as God’s agents, can also bestow blessings, as
abraham and moses do in the Quran. Like a kind
of electricity, it was thought to emanate primarily
from God to his creation through the Quran and
intermediary prophets and saints. Once islam
became a fully institutionalized religion in the
ninth century with hierarchies of political and
religious power and aUthority that involved rul-
ers, soldiers, Ulama, administrators, commoners,
and slaves, then baraka itself was also thought of
as a sacred power that flowed from God through
a hierarchy of supermundane beings. Today the
ordinary person still has simply to hear or see
the Quran to benefit from its baraka. It can also
be obtained by touching a saint, a saint’s relic,
or even a person who has visited the kaaba, a
shrine, or similar holy place. Indeed, obtaining
baraka is one of the main reasons people perform
pilgrimages.
As an impersonal force, baraka is supposed
to be present in certain stones, trees, natural
springs, or manufactured objects—especially in
pre-Islamic cultures, among the bedoUin, and in
rural populations. Egyptian peasants still believe
that the antiquities of the ancient Egyptians have
this power, and they take scrapings from the
pyramids and temples to place in amulets or to
mix into a potion with other substances to cure
a disease. The idea of blessing also has become
diffused in the everyday speech of Muslims and
non-Muslims in the Middle East, who use words
derived from the Arabic word baraka to wish
each other a happy holiday and to congratulate
someone upon marriage or some other success
in life.
See also egypt; miracle; wali; ziyara.
Further reading: Michael Gilsenan, Recognizing Islam:
Religion and Society in the Modern Arab World (New
York: Random House, 1982); Edward Reeves, The Hid-
den Government: Ritual, Clientelism, and Legitimation
in Northern Egypt (Salt Lake City: University of Utah
Press, 1990); Edward Westermarck, Ritual and Belief in
Morocco. 2 vols. (New York: University Books, 1968).
Barelwi, Sayyid Ahmad (Bareilly,
Brelwi) (1786–1831) militant religious revivalist
leader in North India
Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi was born to a prominent
family of sayyids (descendants of mUhammad) in
Awadh province in northern india. After moving
to delhi, where he studied with the son of the
Muslim reformer Shah Wali Allah (d. 1762), he
served in the cavalry of a Muslim ruler in central
India for seven years (1811–18). In 1822, Sayyid
Ahmad went on the haJJ to mecca. When he
returned to India, he combined reformist Islamic
ideas with his military experience to launch a
movement that quickly migrated from Delhi to
Bengal and ultimately to aFghanistan, Kashmir,
and the Punjab in northwest India.
At a time when the Mughal Empire was in
its death throes, Sayyid Ahmad and his disciples
sought to bring Muslims back to what he thought
was the true Islam and lead them to greatness
by way of a Jihad against the British, who were
becoming more and more powerful at this time. In
his teachings, he called upon Muslims to give up
un-Islamic idolatrous practices and return to the
simple monotheism of the qUran and Muham-
mad. He condemned Muslim participation in
Hindu social and religious practices, worship at
saint shrines, and Shii veneration of the imams.
He and his followers thought of themselves as
following the path of the first Muslims under
Muhammad’s leadership, and many believed that
Sayyid Ahmad was the “renewer” (mujaddid)
of the age. Some even considered him to be the
awaited mahdi (Muslim messiah). Sayyid Ahmad’s
opponents labeled him a “Wahhabi,” a follower of
the puritanical Saudi form of Islam, but he did not
consider himself as such. He was more a follower
of the teachings of Shah Wali Allah of Delhi than
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792), the
founder of the so-called Wahhabi movement in
Arabia during the 18th century.
Sayyid Ahmad decided to mount his jihad
against the British from a base in northwest India.
In 1826, after gathering recruits from the regionK 92 Barelwi, Sayyid Ahmad