A hair

In the course of reading around reference 1, I came across reference 2, about a treasured relic to be found at the Hazratbal Shrine of reference 3, a mosque and dargah in the vicinity of Srinagar, in Kashmir. That is to say, in the predominantly Muslim part of the Union of India territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The relic is a jewelled vial containing a hair of the Prophet and is being held up for inspection in the snap above.

I was both puzzled and intrigued by the power of this rather small relic.

Now in the book of Exodus, at the beginning of chapter 20, we are told:

‘Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth’.

My understanding is that Muslims take this injunction about graven images very seriously and allow no images of people – natural or supernatural – in their mosques – and certainly nothing like the famous frescos of the Sistine Chapel. Elaborate calligraphy yes, faces and figures no.

On the other hand, many people, from many places and many times, have liked to have relics of holy people, men and women, kept in shrines where they may be worshipped, venerated and so forth. Such shrines are often places of pilgrimage, often at particular times of the year, for example the anniversary of the martyrdom or death otherwise of the person concerned. Rituals may be associated with relics, but also with particular times or places, the timing sometimes being coordinated with that of an important fair or market. Reference 4, for example, talks of a pre-Islamic Meccan ritual associated with a fair held at the time of the date harvest.

The Catholic Church of old included a great deal of this sort of thing, and my understanding is that, while the practise has shrunk, it is still there. A lot of people, for example, have touched the right toes of the statue of St. Peter in his basilica in Rome, as can be see bottom right in the snap above. Getting on for 500 years of wear.

And according to reference 2, the Prophet made provision for something of this sort. A story which is elaborated at reference 4, where we learn that at the end of his last pilgrimage to Mecca, not long before his death, the Prophet sacrificed a large number of camels. After which his head was shaved and his fingernails were cut, these last seemingly with the express purpose of providing relics for the faithful.

All this being extracted from the corpus of learned commentary which has grown up around the relatively short and cryptic Quran, a lot of which commentary dates back to the second half of the first millennium and the first half of the second. See references 5 and 6 for two of these commentators.

Reference 4 further explains that there was plenty of precedent for all this in pre-Islamic times, both in the Arabian peninsular and to the north, to Iraq and Syria. And plenty of parallels can be drawn from other traditions, for example the Last Supper of our Saviour and the many fragments of the True Cross which found their way across Christendom.

So entirely plausible that a hair of the Prophet should find its way to Kashmir, where it became a very important relic – if rather small relic, elaborate wrapping notwithstanding. Reference 2 is built around this relic and the uproar which followed its – fortunately temporary – theft in 1963. The work of a historian who takes a serious interest in cricket on the side – and which is a lot more accessible than reference 4, the work of a religious scholar based, of all places, at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis. Can’t see our Royal Navy going in for this sort of thing.

Reference 2 explains that Kashmiris have a lot of shrines and relics and goes on to tell us something of the provenance of this one:

‘… In the context of Kashmir, it is reported that a rich local merchant, Khwaja Nuruddin Ishbari purchased the holy relic for one hundred thousand rupees from Sayyid Abdullah of Bijapur, who had brought it to the Deccan from Medina … Ishbari died on his way home from Bijapur in 1699, and the relic was brought to Srinagar along with his dead body. As a mark of respect in response to popular sentiment, Fazil Khan, the Mughal governor of Kashmir ordered that the relic be housed at a mosque in Bagh-i-Sadiqabad, an area situated on the western bank of the Dal Lake. The place has since come to be known as Hazratbal, the abode of the Prophet Muhammad, while the shrine is referred to as Asar-i-sharif … Gradually a village grew around the shrine…’.

It also places the shrines in Kashmiri life, noting in passing that:

‘… The preservation of some of these relics and their public exhibition on special occasions may speak of the assimilation of the local Hindu-Buddhist practices among the Muslims of Kashmir…’

Some of these last have tried to tone down this (rather Sufi) regard for relics, too close to the forbidden idolatry of pre-Islamic times. But they do not seem to have succeeded.

Be all this as it may, the theft of this relic, late December in 1963, resulted in a huge wave of popular anger, grief, movement and worse. The central government down in Delhi had trouble containing it.

‘An Action Committee had also been formed to assist with the recovery of the relic’, a committee largely composed of people in opposition to the central government (at that time still led by Nehru) for one reason or another. Was nearby Pakistan involved in some way or other? The map above gives some idea of the possibilities.

At this point, I switched to the long account at reference 9 of the theft and recovery of the relic by the senior policeman – B.N. Mullik – whom Nehru sent in to sort it all out. A sending in which involved a tricky flight into Srinagar through a blanket of mid-winter fog.

 A policeman’s account from memory and from a central government point of view – but one which I think serves for present purposes.

The relic was seemingly saved by the perpetrators, probably mixed up with Pakistan, in this account keen to make trouble in the territory they thought should have been theirs, having too much regard for the relic and the income it generated to take it far from Srinagar – and Mullik was able to organise its recovery.

But this was not the end of the matter, with the returned relic having to be authenticated and exhibited, arrangements for its custody to be reviewed and other loose ends occupying several months.

There is, however, no doubt that this relic did indeed move a lot of people to action. And, in the troubled territory of Kashmir provide focus and opportunity for all kinds of goings-on in the wider world. I close this section with a quote from Wikipedia:

‘… The incident contributed to heightened communal tensions, leading to unrest in the Indian state of West Bengal and East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh). These events resulted in a significant movement of refugees into India, with estimates placing the number at approximately 200,000 between December 1963 and February 1964…’.

