Artefacts of Devotion

The book is an attempt to introduce the "words and things" which are produced by the Sufi brotherhood known as Qalandariyya. It wishes to give evidence that the material cultural goods produced in the scope of such tradition express a meaningful representation of the world in a regional context. For unveiling such a Weltanschauung, it seems relevant first to constitute a repertoire, that is a first classification of the items, with their local identities and definitions, and the place they occupy inside the discourse of the Qalandariyya. While focussing on the Qalandariyya, the book echoes main issues regarding Islam, Sufism, and society in South Asia. It also provides clues to how regional and local discourses are framed and how they could provide answers to political, social and cultural changes occurring in the recent history of South Asian, and of the Muslim world at large. Finally, the book highlights the interaction between the ideology produced by the Qalandariyya, and the local and regional culture. It demonstrates that the flexibility of a local discourse allows local society to be shaped by the Qalandariyya, but how in return it was also able to reformulate it in regional context.

Michel Boivin was trained at Sorbonne University, Paris (France) in Islamic Studies and Contemporary History. He is currently Research Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies, CNRS-EHESS. He also teaches history of South Asia at University of Lumiere Lyon 2 and University of Savoie. Michel Boivin's work focussed on the social and cultural evolution of Muslim communities, from British colonization to the post-partition period. His fieldwork is mainly restricted to the Southern part of the Indus valley. He is currently heading an interdisciplinary study group working on Sehwan Sharif. He published, as author and editor, seven books and. wrote about 70 articles published in leading academic journals. His last work was edited with Matt Cook, Interpreting the Sindh World: Essays on Culture and History, Karachi, OUP, 2010 and a forthcoming book is devoted to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and the Qalandariyya in South Asia, and published in French by Editions du Cerf, Paris.