4. The Lives of An Afghan Saint

There are many miracles of Hadda Sahib. Maulana Abdul Baqi, who was Hadda Sahib's servant and lived his entire life in the same room with Hadda Sahib, told the following story:

After the evening prayers, Hadda Sahib would come back to his room, perform three hundred prayers, and recite fifteen verses [aya] of the Qur’an.

One night, Hadda Sahib was sitting on his prayer carpet with the door closed. I was wrapped in my blanket but still awake. All of a sudden, I heard someone say, “Salam aleikum,” and Hadda Sahib replied, “Walekum asalam.”

I looked out from under my blanket to see who it was. I hadn't seen the door open, and no one could fit through the small opening in the ceiling. How could anyone have entered? Then I saw that it was a snake, and his head was on Hadda Sahib's prayer carpet.

Hadda Sahib said, “What do you want?”

The snake said, “Dear Sir, I have come from koh-i qaf [the mystical mountain of Qaf].”

He said, “Why have you come?”

The snake said, “I have come from peristan [the land of the fairies]. I want to marry a man's daughter, but she is from a noble family. Her father will not allow me to marry her. I know that she is devoted to you and that she has received tariqat [mystical teaching] from you, so I am asking you to go with me to bagh-i haram [the Forbidden Garden].”

Hadda Sahib said, “Where is Hadda and where is the Forbidden Garden?

”The snake said, “Dear Sir, you ride on my shoulder, and in the blink of an eye I will deliver you there.”

Hadda Sahib said, “I will give you a letter, and your problems will be over.”

“But if you don't go yourself,” the snake replied, “there will be no solution.”

(For this reason, Hadda Sahib felt obliged to go with him. Abdul Baqi said that) at this moment, when I realized that Hadda Sahib was ready to go with him, I threw off my blanket and sat up in my bed. Hadda Sahib said to me in Afghani [Pakhtu], “There is much time left before morning prayers. Go back to sleep.”

I said, “Dear Sir, I can't sleep anymore if you're going. I don't want to sleep, if you're going to leave me behind.”

He said, “Where are you and where is the Forbidden Garden?”

“I don't want to stay if you're going,” I replied, and then he told me, “Okay, if you accept my advice. Perform your ablutions and say two sets of prayers.”

He permitted me to say my prayers on his prayer carpet, and when I had finished, the snake placed his head on the carpet. He turned himself into his original shape [as a dragon] and made himself ready for Hadda Sahib to sit on his wing. But Hadda Sahib said, “God has not made me so useless that I must go on your back. Put Abdul Baqi on your shoulder and come along.”

(Abdul Baqi swore by God that when they reached the Forbidden Garden, all of the people—even the king of the place—were standing to receive Hadda Sahib even though it was the middle of the night. His spiritual quality [ruhaniyat] was so extraordinary that even the king of those people was present to welcome Hadda Sahib.)

When we reached there and had sat down, we saw that they had prepared all sorts of different fruits from the garden. I said to myself, “Who will believe me when I go back to Hadda.” Then I took a sample of every unfamiliar fruit I could find, and I tied them up in my handkerchief so that I could bring some memento back with us.

In one night, Hadda Sahib performed seventy wedding ceremonies. When all those people who were engaged to the daughters of rich men heard the news that Hadda Sahib was there, they came to him, and he performed seventy marriages. When these weddings were finished, Hadda Sahib said that he would go back. They strongly insisted that he stay with them, but Hadda Sahib said that he wouldn't be delayed any further.

In short, I took my handkerchief. The dragon put me back on his shoulder. The dragon was the prince of Peristan. Soon we were back in Hadda, and the roof and ceiling of our room rose up so that no one would know [that we had been gone]. When Hadda Sahib and I were sitting back in the room, the roof and ceiling returned to their place. The mulla was reciting the morning call to prayer.

I was in a hurry to tell the others that we had gone to the Forbidden Garden, but as we left for the mosque, Hadda Sahib said, “Be careful not to tell anyone what we did.”

My next thought was to open the handkerchief in front of the others so that they would ask about the fruit. When I opened the handkerchief, however, I was amazed that all of the fruit had turned into the same kind of fruit that we have in our own land. Even if I swore, no one would believe me. This was one of his extraordinary actions.

Twice-Told Tales

I heard the story of the Mulla of Hadda's journey to the magical Mountain of Qaf one day in 1983 when I was in the home of an Afghan refugee in Peshawar. The narrator, Fazil Aziz, was the nephew of one of the Mulla of Hadda's principal deputies (a man known as the Hazrat Sahib of Butkhak), but I am unsure of how he came to hear this particular tale. He never told me, and I never thought to ask. He had so many stories like this one—stories of miraculous journeys, uncanny apparitions, and upwellings of power. If I had asked him the source of the story, I doubt he would have known for sure, any more than Samiullah Safi could have told me where or under what circumstances he had heard the story of his father's revenge for the first time. There is one difference, however, and that is the purported existence of a manuscript written early in the twentieth century by the Mulla of Hadda's companion, the Abdul Baqi of the story. As the narrative itself indicates, Abdul Baqi went everywhere with the Mulla (also known as Hadda Sahib) and became one of the primary guardians of the great man's legacy after his death in 1903. I don't know what ultimately became of Abdul Baqi. I don't know how long Abdul Baqi lived or what he did after Hadda Sahib died. Residents of Hadda identify the small grave next to the Mulla's tomb as that of Abdul Baqi, but no one who remembers these stories knows much about the man, and I suspect that, like his mentor, he never married and died childless.

Abdul Baqi's manuscript also proved to be elusive. The only copy that I ever heard of was kept in the library at the Mulla's old center (khanaqa) at Hadda. In the late 1940s, the government had taken over the center and converted the informal madrasa (religious school) that had continued operating there after Hadda Sahib's death into a formal government institution. Despite the change of management, the book of the Mulla's miracles remained on the shelf, but after the Soviet invasion, the entire library was reportedly evacuated to Pakistan by members of the Hizb-i Islami political party. Presumably, the book, along with the rest of the Mulla's library, is somewhere in Peshawar, but informal inquiries on my part failed to elicit any response.

Regardless of the absence of what might well be the ur-text, I found no lack of stories about the life of the Mulla. To the contrary, in the course of my interviews in Peshawar, Hadda Sahib's name came up repeatedly, and it quickly became apparent that he would be an appropriate focus for my examination of traditional religious authority in Afghanistan. Like Sultan Muhammad and Amir Abdur Rahman, the Mulla of Hadda was portrayed as an exemplary figure of a kind rarely encountered anymore. He was also someone whose course of action consistently embroiled him in controversy and contention, especially with the state but also with the tribes who supplied his principal base of support.

The Mulla of Hadda was also an appropriate focal point for my efforts because he passed most of his adult life in the eastern frontier region and because the period of his greatest activity and influence came during the last two decades of the nineteenth century—the same time that Abdur Rahman sat on the throne in Kabul and Sultan Muhammad came of age in Pech Valley. The Mulla also beckoned because of the sheer abundance of informants available for me to interview about his life and times. Since Najmuddin Akhundzada, the Mulla of Hadda, had died eighty years earlier, I was unable to find anyone who had actually seen him in person; however, I was able to find sixteen men in and around Peshawar who had some direct connection to him.

Of the sixteen persons I interviewed in depth, all but two were descendants of one of the Mulla's twelve principal deputies.^[1] As noted, the Mulla never married and had no children. Since he was originally from the region of Ghazni (several hundred miles south of Kabul), he also does not appear to have had any other relatives living in the eastern part of the country. That being the case, the people with whom I talked were the best available sources for learning about the Mulla of Hadda, and their usefulness in this regard was not limited by the fact that they were not blood relatives.

To the contrary, since the renown of their own ancestor was a direct result of his having been a disciple of the Mulla, they retained a vital interest in keeping the Mulla's memory alive. The stories they told about the Mulla's life and activities were correspondingly detailed and lively. There was just one problem: almost all the stories I heard were fantastic accounts of the Mulla's miracles. These accounts would be interwoven with scattered bits of seemingly reliable biographical information, but the narrative heart of almost all the stories I heard was otherworldly. The question I faced then was what to do with them? What historical sense and cultural significance could be imparted to stories about magical journeys and occult occurrences?

The story that introduces this chapter is typical of the stories I heard and is representative of the analytical problem I faced. Here is a dramatic instance of the Mulla's power and influence, an influence that extends beyond this world to the magical realm of Koh-i Qaf itself. But what is the connection between this world and that, and between the miracle story as a narrative genre and the actual figures whose lives are remembered within them? Given the rational disbelief to which we are heir, the analytical challenge that is presented by such stories is how to salvage some remainder of the Mulla's life and meaning that time and cultural difference have largely destroyed. In attempting this act of reclamation,my strategy is to use the narratives of miraculous events that are available as a lens for perceiving, if not the actual landscape, then at least the moral one and how the Mulla was situated in that space a century ago.

Few of the stories I will refer to are so marvelous as the one that introduces this chapter, but most have some element of the fabulous in them and consequently represent the sort of “folk” history that traditional historians have tended to discount. Such stories are nevertheless a reservoir of information on religious belief and practice, not as abstract formulations but as lived realities. Thus, just as stories of family feuds crystallize the cultural logic of honor, and government firmans reveal the moral imperatives of kingship, so miracle tales provide an avenue for understanding the cultural significance of Islam in tribal society. The performance of miracles is only one element in the persona of a religious leader, of course, but it is in many ways the most visible and transcendent of saintly attributes, and it is also the primary means by which the religious leader demonstrates the source and nature of the power and authority that religion exerts in the world.

According to Islamic theological doctrines (to which all local cultural beliefs refer at least in part), there are two kinds of miracles: those associated with the prophets and those associated with the saints (awliya). Miracles of the saints are called kiramat, and while it is understood that saints are possessed of uncanny gifts and graces, it is also recognized(at least by the more orthodox and knowledgeable) that God alone isultimately responsible for miracles and that saints themselves servesimply as channels for divine action.^[2] At the same time, saints are privy to sights and sounds beyond those experienced by normal human beings. Because of their piety and persistence in the path in divine insight, God has rewarded a few good men (and fewer women) access to the extrasensory plane of experience known as the batin. Outside of God and his prophets, only the saints are vouchsafed personal knowledge of this hidden realm. They alone among the living have been endowed with the capacity to operate within and between the domains of both the apparent (zahir) and the hidden, and it is only through the occasional appearance of what the rest of us take as a miracle that we become even vaguely and momentarily aware of a more complex reality than that which daily meets our eye.

Despite the fact that belief in miracles is common to many Muslim cultures (indeed, to many cultures throughout the world), the subject has received a great deal less attention from anthropologists than it has from the people they study. One reason for this lacuna is certainly the difficulty of negotiating between the subjective experience of those who believe that miracles can and do take place in the world with some regularity and the skeptical attitude of most scholars that miracles are figments of particular minds and particular places. One way of overcoming this impasse is offered by Michael Gilsenan, who has focused not on what miracles are, but on the way in which they operate in and through popular discourse.