Secondary power

A relic has power in itself, power to move people. But in a place like Kashmir, it can acquire extra power by becoming an icon for a nation, a political party or a community. Any affront or attack on the icon is an affront or attach on the nation. While exhibition of the icon can be a catalyst for expression of national feeling.

From where I associate to the processions of Holy Week in Spain – processions which may well also include a strong element of competition. 

Not images

The distinction between an image – such as, for example, the icons worshipped in parts of eastern Europe and Russia – and relics is a nice one. But a relic does have a more intimate connection with its subject than an image; it is not a picture of the subject, rather it is a part, or close to being a part, of the subject. While a shrine might be built to house the earthly remains of the subject in their entirety.

One issue that came up at reference 2, was that if a relic was stolen and subsequently recovered, how could you be sure that the object recovered was the object stolen? And I suppose that the faithful would worry about whether it had been defiled in some way during its time away.

On which, I might add that I have not come across ritual defilement very often in a Christian context, although I do remember an episode of a television drama – probably either Midsomer Murders or Miss. Marple – explaining that a church had to be consecrated afresh if a sufficiently serious crime had taken place inside.

Nearer home

People have often kept locks of hair taken from loved ones. I, for example, have a lock of my own hair collected by my mother when I was very small, a lock which remains, in its original envelope, in a drawer somewhere. And locks of hair were often put into lockets. There is lots of this sort of thing listed at reference 8.

The French writer of detective stories, Fred Vargas, wove the importance of the hair which grows after death into at least one of her stories. Very powerful magic. Which idea she presumably drew from somewhere; I would not have thought that she just invented it.

She also talks about the magic power arising from the annual cycle of shedding and rebirth of the horns of certain deer. A process which, inter alia, manages to maintain memory of its position in the life cycle, with the horn of one year being a development of that of the previous year. From where I associate to the magical power, important in some cultures, of the horns of rhinoceri. 

I believe that precautions were taken at the execution of Charles I to reduce the risk of blood falling into the hands of those who would parcel it up into relics (presumably for sale).

Further back, we have the religious wars of northern Europe. Fuel may well have been added to these wars by secular considerations, but it remains true that dreadful things were done in the name of the Lord. Further back still, similarly dreadful things were done in the first half of the first millennium in the course of disputes about the Holy Trinity; the nature of and the relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Heritage matters

Until the 1970s, the shrine was a good example of Kashmir vernacular architecture. It has, however, now been replaced by something much more Arab, much more white and much more modern.

Perhaps they did not have the equivalent of the Epsom Civic Society to block this replacement.

Other  matters

I have learned that the Quran is organised into chapter and verses, in much the same way as a book of our Bible. And there are lots of Internet resources when you want to follow up a reference.

Along the way I came across something about one of the strands of commentary on the Quran being concerned with the proper pronunciation of the classical Arabic in which it is written, presumably reflecting the oral tradition from which it emerged. The ritual must be preserved unchanged, even if the world is moving around it. 

I associated first to the Sanskrit scholars of India who were similarly concerned with pronunciation of their scriptures, a thousand years previously. Second to Osama bin Laden, part of whose attraction was said to be his command of classical, spoken Arabic.

While in reference 9, I have read that a control of the relic came to be vested in a group of the original donor’s descendants called the ‘Nishan Dez’.

‘… There are only ten days in the year, all connected with some events in the Prophet’s life, on which the Holy Relic is exposed to the people…’.

However, the Nishan Dez also offered private viewings for sale, making rather a good thing of it, and keeping the proceeds for themselves, rather than applying them to the upkeep of the shrine. 

I might also mention that Gemini is well up on the distinction between ‘Chief Nishan Dez’ and ‘Acting Chief Nishan Dez’, which he started out calling the ‘Nishandeh’, from the Persian. A hereditary custodianship held by the Banday family. A bit like the role of Earl Marshall being inherited by the Dukes of Norfolk.

Conclusions

Having poked the matter around a little, the power of this relic no longer seems quite as bizarre as it had at first.

PS 1: I learned from the FT yesterday that parts of India can get very hot in the summer, although I had thought that Kashmir was one of the places to where one escaped to from the heat of the plains to the south.

PS 2: my first conversation with Gemini about this went missing, but there was a silver lining in that in going over the ground again, he told me about the controversy surrounding the Mullik version of the theft, controversary which does not, however, bear on the present post.

In response to a follow up, he also explained that the practise of selling private viewings came to an abrupt halt after the theft, although the hereditary custodians remain in place.

References

Reference 1: The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian – Nirad C. Chaudhuri. – 1951.

Reference 2: The Social and Political Life of a Relic: The Episode of the Moi-e-Muqaddas Theft in Kashmir, 1963–1964 – Idrees Kanth – 2018.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazratbal_Shrine.

Reference 4: Gift of the Body in Islam: The Prophet Muhammad’s Camel Sacrifice and Distribution of Hair and Nails at his Farewell Pilgrimage – Brannon Wheeler – 2010.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brannon_Wheeler. A modest entry.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Abbas. 

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_al-Halabi. 

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_of_hair. 

Reference 9: Kashmir: My Years with Nehru – Mullik, B. N – 1971. New Delhi: Allied Publishers. The director or the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) at the time in question. Not known to Abebooks, but eBay can do one for £300, including postage from India. And it can be read at the Internet Archive.