. 

Patel, Alka. Building Communities in Gujarat: Architecture and Society during the Twelfth through the Sixteenth centuries. Leiden: Brill, 2004. 

Sheikh, Samira. Forging a Region: Sultans, Traders and Pilgrims in Gujarat, 1200-1500. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010.