A central feature of his analysis is the insight that whatever miracles might be in reality, they are experienced first as stories. These stories, generally “endless versions and varieties of ‘the same’ miracle,” constitute what is known of the hidden realm and reveal to the believer recurring instances of God's presence in human affairs.^[3] The ubiquity of miracles in everyday discourse creates a predisposition to interpret events as reflections of an alternative causality so that everyday congruences of circumstances that might otherwise be dismissed as coincidence, luck, or happenstance are continually subjected to scrutiny for evidence of the involvement of some external agency. Simply stated, saints and the miracles they perform provide “a scheme of interpretation by means of which [people] explain and apprehend the multiple hazards and changes that play so great a part in their lives.”^[4]

Gilsenan's approach may not tell us what miracles are, but it does suggest that perhaps the best way to view them is as stories. Through stories, miracles first come into existence, a fact that became especially apparent to me when I realized that most of the miracle stories that were attributed to a particular saint were also attributed to others. In my interviews, I noticed that I was able to find variants of almost every miracle, although these different stories would often be told about different individuals. For example, I collected eight different versions of miracle stories having to do with the sudden appearance of many guests at the door of the saint's dining area (langar) and his miraculous generation of food to feed them. In each case, the details are different but the central miracle is the same. Of these eight stories, five are told about the Mulla of Hadda, and the other three are attributed to his disciples.

In a similar vein, I collected two stories whose central narrative element was a mistake made in the construction of the saint's shrine. In one case, a rug that had been especially woven for the tomb of one of the Mulla's deputies was found to be too large for the available space. In the second variation, a roof beam that had been cut was found to be too short. In both instances, the error was miraculously corrected during the night and discovered the next day: the rug being found to fit the floor of the tomb just perfectly and the beam to extend just far enough to support the roof. After leaving Pakistan, I was able to augment these two stories with a third that I found recounted in a letter to the editor published in a journal in 1882 and concerning the Akhund of Swat, who was the teacher of the Mulla of Hadda: this version of the story also had to do with a short roof beam—in this case, one intended for a new mosque—that was lengthened overnight through the miraculous intervention of the Akhund.^[5]

My point in mentioning these similarities is not to cast doubt upon the originality of the stories or the veracity of the storytellers. To the contrary, what strikes me as interesting about these “twice-told tales” is precisely the way in which they substantiate Gilsenan's argument that miracles are above all else a discursive vehicle by means of which a certain kind of ethos and worldview are made real and apparent. This being the case, I want to proceed with my investigation into the life of the Mulla by means of the stories that are still remembered from his life. Whatever these stories lack in the way of precise facts and dates, they do allow us entry to an otherwise closed universe and provide us the opportunity to make sense of the moral logic that the Mulla invoked and embodied in his words and actions. These ultimately are what matter, and it is to these topics that most of the chapter will be devoted.

Fathers and Sons

One day when Mulla Najmuddin was in the Mahabat Khan Mosque in Peshawar, an old man came up and told him to stitch up his torn sandals. Najmuddin did so. Then the old man advised him to go see Akhund Sahib of Swat and become his disciple. So Najmuddin went to Swat and slept the night in the mosque of the Akhund.

Early the next morning the Akhund of Swat called out, “Pasanai Mulla, come here!”^[6] Since he had only been there one night, he did not respond, but again the Akhund of Swat called out, “The last mulla come here!” Najmuddin thought that the Akhund Sahib was calling someone else and not him because the Akhund didn't know him. Then the Akhund called out his name, “Mulla Najmuddin, come here!”

Najmuddin went over to him and saw the old man he had met in the Mahabat Khan mosque. He performed the ceremony [of zikr—the spiritual exercises of the Sufi order] and became the Akhund of Swat's disciple. Other disciples were full of wonder why this person who had only spent a night there was called and received so much attention because others spend days and nights waiting to see him up close.

After some time, the Akhund of Swat told him to go and settle in Hadda, the place of the infidels, and to propagate Islam and tariqat [the Sufi path]. Hadda Sahib built a mosque and settled there. Gradually, he became famous.^[7]

In beginning this excursion into a distant life, we should first start by considering what is known with certainty, even if it is minimal and ambiguous at best. While all of the informants with whom I talked agreed that the Mulla was a Pakhtun by birth and originally from the Ghazni area, there was some difference of opinion regarding the tribe into which he had been born and the place where he had grown up. One person claimed that Najmuddin was from the Suleiman Khel tribe and lived originally in Shilgar near Ghazni. Several others indicated that he was from a branch of the Suleiman Khel known as the Musa Khel but believed that he was from the region of Katawaz. Still others said that he was from the Andar tribe and came from Ghazni proper. One thing that is agreed upon is that Najmuddin was the son of a religious teacher, an akhund, which is the reason why he (like Sultan Muhammad's father) bore the honorific title “akhundzada.” Unlike Talabuddin Akhundzada, however, who parlayed his father's status as a religious teacher into a government position for himself, Najmuddin chose a different career, expanding on the minimal base of identity as the son of an akhund to pursue a religious education.

One possible reason for this career choice is indicated in the comment made by some of my informants that Najmuddin's mother was a widow and that he spent his childhood as a “poor shepherd.” If, as is likely, Najmuddin's father was an “akhund” prior to his death, he probably served in the capacity of a village imam, leading communal prayers and teaching local children rudimentary phrases of the Qur’an and the basic customary practices expected of Muslims.^[8] Those who serve as village imams are generally among the poorest members of a tribe, and their position is usually a salaried one, which means that whoever holds it is considered a dependent, or hamsaya, of others in the village.^[9] Whatever the specific arrangement between Najmuddin's family and the community in which he lived, it is fair to assume that they probably occupied an inferior status and, consequently, that in leaving his natal village Najmuddin was also leaving a position of some socioeconomic disadvantage.

The second fact that we know about Najmuddin's early life is that he initially pursued the itinerant career of a religious student (talab ul-‘elm). In choosing to become a religious student, Najmuddin was following a path trod by many poor young men before him who recognized the fact that religious education offered one of the few available avenues out of the fixed matrix of kinship and economic circumstances into which they had been born. Few individuals in nineteenth-century Afghanistan would have considered the possibility of moving outside their own village and region. Indeed, there were few incentives to do so and many not to. Most villages were self-contained units: marriages were contracted withinthe domain of co-resident kin, and there were itinerant merchants and moneylenders who could handle those economic transactions that village people required. Despite (or perhaps because of) the self-sufficiency of the village, however, not all people were happy to remain where they were born. Social inferiority, poverty, intellectual curiosity—many factors could propel a person outward, but there were only a limited number of avenues by which to withdraw from one's people.

On the most basic level, travel was uncertain and often dangerous, and the only people who took to the roads regularly were nomads and traders, both groups being hereditary castes skilled at negotiating the hazards and intricacies of moving from place to place. For the solitary individual, there were few available situations affording escape from the social and economic givens of birth, and the most readily accessible of these was that of the religious seeker, who was not only given a modicum of respect for his learning and commitment, but who also enjoyed a degree of immunity from harm on the highway that other travelers lacked. Generally recognizable by his scrawny beard and sack of books, the religious adept was hardly worth the attention of a self-respecting bandit who, in all probability, would also have thought twice before waylaying a seeker and thereby risking divine retribution.

In Afghanistan there was no paramount center of religious learning to which an aspiring scholar like Najmuddin would have gravitated. Shi'i students would have had Qom, Najaf, or Mashhad as their destinations; accomplished students in the subcontinent would have gone to Aligarh or Deoband, and in Egypt, there was the great university complex at al-Azhar. But in Afghanistan, the usual pattern was for students to study with whichever mullas were available in the immediate vicinity of their homes, and for most that degree of study was sufficient. More ambitious and talented students like Najmuddin quickly exhausted this source of knowledge, however, and had to go further afield to satisfy their thirst for education, usually following the leads of other students they met who would tell them about a particular scholar in such-and-such a village who had memorized so many traditions (hadith) of the Prophet or was known for some other scholastic accomplishment.

The religious seeker sought not only the scriptural learning to be found in books, but also the esoteric wisdom that one gained from a spiritual master: a pir. In some Islamic countries, there was a strict division between the scholarly tradition and the mystical practices associated with tasawuf, or Sufism, but in Afghanistan rigid distinctions were not made between the scriptural and spiritual paths or between acquired and inspired forms of knowledge.^[10] Many, if not most, mullas were engaged in Sufi practices as well as in reading books, and it was not at all uncommon for a mulla to become the disciple (murid) of a pir. Likewise, the best-known religious leaders—men like Mulla Mushk-i Alam who led the Afghan resistance against the British during the second Anglo-Afghan war—were Sufi masters intimately familiar with the mystic realm and also respected scholars, deferred to in matters of scripture.

In pursuit of his education, Najmuddin first traveled to Kabul where he lived for some time in the Tandur Sazi quarter of the city prior to going to Peshawar where he met the Akhund of Swat, purportedly at the Mahabat Khan mosque. Little is known as to when Najmuddin might have been in Kabul, but a date around 1850 can be supposed, given the knowledge that the Mulla of Hadda was an old man at his death in 1903.^[11] It also isn't known how long Najmuddin spent in Kabul, but after some time he did embark for India, which was the usual destination for the majority of serious religious students. Most of those who made the journey gravitated to religious schools in Peshawar or elsewhere in the Pakhtu-speaking frontier area. A few of the most ambitious went further to the great Deoband madrasa, and those that completed the course of study at this institution earned the title of maulavi or moulana. In the case of Najmuddin, I have been able to discover little concrete information about his education in India, but it is likely that he made it as far as Peshawar and was attending classes at one of that city's madrasas prior to his encounter with the Akhund of Swat.

The story of Najmuddin's life really begins at the moment of this meeting, for the Akhund was clearly the mentor that Najmuddin had set out from Afghanistan to meet. At the time, the Akhund was one of the most prominent and respected Islamic figures in India (indeed, he was sufficiently famous that when he died in 1877 he was given an obituary in The Times of London).^[12] It is not known exactly when Najmuddin visited Swat nor where or how he might have fit in with the other deputies of the Akhund, but stories indicate that he possessed the sort of spiritual adeptness that waits less for instruction than for recognition. As the story that begins this section reveals, the match between the old pir and the young devotee was inspired, a fact that is made evident not only in the speed with which the young man learns each spiritual exercise, or zikr, but also in the miraculous manner in which he is guided to the Akhund.^[13] The uncanny meeting of pir and disciple is a common narrative motif in the life histories of Afghan saints, and its significance is in removing the relationship between pir and disciple from the realm of contingent fortune and placing it solidly within the domain of the necessary and inevitable. The true disciple does not simply go out and find a pir to teach him lessons so that he in turn can set up his own spiritual shop; rather, the pir knows beforehand who his most important disciples will be and brings them to him. By taking this active role, the pir is not merely “recruiting” followers; he is also expediting a preordained end, and in the process making the relationship of pir and disciple as concrete and necessary in its own sphere as the blood tie of father and son is in the universe of tribes.

In Pakhtun culture, it is believed that the father is the true progenitor of his children. Mothers provide wombs within which the fetus grows, but the father's sperm provides both the spark and the material of creation. In the realm of religious relationships, the pir can likewise serve as the active agent in spiritual self-reproduction, first bringing the disciple into proximity to himself and then infusing him with the substance of spiritual life in the form of the divine words of the zikr.^[14] In most instances, the pir will eventually send the disciple off to train students of his own, but from then on the name of the disciple will be connected to that of his pir (like that of a son to his father) in the chain of transmission (silsila) by which the authority and traditions of the Sufi order, or tariqat, are passed on from generation to generation.

