NOTES TO PAGES 103-112 209
ment it with material and epigraphic data to arrive at an understanding of
conversion of regions to Islam. The work of Richard M. Eaton on Bengal and
Deccan is foundational for a host of scholarship. See Richard M. Eaton, The
Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993). An excellent recent example is Ramya Sreenivasan,
"Faith and Allegiance in the Mughal Era: Perspectives from Rajasthan,^11 in
Vasudha Dalmia and Munis Faruqui, eds., Religious Interactions in Mughal
India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014) 1 pp. 159-195.
- I am drawing here on scholarship on Christian sacral sites in early Chris-
tianity, summarized in Ora Limor, "Conversion of Space," in Ira Katznelson
and Miri Rubin, eds., Religious Conversion: History, Experience and Meaning
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 31-61; and Oded Irshai, "The Christian
Appropriation of Jerusalem in the Fourth Century: The Case of the Bor-
deaux Pilgrim," Jewish Quarterly Review vol. 991 no. 4 (fall 2009), pp.
465-486.
- The incongruity of Hindu "graves"-as public cremation grounds are not
available-speaks as much to the memorialization ethos of intercultural
pasts in the landscape as it does to the inherent impossibility of ritual sites
dedicated to an invisible minority population.
- There are, however, any number of 'urs or mela (carnivals) that celebrate
Hindu saints. An important one is the annual "Channan Pir" mela, which
is held in the Cholistan desert outside Derawar Fort. The story of Channan
Pir, as narrated in Hadaqah al-Auliya, goes that Surkh Posh was traveling
near the Derawar Fort, whose ruler was a Hindu raja. The raja had no progeny,
and he asked the Sufi to pray for him. Surkh Posh prayed that a Muslim wali
allah [Regent of God] would be born in Derawar Fort. The raja was incensed,
and when the child was born, it was abandoned in the desert. Yet days later,
local Hindus found the child healthy, having been nourished by a d!:er. The
child grew up and became a pir [Sufi] venerated by both Hindus and Mus-
lims. His annual mela is said to attract all faiths and sects. Such stories of a
composite (or related) past are very common at all of the Sufi shrines. See
Ghulam Sarvar Lahori, Hadiqah al-Auliyii: Pan;ab ke Akiibir Siifiyah ka
Mustanad Tazkirah (Lahore: Islamic Book Foundation, 1976) 1 p. 66.
- For two such arguments, see K. A. Nizami, Some Aspects of Religion an{i
Politics in India during the Thirteenth Century (Bombay: Asia Publishing
House, 1961); and Derryl Maclean, Religion and Society in Arab Sind
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989).
- Fathnama, p. 30.
- Ibid., p. 31.
- Ibid., p. 32.
- Ibid.
ro. Ibid. "
II. Ibid., p. 33.
- Baladhuri, Futiih Buldiin, p. 382.
- Istakhri, Kitab al-Masaik wa-1-Mamalik, M. J. de Goeje,.ed. (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1967), p. :r,74.
- Biruni, Tal}.qiq mii li'l Hind (Beirut: 'Alam al-Kitab, 1983), p. 312.
