This book is an ethnographic study of a hagiographical text popularly performed in mourning assemblies held on the 7 Muharram of Shi’a Muslims in the city of Hyderabad in India. Author Karen Ruffle explains hagiographies as “sacred biographies” extolling a saint’s piety and spiritual achievements. The central hagiography examined in this book is the battlefield wedding of eleven-year-old Fatimah Kubra to her thirteen-year-old cousin Qasem, who are both descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.

Ruffle chooses to focus on this particular hagiography because marriage is an Islamic imperative and one of the most charged life-cycle events in South Asian culture. More importantly, the taboo against widow remarriage in Indian society increases the importance of this text because it draws its audiences to the sacrifices made by the young bride Fatimah Kubra, who loses her husband Qasem in the battlefield of Karbala in 680 C.E. and becomes a lifelong widow after only one day of unconsummated marriage. Therefore, the text highlights the importance of marriage, sacrifice, and faith for the Shi’a Muslims of Hyderabad who view Fatimah Kubra and her martyred bridegroom Qasem as embodying Muslim ideals that are commonly emulated.

This book is extremely relevant to the field of folklore because not only is it a thorough documentation of this hagiographical text and its ritualistic performances, but more importantly, it shows how the Shi’a community of Hyderabad integrates this hagiographical text into its spiritual and “everyday” lives and makes it relevant to current cultural and social needs. Fatimah Kubra and Qasem teach contemporary Shi’a how to be good Muslims as well as dutiful husbands and wives. Ruffle also demonstrates how Shi’a Muslims of Hyderabad resist the elitist attempts made by Shi’a Muslims from Iran and Iraq, who wish to eradicate the localized practices that have evolved from the text of Fatimah Kubra and Qasem in Hyderabad in an attempt to unify the Shi’a faith based on historical facts. However, the Shi’a Muslims of Hyderabad have continued to practice these vernacular Muslim traditions within an Indic context and overruled the focus on history in favor of faith that the marriage between Fatimah Kubra and Qasem did indeed take place. This decision on the part of Hyderabadi Shi’a Muslims ensures greater interest in this particular hagiographical text in folklore scholarship.

This book is a gendered analysis of Imam Husain and his family called the ahl-e bait at the Battle of Karbala. Although the male members of the ahl-e bait, including Qasem, who died in the battle, are commemorated, Ruffle’s focus is on the female members of the family who were left behind to witness the battle, suffer the grief of the death of loved ones, and live to tell the tale of their sacrifice. As a result Ruffle highlights the fact that the story of the battle of Karbala and the wedding of Fatimah Kubra and Qasem are told from women’s perspectives, emphasizing their central role among the Shi’a.

Throughout the book, Ruffle relies largely on the concept of binary opposites as complementary pairs to distinguish Shi’i worldview, explain distinct Shi’a terminologies, and most importantly to stress the important role of female saints among Shi’a Muslims of South Asia. In chapter 1, Ruffle draws a comparison between two Shi’a terms for saints—wal?yah and wil?yah. While the term “wal?yah” refers to sainthood bestowed by God, which transcends the reach of common men, the Shi’a term “wil?yah” refers to sainthood that is socially recognized and a model of imitation. Ruffle notes that the ahl-e bait, who suffered in the battle of Karbala to save their faith, fall into the latter category of imitable sainthood. By suffering death and widowhood, the ahl-e bait stand as examples of strength and unquestioning loyalty that can be imitated by ordinary men in their daily lives.

In the remaining chapters of the book, Ruffle explores this term, wil?yah, to focus on the way the female members of the ahl-e bait embody qualities of piety and dedication to their family and society in their actions at the battle of Karbala. In Christianity female saints are required to practice asceticism and celibacy in order to attain sainthood, generally associated with the masculine, but this is not the case among the Shi’a Muslims. According to Ruffle, attributes of the feminine are celebrated qualities of the saintliness of the ahl-e bait, and their social roles as wives, mothers, and sisters are integral to their status. Furthermore, Ruffle notes that Shi’a Muslims have attached Hindu notions of sakti (female power) associated with Hindu goddesses to saints like Fatimah Kubra and other female members of the ahl-e bait, acknowledging the agency and active roles of these female saints that outshine those of male members of the ahl-e bait in these hagiographies. Although criticized by elite Muslim Shi’a from countries like Iran for the incorporation of Hindu ideals into their religious practices, Shi’a Muslims from Hyderabad have continued these individualized traditions that indicate the importance of local/vernacular contexts in shaping a Hyderabadi Shi’a religious world.

One of the only weaknesses of this book is the absence of the voices of female informants Ruffle interviewed in Hyderabad. Although Ruffle incorporates many ethnographic anecdotes where Shi’a women play important roles, we do not get to know them through their words. Rather Ruffle summarizes these women’s social and cultural backgrounds to contextualize the various hagiographical performances and to highlight their meaning for contemporary Shi’a South Asian women. In spite of this drawback, Ruffle’s successful documentation of the way age-old hagiographical texts are localized to fit contemporary religious practices and social contexts makes her work a strong contribution to folklore literature.

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[Review length: 929 words • Review posted on December 5, 2011]