In Najmuddin's case, he received permission from the Akhund to teach all four of the major Sufi orders represented on the eastern frontier. In providing this permission, the Akhund also ensured that Najmuddin's name would henceforth be enshrined in the spiritual genealogies of those four orders and that his and Najmuddin's names would continue to be linked like that of father and son in the genealogy of a tribe. For a would-be pir like Najmuddin, inclusion in such a chain of transmission was as significant for his future prospects as connection to a tribal lineage was to a khan like Sultan Muhammad or being the grandson of Amir Dost Muhammad was to an ambitious prince like Abdur Rahman. In all three cases, genealogical connection was the sine qua non of identity upon which all other claims to social respect and influence were inevitably based.^[15]

This being the case, it can be said that when Najmuddin made the decision to leave his natal home in southern Ghazni, he was not simply going off in search of religious education and spiritual enlightenment; in a real sense, he was exchanging one father for another. Born the son of a nameless “akhund,” Najmuddin was transformed by a miraculous act of appropriation into a spiritual son of the Akhund of Swat, who bequeathed to him what were to become the most important features of his identity: his status as a pir, his right to give instruction to disciples, and his prestige as the recognized spiritual heir of a great saint. Given the significance of this act of recognition between spiritual father and son, we can identify an important point of connection between the first two stories of Sultan Muhammad and Abdur Rahman and this one of Najmuddin Akhundzada, for in all three cases one of the constitutive narrative themes has been the substantiation of paternity as the basis of cultural identity.

In all of these stories, paternity has provided one of the constitutive problems which had to be overcome before identity itself could be attained. Sultan Muhammad's challenge was to substantiate his claim to relationship with his father by avenging his death. Abdur Rahman's was to exhibit unswerving loyalty to his father despite his father's repeated errors in judgment. For Najmuddin, the initial challenge was to go out and find the one true spiritual father who alone was destined to initiate him into the mysteries of the spiritual realm. In all three of these very different but also very similar stories, the solution to the problem of paternity is the foundation upon which the individual constructs his identity: as khan, as amir, and as pir. As we will see, the establishment of his spiritual paternity not only afforded Najmuddin Akhundzada the right to call himself a pir and to gather disciples of his own. It also led to the creation of a larger, more multiply inflected identity, one dimension of which was his association with his desert outpost at Hadda.

Identity and Place

Najmuddin became a follower of Swat Sahib [the Akhund of Swat] who told him to continue seeking knowledge. He prayed for him, and as a result he made great progress. The scriptural knowledge of Hadda Sahib was very advanced. When he had finished his studies, he went back to Swat Sahib who made him his deputy. Then he gave him permission to return to Afghanistan, but not to his own area. “You should choose a place that will become a fortress for Islam.” When Swat Sahib told him this, he gave him a single rupee from his pocket. As he was leaving Swat, [Najmuddin] gave that rupee to a religious mendicant [faqir]. As he traveled, other people gave him money which he always distributed to the poor. Finally, he reached Hadda, which was close to the border with the English. Since he had been told by Swat Sahib to go to a place that would be a fortress for Islam, he chose Hadda which was near the English border. Another reason he chose Hadda was that religious devotees should live in a deserted place where they wouldn't bother anyone. Hadda was a dry, deserted, uncultivated place. There were a few nomads, but they didn't have land there. It was just a desert of God. Hadda was also the name of an idol-worshipping king. His name was Hadda, and he had lived a long time ago, but idols are still found there.^[16]

Individuals who are appointed as deputies to their pirs usually leave the presence of their pir, sometimes to return to their home areas or, as seems more often to be the case, to settle elsewhere. In some cases, villagers from a particular region will come to an established pir and request that he send some holy person to live in their village, usually because of an ongoing dispute that the religious person might help to dampen or because of the prestige and religious merit that might accrue by his presence. We don't know precisely why Najmuddin chose to go to Hadda. Some stories indicate that he was sent there by the Akhund. Others say that he had already established himself in Hadda prior to going to Swat. The former story is the one more often heard, but there is no definite evidence either way. Regardless of how he got there, there is no doubt that Hadda had certain physical and social characteristics that might recommend themselves to a pir far more than they would to a khan.

Although part of the area later came under irrigation from a government-built dam, one hundred years ago the area was apparently desert-like in its aridity and lack of vegetation. It was sparsely and sporadically populated by a mixture of local groups who would graze their animals and grow a few crops, as well as by pastoral nomads who would pass through the area on their way to India each winter. Located just a few kilometers outside the provincial capital of Jalalabad, Hadda was within the domain of the state, but also relatively near to the border with British India and the Mohmand and Shinwari tribal territories that straddled it. Being close to Jalalabad meant that Hadda was easily accessible and could be frequently visited; being close to the tribal territories along the frontier (but not within the territory of any one tribe) meant that the Mulla had ready means to evade encapsulation and control by the state.^[17]

In addition to being marginal in a variety of economic, social, and political senses, Hadda was also marginal in a historic and religious sense as well since it was the former site of an extensive sixth-century Buddhist complex, ruins of which are still visible today. That this center of Buddhist worship became the site of a Sufi khanaqa, or center, was not coincidental. The site's “pagan” history was, in fact, one of its most attractive characteristics. As one informant expressed it, “Swat Sahib told him to make the house of idols (butkhana) into the place of la illah il-lallah (There is no god but Allah).” Constructing a mosque and religious center on“pagan” grounds was a common practice in South Asia: the Quwwatul-Islam mosque in Delhi, which is made from the stones of a Hindu temple, is one example; so too is the mosque/temple at Ayodhya where fierce Hindu/Muslim fighting broke out in 1993. At least one of Hadda Sahib's disciples—the Hazrat Sahib of Butkhak (idol-dust)—repeated his master's example by locating his center on (or near) the site of a pre-Islamic ruin.

The symbolism of this practice is obvious, but Hadda had other symbolic attributes that the Mulla also appears to have recognized. Hadda, one person told me, was “a lonely place…like the cave on Mount Hira” which the Prophet Muhammad used to frequent for periods of private meditation. This attribution of separateness and the implicit linkage between Muhammad and Najmuddin are important for several reasons. First, Najmuddin, like Muhammad, was an ascetic who gained his connection to God through solitary meditation and prayer. Isolation from society was an important precondition for his acquisition of the spiritual insight and power that would later manifest themselves in a variety of ways, among them his performance of miracles. Second, separation from society and its entanglements and obligations was a necessary precondition for a figure like Najmuddin to establish himself as an independent political actor.

The extent to which a religious figure is bound by involuntary ties of obligation is the extent to which his status is compromised. This is true whether the ties are those of kinship or of clientage. In either case, the man of religion is constrained in the positions and actions he can take by the commitments that others can impose upon him. However, Najmuddin's choice of Hadda appears to have obviated this problem, for in removing himself from his natal kin group, he loosed himself from the pull of familial responsibility and public opinion that—as the case of Sultan Muhammad demonstrated—keep even the strongest individuals within the orbit of tribal morality.

The independence that Najmuddin achieved through social separation is seen in the names by which he came to be known. In addition to their given names, most Afghans in my experience also have at least one other identifying title, and it is usually this that others use to address them. Such titles generally refer to the individual's tribe, kin group, native area, or hereditary occupation.^[18] In Najmuddin's case (and that of many religious figures like him), what stands out about his titles is that they are his own creation. Religious leaders are practically the only ones in their society having the power to name themselves rather than having a name imposed upon them. Thus, to his contemporaries, as well as to posterity, Najmuddin became what he himself chose to become—the sahib, or master, of Hadda.

Achieving recognition as the “master of Hadda” meant not only that Najmuddin had established an identity on his own terms, it also meant that he had evaded the limitations that other markers would have placed upon him. In writing of a parallel pattern of identification among Islamic saints in Morocco, Paul Rabinow has commented that the identification of a religious personage as “master” of a place “is not simply a case of association, or a territorial designation, but it is a claim, an assertion of a more profound connection…an aggressive statement of a deep, emphatic, empathetic attachment of a mutual spiritual branding.”^[19] In contrast to this what is significant in Najmuddin's identification with Hadda was not so much the sense of attachment that it demonstrates as the sense of detachment. What was Hadda after all but a barren wasteland and a collection of ruins? Whatever significance the place had was not finally because of the place itself but because of the person, and what the person asserted in his association with this (non)place was essentially his own right to forge an identity outside the established matrices of kinship and co-residence. He would create himself anew, and Hadda provided the perfect place in which to effect this transformation.

If we compare the relationship of identity and place in the case of Hadda Sahib with that of Sultan Muhammad Khan, what stands out is the degree to which the tribal leader's identity involves a connection both to place and to group. Sultan Muhammad could only achieve his true identity by gaining the respect of the group to which he belonged in the place where he was born, and once he had done so, his identity was ever after linked with the Safi tribe and the Pech Valley. Abdur Rahman Khan, too, was a partial man so long as he lived in exile from Afghanistan. Although exile served to test his character and to school him in the verities of his station, the flowering of his own identity could only come about when he returned to Kabul to reclaim his birthright as the eldest son of the eldest son of the great amir, Dost Muhammad Khan.

Hadda Sahib's identity was very different from this. Abandoning both his birthplace and his birthright, his exile was in fact an escape, a process by which he acquired a new identity through the agency of a spiritual father and the adoption of a new homeland. The character of this new home is also significant, for in laying claim to a small expanse of desert ground, the Mulla of Hadda indicated the otherworldly source of his authority and implicitly rejected the criteria of wealth and power by which social status was elsewhere accrued and measured.

Discipline and Power

This story goes back to the time when Hadda Sahib was living in Hadda, and people were anxious to have him as their guest. But Hadda Sahib would not eat luxurious food. He wouldn't eat all the delicacies like pilau and chicken. I heard this [story] from the people who lived at that time that one of the rich people of the area insisted on inviting him [for a meal], so finally Hadda Sahib told him, “I will only accept your invitation on one condition.” That person prepared many different dishes for him, but he told him that his condition was that he be alone in the room while he was eating.

Hadda Sahib had a horse and a cat. It was a very big cat. When they reached the house of the man who had invited them, he closed all the doors and windows after him. But the person was curious what Hadda Sahib would do with the food and how he would eat. So he made a small hole in the door beforehand to watch what was going on inside. He saw [Hadda Sahib] take a leg [of the chicken] and bring it close to his nafs [here meaning “senses,” but more generally meaning “carnal self”] to smell it, and then he put it in front of the cat so that the cat could eat it.^[20]

Abdul Baqi Sahib has written the story that one day Hadda Sahib told him, “One of the distinguished friends of God has arrived. Let us go and welcome him.”

All of us went out, and everyone wondered what had happened. They saw that a religious mendicant [malang] had come. The malang had two dogs with him. When Hadda Sahib went up to him, the person didn't pay any attention to him. He didn't shake hands with him. He didn't take into account that “this is Hadda Sahib, and I should pay attention to him.” Nothing. He went toward the langar [dining area], and Sahib followed him.

When they reached the langar, Hadda Sahib went up to the malang, who said to him, “Mullah Najmuddin, feed my dogs!”

Then Hadda Sahib gave the order to slaughter a good sheep and give it to the dogs. The malang stayed for two or three nights with- out eating or talking to anyone. Then he finally left with his dogs, and Mia Abdul Baqi asked Hadda Sahib who the malang was. Hadda Sahib replied that he was an [Indian] religious mendicant [qalandar] who had come from India to inspect him. One of the dogs was a devil, and the other was the carnal desire [nafs] which he had expelled from his body. That is why he fed them and didn't eat himself.^[21]

Many stories told of Hadda Sahib emphasize the single-mindedness of his piety and his disregard for the normal demands of the body. Thus, one of the things that is still remembered about Hadda Sahib is how he restricted his meals to a few pieces of plain barley bread and a semi-poisonous vegetable that no one else would eat but that he boiled and served unadulterated with any oil or spices to offset its bitter taste. It is also said that his piety led him to retreat frequently from society for extended periods of time. Known as chilla for the forty (chil) days which most individuals spend in isolation, such retreats were made in emulation of the periods which the Prophet Muhammad would spend by himself in meditation and prayer. During the period of chilla, the individual closets himself in a separate room (chilla khana) away from the comings and goings of the religious center. In his isolated chamber, the devotee eats only enough food to sustain himself and otherwise concentrates his thoughts on God.^[22]

Periods of solitary meditation and fasting constitute one part of a larger set of disciplinary practices whose purpose was the purification of the individual's nafs. In Sufi cosmology, it is said that the individual's struggle to purify his soul is analogous to the holy wars initiated in defense of Islam. Both are forms of jihad, or struggle; and, in the view of Sufis, the jihad against unbelievers is of lesser importance than the jihad undertaken against the carnal nafs.^[23] The basic instrument in this battle is the practice of zikr, for it is through the act of repeatedly reciting the phrases of the zikr that the individual comes both to cleanse his own soul of its desires and to know the oneness of God.

According to the precepts of the Qaderiya order, which is the most influential Sufi school on the eastern frontier, the adept must master eight zikrs, each of which consists of an Arabic phrase that is recited a set number of times in a given session. Each zikr centers on a different phrase, and each phrase employs different focal points and patterns of breathing that are designed to concentrate the disciple's mind on a particular aspect of the divine presence.^[24] When the pir feels that his disciple has mastered each particular lesson, he will teach him the next until the sequence is complete. This may take anywhere from a few months to a lifetime. Most disciples, in fact, never complete the sequence, and it sometimes happens that a disciple who has completed all of his lessons is ordered by his pir to begin all over again.

Zikrs are obviously quite simple in themselves, and it would be no problem for a disciple to begin practicing them on his own without the permission of his pir. However, freelancing by disciples is strictly forbidden for several reasons. First, it is felt that such experimentation is unproductive and even dangerous without the guidance of the pir. The pir alone is capable of monitoring the disciple's progress and ensuring that he is reciting a particular phrase in the correct manner to produce the desired results. Those who experiment with zikr without proper preparation and guidance can be overcome by the experience, and it is generally believed that many of the wandering faqirs and dervishes one sees on the street are individuals who got too close to the divine source and forever lost touch with earthly reality as a result. Such individuals are thereafter irradiated by the experience, and while they may be unpredictable and dangerous as a result, it is also the case that they sometimes can become the channel for outbursts of divine energy.^[25]

Like the faqirs one meets on the street, Hadda Sahib was thought to have experienced the divine, but unlike them he could control the power thus unleashed. Expressed in the formal terms of Sufi cosmology, Hadda Sahib (through the benevolent tutelage of his pir, the personal discipline of ascetic practice, and the spiritual exercise of zikr, prayer, and meditation) had learned to conquer his nafs and thereby escape the prison of bodily sensation and desire that obscure the universe of divine energies and potentialities from most of humanity.^[26] Once he had achieved this degree of mastery, Hadda Sahib could unlock the treasure trove of hidden knowledge (‘elm-i batini) and tap into the source of divine power, the power to manifest actions that other men wonder at and call “miraculous.” Only the prophets and God's chosen saints have personal knowledge of God and with it the power to perform miracles. For them, the veil has been lifted, and the truth revealed. “A miracle cannot be manifested except in a state of unveiledness (kashf), which is the rank of proximity (qurb)” that is attained by only a select few.^[27]

If we compare the power that emanates from the pir with that of the other great man of the tribal frontier—the khan—we notice the different ontological bases of their greatness. In the case of the khan, greatness derives in the first place from the quality of his ancestry, his nasab. Ancestry alone is not enough, however, for the man of greatness must demonstrate his qualities of person through a continual vigilance and readiness to take up challenges and redress any and all slights to his honor and reputation. In the process, the man of honor might very well be called upon to endure great hardships and perhaps even to sacrifice his life over objectively inconsequential matters, but it is in his willingness to do so and in his ability to recognize the implication of honor in the mundane that his own claim to greatness principally rests.

In the case of the saint, biology is important, but not in a definitive way. That is to say, a man who can claim descent from the Prophet Muhammad (sayyid) or from one of the recognized saints of the past is accorded respect for his ancestry and is thought to possess a natural propensity and talent for spiritual matters, but the realization of this potentiality is no more automatic in the realm of religion than in the domain of the tribe. Furthermore, it is also possible for greatness to manifest itself in someone of humble parentage like Hadda Sahib. As already noted, the “ancestry” that ultimately matters most is that provided by the pir whose advancement of favored disciples serves to incorporate them into the genealogy of the Sufi order(s) to which he himself has gained membership. While such incorporation into a spiritual genealogy is a sine qua non of true and lasting greatness, it is also insufficient, for the saint must also demonstrate his character and quality through his own acts.

In contrast to the khan, the most characteristic of a saint's acts are expected to be undertaken away from the glare of public inspection. Above all else, it is the self-mortification, the denial of bodily pleasures, and the continual prayer and worship that set the saint apart and mark him as extraordinary or, in local parlance, buzurg: large or great. While these acts of self-denial are not intended for public consumption, they come to be witnessed by others, shaped in the form of stories, and then marshaled as evidence of the saint's absolute devotion to God. These stories confirm the moral reputation of the pir, as well as his dangerousness, for just as a man like Sultan Muhammad excites the unease of those around him through the single-mindedness of his resolve, so stories of the saint's solitary exertions also generate as much concern as awe. Such men are unlike other men. They do not make the compromises other men accept. They attack life rather than negotiate it, and this approach gives them a sort of power: a power born as much in other men's uncertainty as in the saint's own capacities.

Benefit and Gratitude

There was a Hindu in Peshawar who lived in extreme poverty and destitution. (Hadda Sahib was very famous as a person of jihad, piety and knowledge. He also had a langar even though he was poor and didn't own even a hand's breadth of land while he was alive. He didn't have any close relatives in Hadda—no cousins or uncles, nephews, or nieces. But he had a langar which is still operating by the blessing of God for hundreds of people who are the sons and grandsons of his deputies—like Sufi Sahib, Hazrat Sahib of Butkhak, Ustad Sahib of Hadda. On behalf of their descendants in Peshawar, his langar is still going on. This is because of his spiritual power [baraka]. This blessing is because of his tariqat.) This [Hindu] went to the langar thinking, “He has money, and maybe he will give me something if I beg for his mercy.”

He left [Peshawar], and when he arrived at Hadda, Hadda Sahib saw him and told his servants, “A Hindu has come here. Dunk him in the pool.”

The servants came and took the Hindu in his clothes and dunked him in the water. When he came up, they dunked him again, and then they did it again, and when he came up, there was a bag of coins in his hand.

When the Hindu came out of the water, he told Hadda Sahib, “Sir, it's enough. I can only carry this much money.” The Hindu left happy, and sahib-i mubarak [blessed saint] just continued with his usual worship.

There is another story like this one that people tell. Another person went to [Hadda Sahib] and told him that, “I am very poor. I have a wife and children and don't have enough to feed them. I am handicapped. I don't have any job, and I can't work.”

Hadda Sahib ordered his servants to fill his bag with corn. The servants took hold of the man's hand and led him to the langar where they filled his bag with corn. The man was amazed by this action and thought to himself, “This corn cannot feed us for even a day. I came with such great hope, but see what he has done.”

He placed the bag on his shoulder and thought to himself, “As soon as I get away from this place I will throw away the corn.” When he went away, he opened the bag to throw [the corn] out, but suddenly he saw that all of the corn had turned into jewels, money, and silver. So he closed the bag up and became happy. “He has actually given me money. This isn't corn. I had thought that it was corn, but it is not.”^[28]

Hadda Sahib had a great shaykh who wrote down all of the stories of his life in a book. Now this book is with Hizb-i Islami because Hizb-i Islami brought the library of Hadda Sahib to Peshawar. It's with Gulbuddin [Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of Hizb-i Islami]. This book was a manuscript. It wasn't printed. The name of the book is “Mia Abdul Baqi.” The person who wrote the book was Mia Abdul Baqi. He named the book after himself.

Abdul Baqi wrote, “In the langar everything had been eaten up, and nobody had brought anything. I went to Hadda Sahib and told him, `Dear Sir, there is nothing in the langar. People are hungry, but there's nothing.'

“Hadda Sahib told him, `Come back in an hour.'

“When I returned after an hour, he said, `Wash yourself and do ablution.'

“[When I finished], he said, `Sit down and do zikr, and then come back to me in the last hour of the night.'

“When I went back, Hadda Sahib picked up his prayer carpet, and under it was a lot of money—gold coins. He filled his hand and gave it to me. My shawl became so heavy that I couldn't lift it, but the same amount of money was still lying there.”

Abdul Baqi also wrote, “One day, everything in the langar had been eaten when Shaykh Pacha Sahib of Islampur arrived with 1,500 people. The food was completely gone. Finished. Someone told Hadda Sahib that Pacha Sahib had come and that he had many people with him. Here, he showed two miracles.

“One of the miracles was that Hadda Sahib told him that the number of people [with Pacha Sahib] was 1,497. Hadda Sahib said `Three short of 1,500.' The next [miracle] was that he told him, `Go and I think you will find two pots full of food.' The shaykhs hadn't seen any food before, but when we went there, we saw that they were full of food.

“There were only a few pieces of bread left over, but Hadda Sahib himself went [to the langar] and covered the leftover bread with his shawl. They were taking bread from under the shawl until they had fed all of the people, and after they had fed all of those people, the amount of bread that was left was the same as it had been in the beginning. They were taking food from those two pots and bread from under the shawl until all the people had eaten enough food.

“Hadda Sahib replied that, `There are a total of 1,497 people with Pacha Sahib.'

“Someone else came up and said, `Look! Two pots of food are full!' When we went [to the kitchen], we saw that two pots had suddenly filled up.

“All of the bread had been eaten, and only a few broken pieces remained. Hadda Sahib came and spread his shawl over them, and when he removed it, there were so many pieces that even after everyone had eaten some were still left over.”^[29]

The center of activity for all those who came to visit Hadda Sahib was the guest-house-cum-dining-hall known as the langarwhich was the principal institution through which the pir connected with both the immediate circle of his deputies and disciples and the community at large. In the present day, there are relatively few active langars compared to the number that existed in the late nineteenth century, and what few there were in Afghanistan prior to the 1978 revolution have, to the best of my knowledge, ceased (or severely cut back) operation.^[30] Each of the langars served food to travelers, pilgrims, and local people on a daily basis. According to the son of one of Hadda Sahib's deputies, the Kajuri Mulla, there were “never less than thirty, forty, or fifty people in my father's langar.” Many of these people were travelers “who were completely unknown. They would eat food and then go and didn't stay around. … In my memory, there were never fewer than twenty travelers in the langar.”^[31] While little information exists as to who the visitors to Hadda might have been, it is reasonable to assume that the majority were pilgrims who wanted to partake in the mysterious power (baraka) of the great man and perhaps as well to receive some relief from the vagaries and hardships of life. As a vehicle for divine intervention, the pir offered the hope of reprieve from bad harvests, infertility, sick children and other afflictions commonly experienced by rich and poor alike.

In addition to the ordinary people who were attracted to Hadda, there were undoubtedly some pilgrims, like the young Najmuddin himself, who would have journeyed to Hadda to imbibe the wisdom of the holy man. These scholars and seekers would have come to Hadda in search of spiritual insight, and they would have come with the hope that the great Mulla of Hadda was the longed-for master who would initiate them into the higher realms of scriptural and esoteric knowledge. Some who made the journey undoubtedly were disappointed and eventually moved on to study with other mullas and pirs. A few whom the Mulla encouraged remained for longer periods of time, and the best of these—those who succeeded in establishing a lasting bond with the pir—were anointed as his deputies. Almost all of these deputies either returned to their native villages or were sent out to new locations by Hadda Sahib, but they would have continued coming back to visit their pir once a year or so to receive new lessons or simply to pay their respects.^[32]

According to the grandson of Ustad Sahib of Hadda, the langar at Hadda required many servants (shaykhs) and an elaborate organization to function properly: “In the langar, there were people who were in charge of bread making, meat slaughtering, distributing the food, tending to the guests, and cleaning the mosque. For every one of these responsibilities, there was a shaykh who was assigned to take care of the duty.”^[33] The number of Hadda Sahib's attendants probably says as much about the prevalence of the dispossessed on the frontier as it does about the size and scope of the langar itself. Without a large-scale government presence or any major urban areas in the immediate vicinity, there were few places where the outcast and the exiled could go, and one function the pir and his langar served was to provide an alternative community for those with nowhere to go. As the grandson of Sufi Sahib of Batikot explained, there were hundreds of these shaykhs at Sufi Sahib's langar, but no one was sure where they came from or to what tribe or group they originally belonged:

Children would come from everywhere and grow up there, or a person would come, stay there, and eventually be given a wife. In Hisarak, Kot, Batikot, Dawarkhel-i Qabayel…there are compounds near to where Sufi Sahib had his langars. These are known as the compounds of the shaykhs, and there are also graveyards known as the graveyards of the shaykhs. Wherever they came from, they were serving in the langar, and people gave them wives, a place to live, and they would choose to stay there. They served the people and worked in the langar.

Even if these descriptions of the size and complexity of the langar are inflated, there is no doubt that they were important institutions that provided a social space unlike any other in the frontier region. This being the case, one question that arises is how exactly the Mulla and his deputies managed to keep their storehouses full enough to feed the multitude of pilgrims who came for short visits and the smaller but still significant number of scholars and shaykhs who came and stayed. According to all of the testimony that I heard, the most common arrangement for supplying the langar was for the local people to jointly agree to supply needed commodities to it on a regular basis. Such an arrangement is described as follows by Shams ul-Haq Pirzada, the son of the Kajuri Mulla:

The organization [silsila] of the langar was like this.…Once a year, for instance after harvest, those who were able would provide as much as they could—so many kilos of wheat, so many of this or that…All of the disciples from different villages would do this. Some would bring money. Some firewood—we never paid for this. Since we lived near the mountains, the mountain people would bring it, dried cheese and oil and that sort of thing. It wasn't necessarily once a year.…If you were alive, and you went to see [the pir], you would bring something to him. If I went once, after a month, it would come back to my mind to go again. When he was coming, the next time he didn't want to come empty-handed.^[34]

Whatever the actual arrangement might have been, the ethos at the center of the operation of the langar was one of boundless and uncalculated generosity on the part of the pir. All who came to the langar were to be served regardless of their wealth or position, and many stories illustrate this principle by showing a particular pir treating a poor beggar with the same or a greater level of attention and generosity as he did the visiting noble.^[35] Some pirs also made it a habit not only to make food available to their guests, but also to personally lay before their guests the cloth on which food was eaten. Some also apparently insisted on giving their visitors a gift prior to their departure, as was the case with Kajuri Sahib: “When you left, he would put his hand in his pocket. If 1,000 rupees, or 2,000, or a ten rupee note, or one rupee came out, whatever it was, he would give it to you—definitely.”

The most telling expression of the ethos of the langar is found in the stories about the miraculous generation of money or food for provisioning the langar. This is probably the most common theme of all the stories that I collected concerning Hadda Sahib and his deputies, and the frequency with which different versions of this theme appear makes me believe that it is one of the most important elements of the pir's persona. Specifically, what seems to be most important is the denial of normal patterns of economic production and exchange. Thus, on the one hand, the stories obscure the fact that the pir was involved in long-standing relationships with local people who supplied him with the resources for the langar, and on the other, the stories show the pir giving endlessly to others and thereby negating the usual patterns of reciprocity that structure exchange relations.

If the stories are to be believed, the pir receives all of the assistance he needs from God. People may bring their donations, but when the storehouse of the langar threatens to dry up, the pir calls on God to restore its bounty. Furthermore, normal sorts of exchange don't matter. The pir gives food and gifts to those who need it without consideration of return. His gifts represent unselfish acts of generosity that are made possible not only by his own miraculous powers but also by the expectation that every rupee expended will be matched by ten or a hundred rupees returned later on. To some extent, it might appear that what is going on here is a kind of divine pyramid scheme, according to which the apparently boundless ability of the charismatic leader to give occasions more gifts which in turn lead to more bounty. The charismatic leader keeps the operation going by appearing to disavow any concern for the banal details of economic value or advantage. His attitude is one of total uninterest in the economic exchange that underwrites the langar, and by maintaining this air of otherworldliness he increases the mystery surrounding the institution and mystifies the role which the people themselves play in keeping it viable.

While I think there is some truth to this sort of analysis—mystification is central to the operation of the langar and to the miracle stories that encode the langar's operation—viewing the langar solely in such instrumental terms would be misguided. The langar cannot be reduced to a counterfeit confidence game. Its significance transcends this sort of reductionism and must be analyzed not simply in terms of its own operation but rather in relation to the larger matrices of frontier society. Thus, while much of what a pir “does” for people (from “curing” them of diseases to teaching them zikrs) is relatively difficult to understand and even more difficult to assess, the langar is a public space and performs a public function, and in so doing allows us to consider the nature of the pir's symbolic presence and moral authority.

In approaching this issue, it is perhaps most pertinent to begin by comparing the langar as an institution and as a symbol of the pir's power to the other institution in tribal society that the langar most resembles: the guest house of the khan. As has been noted, the guest house, or hujra, is one of the prime elements in the tribal khan's social persona. As much as anything, it is the khan's ability to feed people that substantiates his own reputation as a man of substance: literally, a man who is “heavy” or drund. No individual who sought the title and position of khan could effect this claim without maintaining an active guest house where supporters, co-villagers, and strangers could gather and partake of the big man's hospitality.

In its heyday, the langar functioned in a similar fashion, providing the pir with an institutional base from which he could extend his influence into society and gather people to him. But while most tribal khans extended their hospitality to a narrow range of relatives, retainers, and guests, the langar served the needs of a wider public, functioning not only as a dining hall and dormitory for those close to the pir but also as a way station for travelers, as a place of congregation for neighboring tribes(and sometimes of mediation when those tribes were engaged in hostilities), and finally as a refuge for the many outcasts of society (not a fewof whom assumed the status of shaykhs and stayed on as servants ofthe pir). In assuming these larger and more ecumenical functions, the langar provided a partial corrective to the insular propensities of the frontier tribes, bringing the tribes into contact with each other and with the world beyond their borders. The presence of langars meant that people could travel more easily. It meant that there existed a place where individuals from different, sometimes warring, groups could sit down together without anyone having the upper hand.^[36] As visitors, no one assumed the identity of host or guest; all were equals and equally bound to respect the ethical precepts that governed the sacred precincts of the pir's center.

As an institution, the langar differs from the hujra in another way, and that is in how it formalizes relations of hierarchy and authority. We have noted previously that those who repeatedly attended the guest house of the khan would eventually be considered a companion or retainer (malgarai). Repeatedly accepting the hospitality of another individual without offering hospitality of one's own implies that one has accepted an inferior status relative to the other. Those who attend the khan can do so indefinitely, but it is understood that, when called upon, they will serve their benefactor and come to his aid. In the meantime, however, the khan's retainers preserve the facade of autonomy and even of equality in their relations with the khan, and only rarely, and in subtle ways, does one notice that there is a status difference between the khan and those around him.

The same is not the case with those who become disciples of a pir, for in accepting lessons from the pir and partaking of his food and his blessing, they implicitly accept a different status relative to the pir than to any other human being. This is the status of being “in the band” of the pir, which means in essence that they are to the pir as slaves are to their master. Compared with the relatively indistinct gestures of respect offered by a retainer or client to the khan he serves, the disciple is expected to act out more dramatic expressions of obeisance, as can be seen in the following “ligations and manners” (shartuna au adabuna) for disciples taken from a pamphlet prepared by Haji Muhammad Amin, a Pakistani Pakhtun whose pir was a disciple of a disciple of the Mulla of Hadda:

• the disciple should show politeness [adab] and modesty [hiya] in front of his pir
• the disciple should be “like a dead body in front of the pir” [which is to say, he should be quiet and non-assertive]
• the disciple should accept that the orders of the pir are obligatory [wajeb]
• the disciple should perform service [khedmat] for the pir with love [mahabat] and devotion [ekhlas]
• when going to visit the pir, the disciple should be sure to take some present—if he is poor, then he should take him a flower or even a clean stone
• when going to the pir's house, the disciple should consider himself a servant rather than expect to be treated with the respect due a guest^[37]

We cannot say with certainty that these and other rules set forth in this pamphlet would have been applicable to Hadda Sahib's disciples, but given that they were written down by a disciple of Haji Sahib of Turangzai, one of the Mulla of Hadda's principal deputies, it seems fair to conclude that similar rules would have applied in the Mulla's time. If this assumption is accepted, then what stands out is the degree to which these rules of conduct contrast with the ethos of self-determination that otherwise held sway in the frontier region and that was so prominently displayed in the story of Sultan Muhammad Khan.

As discussed in the first chapter, the principal form of obedience that is expected of an individual in Pakhtun society is that which a son must show to his father and other senior patrilineal kin. In all other encounters, Pakhtun men try to meet one another on an equal footing, carefully reciprocating all signs of deference and respect so that the pretense of equality can be maintained even when the relationship is distinctly hierarchical (as in the case of a khan and his retainers). The author of the Sufi pamphlet, however, would seem to contravene the ethos of self-determination in his delineation of the protocols of discipleship, for not only is the pir to whom these signs of respect are shown not a senior kinsman, but the customary forms of regard due to him exceed those that a Pakhtun man would show even to his father.^[38]

This being the case, what then is the explanation for this apparent difference between Sufi protocols and Pakhtun custom? What is the reason not only for self-effacement in the presence of the pir, but also for the larger set of disciplinary customs that encourage self-abnegation and mortification of the flesh? To some extent, the answer to these questions lies in the nature of mystical practice generally. The Sufi adept, like his counterpart in Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu mystical traditions, seeks to break away from the world of sensory gratification and ego-fulfillment, and the practices of self-denial help him to achieve that condition.

Beyond this general similarity with other mystical practices, the answer to these questions also lies in the particular character of Pakhtun culture, particularly its unusual severity—a severity that might lead an initiate to view Sufi discipline as a release from worldly stress rather than a trial to be endured. Leading the life of a Pakhtun requires relentless vigilance and restraint. A person is always under inspection and subject to censure or insult; consequently, he or she must always remain cognizant of the potential slights, insinuations, and assaults to which an individual is subject in the universe of honor-shame transactions. So long as a person remains in the village among his or her own people, the expectations of honor hold sway. There is no respite, even in the privacy of the domestic quarters, where competitive pressures are often as rife as they are in the public domain.

In the presence of the pir, however, a new sort of ethos takes hold: a non-economizing one of obedience and acceptance. No longer are there worries about reciprocal obligations. Whatever a person gives in the way of material goods for the operation of the langar is returned in the form of a sometimes tangible, sometimes intangible blessing. Likewise, even though the acts of deference paid to the pir are often returned with indifference or even abuse, it is not a matter of concern. The disciple does not feel slighted or aggrieved, for the ways of the saints are mysterious; therefore, the disciple must simply accept his treatment, for calculations of goods given and goods gained or of honors paid and received are not in accordance with the saintly ethos.

When the disciple is in the precincts of his pir, he conforms to the pir's rules, and he is grateful for the opportunity to do so, for the palpable recompense of his obedience is a unique sort of freedom that he can experience nowhere else. This freedom comes from letting go, from dropping the ever-present vigilance that an individual must maintain in the perilous world of tribal culture. Because the pir is situated outside the domain of day-to-day social and political relations, the disciple knows that his interactions with the pir are separate from the rest of his life and can be left behind when the everyday world is reentered.^[39]

Purity and Politics

Once when Hadda Sahib was staying in Jalalabad, he said to Hazrat Sahib of Butkhak, “Go outside and listen, and tell me what you hear.”

It was a peaceful night, and Hazrat Sahib soon came back inside. Hadda Sahib asked him, “What did you hear?”

Hazrat Sahib replied, “Dear Sir, I listened in every direction, and I heard nothing but the sound of people praising God and zikr.”

Hadda Sahib said, “Once when I was a student, I was walking along in the heat of the summer and passed by Jalalabad. (Jalalabad is now very developed, but long ago it was a desert. Around the city there was only sand and no trees—only a kind of white plant that grew in the sand. It was just a small town. Nothing was there.)When I reached Reg-i Shahmard Khan, I put down my books. It was summer and hot. When I reached Reg-i Shahmard Khan, I just fell down. I spread my shawl out on the ground, but because of the heat and the mosquitoes, I couldn't sleep. I was also hearing the sound of singing and music rising up.

“I raised my head, turned my face to the sky, and said, `Oh God, please send a person to change all these evil acts to positive ones. Change the people's corruption [fasad-i‘alam] to the people's improvement [aslah-i‘alam].'

“I prayed and prayed and prayed, and then I went to Swat Sahib and took his hand, and after he accepted me and made me his deputy, he gave me permission to come to Hadda (which is located about five or six miles south of Jalalabad). Swat Sahib told me, `You shall stay there.'

“As I told you, when I was passing through there, I didn't hear any sound except that of music and nonsense, shouting, screaming, and carrying on. But tonight you are telling me that you hear the sound of [people] praising God and zikr. See how God has changed this place from that time until now. The changes will come through a person who himself has accepted the change. If he himself has not changed, then he cannot change others.”^[40]

There is an odd disparity between the respect that was shown to the pir and his lack of concrete authority. Scores of people came to pay their respects to the pir, and many of those who visited humbled themselves before the great man in token of their respect, but in practical terms the pir's authority did not extend much beyond the limits of his own center; for example, whereas the pir had a staff of attendant shaykhs to tend to his needs and handle the daily management of the langar, he did not have a force that could be called on to support him in the way that a khan's cohort of retainers could be called on to bully an adversary or appropriate a piece of land. Likewise, the nonresident disciples visited the center only intermittently and resumed their other commitments once they were out of the pir's presence, and only under certain rare circumstances would they enlist en masse to accomplish a political objective.

Although pirs could not extend their influence in the forceful ways available to a khan or a ruler, they did possess certain means by which to advance their authority. One was a practice known as amir bil maruf (commanding people to the proper practice and faith), according to which the pir would summon other scholars and Sufis to accompany him on a tour of local villages. In each village, the pir and other members of his entourage would preach in the mosque, encouraging the people to abandon those traditional customs that were not condoned in Islam and to embrace those that were. The customs most often enjoined included such time-honored practices as the collection of bride-price (wulja) and interest (sud), as well as singing and dancing at weddings and other celebrations.

While religious condemnations of customary practices were couched in the language of piety and proper worship, they also had clear political overtones, and there was at least one instance in which the Mulla's efforts to purify the faith brought him into competition with another religious leader who was also intent on extending his authority in the frontier. That other leader was the Mulla of Manki (Manki being a village on the British side of the border within the British zone of control), who was also a disciple of the Akhund of Swat, and, like Hadda Sahib, a figure of some renown among the frontier tribes. Though the details of their relationship are sketchy, it appears that the Mulla of Manki and Hadda Sahib had a long-standing rivalry that finally culminated in 1896 when the two religious leaders faced off over an issue of how properly to perform the act of prayer (namaz or salat).

Specifically, their dispute centered on the issue of whether it was appropriate for the worshipper to raise his finger at certain specific points in the sequence of recitations and prostrations that make up the prayer ritual. Hadda Sahib, citing one set of Traditions (hadith) of the Prophet Muhammad, claimed that it was. The Manki Mulla, marshaling his scriptural evidence, argued the opposite point of view—that the finger should not be raised. At stake in this confrontation was not only the proper conduct of ritual but also who was to be recognized as the paramount authority on religious matters in the frontier region. In April 1896 the two rivals met in the Mohmand village of Gandhab in front of an assembly of about eight thousand mullahs and spectators and, over several days, debated their respective positions.^[41]

Such debates were nothing new to the frontier. In fact, they appear to have been treated as something of a sport and often attracted a large audience of spectators. Few of these spectators would have understood the theological nuances under debate, but that would not have prevented them from enjoying the sight of men squared off in contest, as illustrated in this description by Sayyid Bahauddin Majrooh:

The best fight was disputation between two well-known maulavis. Each one would come with a large following of his students and donkey-loads of commentary books in Arabic. Arguments against arguments, objections against objections, books against books were produced. The disputation, interrupted by prayers, meals and sleep, was resumed the following morning and would continue for days. Strong emotion of anger, exchange of insults and occasionally physical fighting among the rival students were integral parts of the art of disputation.^[42]

Sometimes debates would be sponsored by members of a particular tribe or village who would supply room and board for the disputants and their followers. In other cases, a debate might be paid for by a local chief, who would pit a religious scholar resident in his area against that of a rival leader, in order to gain merit and prestige for himself. In the case of the debate between Hadda Sahib and the Manki Mulla, however, it appears that the two principal protagonists were operating independently and on their own behalf.^[43] Given this fact, the dispute is significant for showing the ways in which spiritual leaders could become embroiled in the same kind of political entanglements that engaged other political figures in the frontier region. As noted previously, a man of honor is judged by the rivals he keeps. The more famous an individual becomes, the more likely it is that he will attract the attention of others who want what he has. The most common form of rivalry is tarburwali, which pits patrilateral first cousins against one another. Variations of such rivalries are found in almost every frontier village, and, as the story of Sultan Muhammad illustrates, in their many permutations they constitute a fundamental element of Pakhtun social structure.^[44]

While the Hadda and Manki Mullas were outside of the tribal system, they do not seem to have been exempt from the rivalries that the tribal system engendered. To the contrary, their own competition can be thought of as a variation on the tarburwali pattern since both Hadda Sahib and Manki Mulla were disciples of the Akhund of Swat and therefore something like “spiritual cousins.” In the tribal universe, cousin rivalry is endemic at least in part because cousins share a joint estate and are condemned by circumstance to live in close proximity with one another throughout their lives (see chapter 1). Spiritual cousins are more fortunate, perhaps, because they have the advantage of mobility, and it appears that the disciples of important pirs like the Akhund of Swat and Hadda Sahib purposely located themselves at some distance from other disciples so that they would not be competing with one another for support.^[45] Nevertheless, it sometimes happened that spheres of influence overlapped and as a result, occasioned spirited rivalries such as that between the Manki and Hadda Mullas.^[46]

Pirs and Princes

Someone reported to Abdur Rahman that Hazrat Sahib [of Butkhak, one of Hadda Sahib's deputies] was giving langar, and Abdur Rahman wanted to know where the expenditures were coming from. “What is the source of his income? Is he an alchemist or something?” Then Abdur Rahman said, “Bring him to me, so I can ask him face-to-face!”

The day that Hazrat Sahib came was a Friday, and Abdur Rahman ordered that [Hazrat Sahib's] prayer carpet be put in the front row [of the mosque]. After the Friday prayers, Abdur Rahman said to him, “I caused trouble for you [in the past]. Now I want to ask you something. Should I ask it here or in private?”

Hazrat Sahib replied, “There is nothing special about my activities, so go ahead and ask.”

“I want to know what is the source of your income when you give langar. You have so many expenses. What is the source?”

[Hazrat Sahib] said to him, “Are you a king?”

[Abdur Rahman] replied, “Yes.”

“Suppose I come from Butkhak or the mountains and I bring you a gift of a hundred rupees or one hundred rupees worth of gifts. So I, as a poor man, give these things to you. What would you, as a king, do in return?”

He replied, “If you bring a hundred, I must put 1,000 or 2,000 rupees in front of you.”

[Hazrat Sahib] said, “This is my alchemy—that I give a piece of bread in the name of God, and He gives me ten in exchange. If I expend one ser [approximately 16 pounds], then immediately God gives me ten ser. If I spend one rupee, God finds ten rupees for me. If you like this kind of alchemy, then you should start giving langar to people and the income will also be coming to you from every direction. This is my alchemy.”

When Hadda Sahib became popular as a saint, his influence grew, and people were coming to him all the time. One of the distinguishing characteristics for which Abdur Rahman was known was his suspicion of those who were becoming influential among the people. When someone was becoming popular among the people, he would feel threatened and worry that he would be challenged. Then he would find pretexts for arresting or expelling that person from the country.

[Abdur Rahman] started opposing Hadda Sahib and tried to destroy his reputation. Finally, he decided to arrest Hadda Sahib, so Hadda Sahib left his home during the night. He left his home in Kabul during the middle of the night, and he reached Miran-i Zarbacha [in the Shinwar territory] before dawn. The people who lived there at that time were his followers. Since they were memorizers [qari] of the Qur’an, they were his sincere devotees. He spent the night there, and when the people of Shinwar were informed [of his arrival], all of them stood determined and expressed their readiness to fight Abdur Rahman.

Hadda Sahib told them, “Jihad against Muslims is forbidden because it will result in the shedding of Muslim blood. I don't want you to start fighting with him. I am going to the border so I will be beyond his authority. I want other Muslims to remain at peace and do not want to have their blood spilled.”

Then the father of Feroz Khan—I can't remember his name— and some people of Mohmand Dara took Hadda Sahib to the ferry crossing. They crossed the river and took him themselves to Mohmand—the free tribal area [azad qabayel]. When Hadda Sahib arrived there, his fame increased.

At that time, Hazrat Sahib was in Butkhak, and Abdur Rahman was saying things about Hadda Sahib. At that time, some spies brought a report to Abdur Rahman, “Hazrat Sahib has called you an infidel [kafir]. He has given his judgment against you as an infidel.”

So Abdur Rahman summoned Hazrat Sahib, and one of my uncles named Azim Jan, who was a young boy at that time, says that he was with him. He says, “I thought if they put him in prison, I'd like to be with him to serve him.” He says, “When they took Hazrat Sahib there, they told him to sit and wait.”

(Abdur Rahman was a very intimidating king. He was cruel [zalem] and merciless [be rahm].)

When Abdur Rahman was face-to-face with Hazrat Sahib, he asked him, “Is it true that you called me an infidel?” He told him, “I received reports that you have given a verdict of infidelity against me.”

Hazrat Sahib told him, “Our religious law (shari‘at) doesn't permit a Muslim to call another Muslim an infidel.”

(This is in accord with Shari‘at law. If any Muslim calls another Muslim an infidel, he himself will be the one who is an infidel.)

Then Hazrat Sahib said to him, “I received some reports that you used bad words against Hadda Sahib who is the leader of the people (muqtada-i ‘alam). If you have called him these names, then you are an infidel. Do you understand?”

(In other words, “I may have given the judgment against you, but only if you have used these words. Then you are an infidel.”)

Then Abdur Rahman used bad words against Hadda Sahib in front of Hazrat Sahib. He even called him a kafir. Hazrat Sahib said, “Now I am sure that you have become an infidel.”

Then Abdur Rahman ordered that the beard of Mubarak [Hazrat Sahib] be pulled out. He commanded them to tear it out by the roots, and he issued the order for his execution.

Hazrat Sahib said, “You can't kill me because [the Qur’an] says that God is the only one in the position of life and death.…God's is the only power. You are something that can't even cure its own leg.” (Abdur Rahman's leg was crippled. He had a problem with his leg that caused him to limp.) “Life and death are in God's hands. If you have the power to kill someone, then you should also have the power to bring them back as well. If you can do that, go to the graveyard and bring someone back to life.”

When Abdur Rahman ordered them to tear his beard out by the roots, Hazrat Sahib said, “Thanks be to God. I have been ready to sacrifice my jugular vein, but so far I have suffered very little. I am thankful that this thing has happened in the path of Islam.”

The order of execution was not carried out, but seven ser and one charak [approximately 4 pounds] of shackles and chain were placed on his feet, and five charak of handcuffs were placed on his wrists: in all, more than eight and a half sers [about 140 pounds]. But when they took Hazrat Sahib to prison with those eight and a half ser of shackles and chains, they broke by themselves.

The jailer told him, “I know that the chains have broken of their own accord, but if Abdur Rahman sees that the chain is not on your neck, he will kill me. If he finds out that you are not wearing your chains, he will accuse me of opening them.” Then when Mubarak [Hazrat Sahib] finished his ablution and prayers, he would put the nail [securing the chains] back in place.

He was in prison for two years and some months. Then one day, Tur, the jailer, asked him, “Why don't you put these handcuffs back on?”

Hazrat Sahib told him to come fix them himself. “I won't fix them anymore.”

When Tur tried to fix them, they would just break again. Then Hazrat Sahib said to him, “If you can't fix them, why should I?”

Then Tur went to Abdur Rahman and told him that, “We are putting the chains on, but they are breaking by themselves,” and Abdur Rahman said, “If they won't remain secure on him, don't put them on.”

Every night his bed would turn over, and [Abdur Rahman] would see in his dreams Hazrat Sahib with his shalgi [an iron-tipped staff sometimes carried by faqirs]. Hazrat Sahib would say to him, “Shall I stab you, tyrant?,” and Abdur Rahman would shout out in his sleep. Then he ordered that the shackles be removed.

During the two years [that Hazrat Sahib was in prison], Abdur Rahman's bed turned over many times, and he saw Hazrat Sahib many times in his dreams.

When Abdur Rahman died, his son, Amir Habibullah Khan, came and kissed the beard of Hazrat Sahib and asked him to excuse his father. Hazrat Sahib said, “I have forgiven all Muslims.”^[47]

In his autobiography, Abdur Rahman freely admits his antipathy for religious leaders, and from the evidence obtained in my various interviews the feeling appears to have been reciprocated. This is not surprising. A common theme in Sufi narratives is precisely this animosity between the power of the state and the power of religion, and many of the stories told about Hadda Sahib and his deputies, including the ones presented here, reflect this tension.^[48] The first of the two stories begins with Abdur Rahman learning through his network of informants of the extraordinary bounty of the langar operated by the Hazrat Sahib of Butkhak. Suspicious, Abdur Rahman goes to see for himself what sort of magic the pir is employing that allows him to supply endless amounts of food to the people.

When Abdur Rahman meets Hazrat Sahib, the Amir expresses his discomfort at speaking in public. We infer that he is used to working in secret—his is the world of manipulation and intrigue. Not so with Hazrat Sahib, who makes it clear that he has nothing to hide from others. His power comes from God alone, and he has no need to cut covert deals—with the king or anyone else. Abdur Rahman then asks the question that has been preying on his mind: how could a humble man like Hazrat Sahib with no apparent source of income manage to feed the streams of people coming day and night to his langar? To Abdur Rahman, this phenomenon is inexplicable and makes him suspicious. Could the pir be a magician of some sort or an agent of the British? And, even if he is neither of these things, the pir is still dangerous, for he attracts people's attention and draws them to him.

To answer the Amir's question, Hazrat Sahib asks one of his own which succinctly illustrates the difference between their two modes of operation. The question concerns what the Amir would do if Hazrat Sahib were to give him a valuable gift. Abdur Rahman's response is to indicate that as ruler, he would be obliged to outdo the pir's gift ten- or twenty-fold. This is the nature of his power: he can allow no one to hold an advantage over him, for to do so would be to admit the other as an equal to himself. To this admission, Hazrat Sahib has his own reply. His authority does not derive from wealth, nor is it subject to contestation. Like the Amir, he can cause vast riches to materialize on demand, but it is God who is ultimately responsible for these riches, not Hazrat Sahib. Unlike the Amir, he feels no need to prove his worth by outdoing potential rivals. He is not required by his position to overwhelm the potential gifts of others and thereby render them socially inferior. Nor does he manifest any particular interest in the quantity of goods moving through his langar. He is merely the agent for this alchemy of riches. The benefactor is God, and it is to God that thanks are due.

Whereas the story does not explicitly challenge the authority of the king, the challenge is nevertheless present, grounded in the contrary notion of benefit and gratitude espoused by the Hazrat. As noted in the last chapter, the king bestows benefits on his subjects and demands gratitude and obedience in return. This story, however, shows the limits of this equation, first, through its implicit depiction of the Amir's use of benefits as a measure of his own dominance, and second, through its demonstration that the king's benefits are not as impressive as they might seem, at least when compared to the greater benefits freely provided by God. The king's attitude is that he is the central conduit through which benefit is bestowed upon the community, but the pir contravenes this notion and demonstrates that all those in a position to provide benefit are merely custodians of God's bounty and that, consequently, gratitude is finally due to God alone. In this sense, the pir's resolute disinterest in the dynamics of material exchange communicates the message that material benefit is not a basis of temporal authority because it is not any person's to give. God alone produces the material resources on which human life depends, and consequently the act of taking credit for that production must be seen as an act of unlawful appropriation.

The second story is more discursive and explicit in its points. The king is afraid of crowds because they are a challenge to his power, and so whenever large groups of people gather, he tries to eliminate the person responsible. In this case, the author of the Abdur Rahman's discontent is Hadda Sahib himself who is forced to flee Kabul in the middle of the night to evade the Amir's plot. However romanticized it might be, this episode does accord with the apparent facts of Hadda Sahib's life. Sometime in the late 1880s, he managed to incur the Amir's distrust and animosity.^[49] In an effort to limit Hadda Sahib's power, the Amir tried to convince other mullas to declare Hadda Sahib a “Wahhabi,” which is to say, a follower of the militant Arabian leader, Abdul Wahhab, who advocated the demolition of saint shrines and the discontinuation of other beliefs and practices unsanctioned by the Qur’an and the hadith of the Prophet.

Time and again, Afghans have rejected and expelled religious reformers who urged them to abandon their traditional beliefs and practices, and the Amir's accusation was clearly intended to tap this conservative current as a means of discrediting the Mulla with his followers.^[50] However, given the Mulla's status as a Sufi pir and the seemingly un-Wahhabi-like quality of his career, the Amir's choice of tactics appears strange, and perhaps desperate. The initiative failed, apparently because Abdur Rahman was unable to convince a large enough number of religious leaders to support his efforts. Subsequently, the Amir reversed directions, asking Hadda Sahib to serve as a mediator when the Ghilzai tribal confederacy rose up against the state. Himself a Ghilzai by birth, Hadda Sahib initially agreed to undertake the assignment on the condition that the Amir agree to limit taxes collected from his subjects. Abdur Rahman refused to accede to this demand and reportedly tried to have the Mulla secretly killed, but Hadda Sahib discovered the plot.

Effecting his escape from Kabul, Hadda Sahib journeyed first to the territory of the Shinwari tribe, which is in fact not far from Hadda itself. Presumably, the Mulla had disciples among the tribe, but he was also familiar with the tribe's leaders from an earlier visit in 1883.^[51] On that occasion, Abdur Rahman had sent him to negotiate an end to a long period of antagonism between the tribe and the government, and he had been successful in his mission. Now, four years later, Hadda Sahib openly denounced the Amir as an infidel and was greeted with warm support by the Shinwaris who declared their own willingness to accept the Mulla as their king (padshah). In the story, Hadda Sahib refuses this suggestion because of his desire not to “shed Muslim blood.” According to Kakar, the Mulla refused because “he did not intend to enter politics.”^[52] Whatever the reason, the narrative coincides with archival accounts in indicating that the Mulla chose to leave Shinwari territory and continue on to the Mohmand districts, north of the Khyber Pass. Like the Shinwari lands, the Mohmand area was also free of government control, and it had often provided a refuge for political opponents of the British and Afghan states.

Our story is silent about the Mulla's flight and long sojourn among the Mohmand (he was to remain there until after Abdur Rahman's death in 1901). Instead, the narrative shifts to the Mulla's disciple, Hazrat Sahib of Butkhak, who was imprisoned by the Amir about the time of the Mulla's flight. This change in focus occurs partly because the narrator of the story is the grandson of Hazrat Sahib, but it is also because Hazrat Sahib had a more dramatic encounter with the king than did Hadda Sahib, who managed to escape.^[53] This episode accords with the known facts, for it is entirely consistent that the Amir would try to force Hazrat Sahib to demonstrate his loyalty to the state by issuing an edict of infidelity against his pir, Hadda Sahib.

It is not simply the reputation of an individual that is at stake in this story, however. Far more significant is the question of which of two different authorities has the right to declare someone an infidel. Through his network of spies, the Amir has discovered that Hazrat Sahib has condemned him. When confronted with this charge, Hazrat Sahib avoids openly stating whether he is guilty as charged, but he does indicate what actions on the part of the Amir would confirm his status as an infidel. Since no Muslim has the right to call any other Muslim an infidel, the Amir has effectively condemned himself in his attacks on Hadda Sahib.^[54] For his part, Hazrat Sahib is careful not to fall into the same trap of making unlawful pronouncements. Cleverly, he states the conditions within which a declaration of infidelity would be justified and then allows the Amir to fulfill them, thus making it self-evident to the listener who is in the right and who is in the wrong.

On one level, this dispute seems rather like schoolyard taunting, but the dynamics here are profoundly important. What is at stake in this semantic contest is the right to make pronouncements and categorizations of the most vital sort. The right to decide whether or not someone is a believer carries with it the power of inclusion and exclusion from the community. Abdur Rahman clearly wants this right for himself.^[55] As we saw in the last chapter, he preserves to himself the right to appoint each individual to his rightful place and to receive in turn the gratitude that this right carries with it: “Each one stands in his own place and position, and hence you people should be grateful to God and to the King.” There is a crucial problem with this equation, however, and that is that the king's authority ultimately derives from God, and while it is understood that God desires one individual to rise above the rest and lead the community of the faithful, there is no specific set of guidelines that can indicate who that individual should be. As we have seen, Abdur Rahman claims that right on the basis of his own qualities of just leadership (dramatically illustrated in the autobiography) and through the mystical vehicle of dreams.

In this story, an alternative framework for determining legitimacy is offered to counter Abdur Rahman's claims. The first element of this framework is control over Islamic legal precedents. Traditionally, Islamic kings have always had to rely on the legal advice and consent of scholars to approve their edicts. Abdur Rahman was no different; he too had to secure the approval of Islamic clerics when he wanted to institute a change in the established way of conducting business or when he wanted to exercise force to secure the obedience of his subjects. In most instances, for example, in the case of a tribal uprising, this approval was not difficult to obtain, but when he sought to attack one of their own number, the clerics bridled and asserted their authority to check his power. That is what is at issue when Hazrat Sahib counters Abdur Rahman's efforts to secure Hadda Sahib's condemnation. The judgment of infidelity is the ultimate sanction that can be leveled against a Muslim: it entails exclusion from the community of the faithful at the least, and execution at the most. Hazrat Sahib not only denies the Amir the right to wield this weapon, he also turns that weapon upon him: illegitimate use of power by the sovereign makes the sovereign himself illegitimate.

This is the first of several reversals that we see in the story. The second comes when the Amir attempts to punish Hazrat Sahib. The Amir pulls out the saint's beard and throws him in prison bound in heavy iron handcuffs, leg irons, and chains. The saint, however, welcomes his punishment and, in so doing, transforms Abdur Rahman's use of symbolic violence (his infliction of a physical punishment that not only harms the body but also communicates a message) into a source of power for himself. That is to say, the saint undermines the absolute nature of the king's sovereignty by conveying his own message of pleasure at having pain inflicted upon himself.

The source of the saint's pleasure is the opportunity that Abdur Rahman's violence affords Hazrat to compare the puny power of temporal violence in relation to the ultimate power of God to bring about life and death, pain and healing. The saint's power, it has been noted, comes from his own actions, particularly his acts of self-abnegation. The king's torment and temptation may be unbearable for most men, but they are a mere shadow of the torment and temptation that Sufi adepts face during their extended retreats in the chilla khana. The king's punishment is therefore welcomed by the saint, for he can do nothing to the saint that the saint has not already done to himself. In communicating pleasure in his predicament, Hazrat Sahib contemptuously derides the limited power of the king while also declaring his own gratitude for the opportunity which the Amir has provided him to demonstrate his faith. The king's prerogative not only to exercise justice but also to inflict a surplus of violence—a prerogative that we saw in the last chapter as central to Abdur Rahman's authority—is thereby taken from him. So, ironically, is his right to expect gratitude and obedience from his subjects, for here gratitude is expressed for the Amir's “benefits” but in a manner that makes a mockery of the Amir's power.

The final reversal in the story comes in the end when the saint uses the means at his disposal to inflict his own pain on the king. Significantly, the principal vehicle for this reversal comes through the medium of dreams which is one of the avenues by which Abdur Rahman himself sought to legitimate his power. Here, however, dreams are used to torment the Amir, not to succor him, and the agent of that torment is the Hazrat himself carrying the iron-tipped staff of the faqir, the Islamic personage who represents more completely than any other the antithetical character of spiritual and temporal power. Ultimately, of course, victory belongs to the saint. The king's chains cannot hold Hazrat Sahib, and the tormentor becomes the tormented until finally the dead father must ask forgiveness through the person of his living son.^[56]

The representation in the story of the son asking forgiveness for the father carries an especially strong symbolic value given the charged relationship of fathers and sons in Afghan society. In this instance, the king's lust for power makes him oblivious to the real source of power. Only in death is he brought to his senses, and he must use the medium of dreams to communicate his plight to the living son who alone can alleviate his torment through acts of pious devotion.^[57] In this way the saint finally lays hold of the authority that is rightfully his. The king can pursue his triumphs only to the brink of death, but the saint transcends this boundary, thereby demonstrating the primacy of God over human affairs and of religious leadership over the state.

Coda: The Journey To Koh-i Qaf

To conclude this discussion of the life of Najmuddin Akhundzada, I want to return to the story which began this chapter—the story of the Mulla of Hadda's journey to Koh-i Qaf. The import of this specific story and the more general significance of miracle stories as a narrative genre are clearer in light of the nature and role of Islam in the frontier context. What seemed most striking about this story initially was its admixture of the mundane and the fantastic. The Mulla, after all, is a historical personage of the recent past, yet in this episode he is engaged in acts that seem better suited to a character from the Arabian Nights than a real man.

Similar comments were elicited by Sultan Muhammad Khan's story and by the life history of Abdur Rahman. All of these stories are memorable because they place “real” people in mythical situations. This being the case, what is most important to attend to, in this story as in the others, is precisely the conjunction between myth and history, between the vision of the ideal and the embeddedness of the real. The first point to make in this regard is that the magical elements of the story enshroud what is basically a prosaic tale concerning the religious leader's role in mediating social disputes. Thus, we have a jilted lover (who just happens to be a dragon) prevented from marrying the daughter of a nobleman. Beseeched to intervene on the lover's behalf, the Mulla reluctantly agrees to fly off to the land of the fairies. While attending to this business, Hadda Sahib also arranges and performs sixty-nine other marriage ceremonies.

There are a number of confusing elements in this story; for example, the dragon is revealed to be the prince of fairy land and therefore presumably a suitable marriage partner for any nobleman's daughter. It is also not explained why there is such a backlog of marriages in fairyland. The implication seems to be that the marriages had been held up, perhaps because of disagreements over bride price or some other part of the exchange. We cannot be sure of this interpretation, but one Western reader has suggested that the Mulla's performance of these multiple marriages might represent “an emotional amplification of the perceived `touchiness' of marital negotiations in general in real life, and the potency of the intervention of a real-life spiritual figure.”^[58]

Over and above these issues, however, the critical feature of the story is its ordinariness. Within the magical frame lies a quite straightforward narrative about one of the things that religious leaders like the Mulla of Hadda have traditionally done—which is to mediate disputes and offer solutions to the everyday problems that restrict the normal flow of social life. In this context, Koh-i Qaf serves as a kind of mirror world to the world of the everyday. That other world may be more exotic than the world of the frontier, it may contain succulent fruits and metamorphosing dragons, but despite these differences, the fairies must deal with the same sort of problems in their mystical realm that Afghans deal with in their mud-brick villages back home.

At the same time, there are differences between the mirror world of Koh-i Qaf and the real world of the frontier, the most important of which is the relative authority that the fairies give to the Mulla to intervene in their affairs. Comparatively, the Pakhtuns of the frontier accord far less scope to their religious leaders to intervene in social affairs, and—we are to conclude—have a far less harmonious and prosperous society as a result. In this sense then, the story of Koh-i Qaf can be seen as an implicit critique of Pakhtun culture, particularly its failure to treat religious figures with the respect they are due.^[59] The world revealed in the miracle story is a world where the divine plan has been worked out by and through those whom God has designated as his instruments. Lost in its temporal concerns, the human world remains unconscious of God's power, just as it is unconscious of the status of God's saints. The miracle story, however, reminds those absorbed in the world of appearances about the existence of a transcendent reality superseding the evanescent order of the material world that holds them in thrall. The majority of men and women cannot experience this realm, of course, but they can at least show a proper respect to those saints who can cross the divide and bring some of the harmony from that other world into this one.

The story highlights the dichotomy between the real and the ideal, and it also reminds the listener that, despite the Mulla's lack of those things that constitute temporal power, he is neither abject nor powerless. To the contrary, the humble faqir has, through his various negations and privations, endowed himself with a pure potency capable of striking terror into the hearts of great men, including kings. The Mulla and his ilk frighten and confound those who align their compasses in relation to more mundane ambitions and desires. With normal men, even the great and powerful, the logic of why and how they act is comprehensible, but the motivation and response of a pir can only be guessed at. His reasons and ways evince a moral calculus that others cannot readily comprehend, and the power that he displays is a power not of human manufacture.

The transmutation of power from powerlessness is an unstable operation, but the story of the Mulla's journey to Koh-i Qaf indicates some of the ways the process can be smoothed and ensured. Thus, for example, it is important to preserve the illusion that the saint's power has not been sought and that the saint does not brandish it for his own sake alone. Just as he shows a distinct disinterest in the transactions of wealth surrounding the langar, so the pir must eschew any display of pride or personal investment if the notion that he is truly God's agent is to be maintained. This attitude is demonstrated in the Koh-i Qaf story by the Mulla's fruitless efforts at hiding his miracles from the sight of those around him and by the fact that it is only Abdul Baqi's meddlesome presence that allows the story to be known at all. The nominal reason for making these efforts to obscure the journey to Koh-i Qaf is that ordinary mortals are not capable of comprehending or withstanding the hidden reality of divine power. For this reason, then, the Mulla must veil himself and his acts. He must dissuade Abdul Baqi from accompanying him, and he must tell him not to tell anyone else what he has seen. Mankind is not ready to absorb the truth of the batin, the hidden realm, so for now they can only get hints of that other power on which the Mulla draws.

That is one reason for veiling his miracles. But there is another one, and that is the extreme nature of the miracles that are claimed for the Mulla. In the eyes of many Muslims, the notion that a man—any man—might journey to Koh-i Qaf is too far removed from the realm of the ordinary to be acceptable. It is one thing for the Prophet to fly on the back of his magical horse, Buraq, but it is something else again for an ordinary mortal to consort with dragons and fairies. Those who claim such power mislead the people and commit the gravest of all sins—that of diverting attention from God to themselves. This is infidelity (kufr) of the most dangerous sort, for it both imputes divine power to a non-divine source and causes people to stray onto the path of idolatry and polytheism. That is why Abdul Baqi's presence in the story is so crucial. He not only provides a kind of narrative foil for the Mulla—the ordinary mortal whose foolishness complements the Mulla's sagacity—but also serves to insulate him from culpability for the story's extreme claims. Abdul Baqi, the story makes clear, is impulsive. He gets involved in affairs that do not properly concern him, as when he rashly tries to bring a memento back from the magic kingdom of the fairies. These are recognizable sorts of acts, the sort of thing that any one of us might do, and this fact shifts responsibility for the story from the Mulla onto the shoulders of Abdul Baqi, who can be blamed for perpetuating infidelity without any stigma attaching to the Mulla.^[60]

Despite Abdul Baqi's presence, however, the story of Hadda Sahib's visit to Koh-i Qaf reveals a fundamental ambiguity that is inherent in the Mulla's social position and that is similar to the ambiguities previously encountered in our examination of other great lives. The actions of Sultan Muhammad obscured the boundary between what is exemplary and what is arrogant; in the end, his position of respect was apparently preserved because his devotion to honor could be seen as mitigating his sometimes unseemingly arrogation of authority. Likewise, Amir Abdur Rahman often stepped over the line of what was just and acceptable for a ruler into the realm of the cruel and despotic, but his reputation remained intact due to the perception that he was bound by higher principles than mere self-interest and that whatever his faults and excesses might have been he did fulfill his responsibility for bringing order and prosperity to his kingdom.

The Mulla of Hadda's story presents a similar ambiguity, for he too trod a narrow path between the acceptable and the unacceptable. This is true of Sufi saints in general, of course, since all those who explore the mystical realm automatically make themselves vulnerable to accusations of infidelity from the narrowly orthodox, who limit appropriate action to that which is explicitly called for in scripture. However, even among Sufi saints, the Mulla of Hadda's case is an extreme one, since relatively few in this category ever did so much as he did or were so involved in the social and political events of their time. Nor do many Sufi saints have the kind and degree of power claimed for them by their disciples that the Mulla did by his. It is one thing, after all, to be associated with making roof beams longer or keeping the langar pot full (particularly since these are actions without clear agents), but it is something else again to converse with dragons and take off on night flights to fairy land.

As with our other heroes, the Mulla's reputation finally overcomes all qualifications and uncertainties. Whatever the orthodox might think of dragons and fairies, no one doubts the Mulla's single-minded devotion to Islam. No one questions his personal piety or the fact that he made great sacrifices to preserve and protect the Muslim community. There are excesses in his stories—instances in which powers are ascribed to the Mulla that surpass what a scripturally minded Muslim can countenance. But what is unseemly and dangerous in Hadda Sahib's stories can be explained away. Others in the past, lesser men like Abdul Baqi, can be held responsible for what transgresses the boundaries of the moral; and having taken the blame away from the Mulla himself, those in the present can then safely revel in the wonder and possibility that the great saint's miracles open up to view.

Notes