Category: religion

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photo religion Tibet

Photo Fees in Tibetan Monasteries, or On Tashilhunpo Monastery

I’ve always thought that there is something slightly unseemly about admission fees at religious sites. Of course being a tourist attraction does result in expenses, in terms of staffing and whatnot, but charging admission highlights the sometimes commercial and parasitic nature of organized religion, and seems to fly in the face of evangelism, which one would think would be an aim of any group that believes that it holds ultimate truths that others do not. That said, I understand that for some institutions admission fees help with capital projects, further charitable missions and fill other gaps in budget. The tourist is getting something of value, and it’s not totally unfair for the faith to benefit.

As we expected, Tibetan monasteries, like all tourist attractions in China (see post of 2008.07.25), charge fairly hefty admission fees (50 RMB, or USD 7.50, on average, I would say).

What we did not expect, certainly at this level of frequency and magnitude, are the camera fees. In order to take pictures inside most of the most visited Tibetan monasteries, you need to pay an additional *per-chapel* charge ranging anywhere from 10 RMB, or USD 1.50, to over 100 RMB, or USD 15–and monasteries can have a dozen chapels (outside pictures are included in the regular admission fee). We’ve encountered camera fees in other parts of the world, mostly in India and ex-Soviet republics, but the photo fees we are encountering in Tibetan monasteries are particularly pernicious, not only because they are on top of relatively high admission fees, but because they are administered in a way that is annoying and demeaning to the monks and the monasteries–on a per chapel basis.

I understand that charging per chapel might result in higher proceeds, but, in an era when photography is so much of a traveler’s experience, it turns each monastery visit into a sort of shopping expedition, where one pauses to evaluate each chapel to decide whether it is “worth” memorializing at whatever price is being asked. It turns each monk into a sort of ticket enforcer (a task some seem to relish), and since there is no clear receipt or anything given, even after one has already paid one is still bothered with questions regarding the photo fee.

Even then, at the first monasteries that we visited, I was willing to give the Tibetans the benefit of the doubt. I told myself that the per chapel fee made sense because they sort of took the place of per chapel donations that the faithful would leave (though of course at many multiples). Until I got to Tashilhunpo Monastery in Shigatse.

Tashilhunpo Monastery is the seat of the Panchen Lama, second only to the Dalai Lama in spiritual authority (and a “recognizer” of new Dalai Lamas), and one of the principal tourist attractions of Tibet, with a prominent place on almost any Tibet itinerary. Admission is a steep 85 RMB (USD 13), befitting its prominence and size, and perhaps the extensive restoration work done. What really sets the monastery apart, however, are the photo fees, which range from 75RMB to 160RMB (USD 11 to 24)–per chapel.

The mercenary character of all this came into full light when we were told that the monks of Tashilhunpo–which is said to be more closely affiliated with the Chinese government than other monasteries–actually work office hours, like civil servants, taking public holidays and an hour off for lunch. Now, I’m not saying that monks have to pray 15 hours a day, but certainly there is something about a religious calling that should be distinguished from regular salaried employees. I knew that the Chinese government was “involved” in the affairs of the Tibetan monasteries, sometimes even requiring monks to profess allegiance to the Chinese government ahead of the Dalai Lama, but did not think that monks would simply be government employees. Through this lens, like so many things in China, Tashilhunpo appears like an operation optimized solely for profit.

Sign at the monastery promoting a sister site, widely reputed not to be worth the admission fee. Why is a monastery advertising tourist attractions?

Our disdain for the photo fees being charged at Tashilhunpo made me reconsider not only the merits of photo fees at all Tibetan monasteries, but also made me feel offended by their general funding tactics, so common to many organized religions. Most Tibetans are extremely poor, yet when they come to these gilded temples, some with fabulous amounts of government support, they throw heaps of (small) bills at each shrine. The money is displayed extremely prominently, sometimes the deities surrounded by bills, apparently equating holiness and material wealth. When a holy man dies, a memorial stupa is raised with obscene quantities of gold and precious metals (the weight of their gold now a favorite fact on tours). Seen this way, the monks are almost predators, feeding on the superstitiousness and awe of the people (who are not even invited to the esoteric knowledge of the monks) in order to maintain their livelihood. The priestly class as parasites–not an uncommon motif.

The stupa of the Tenth Panchen Lama, said to contain 614 kg gold, 868 precious stones and 246,794 jewels

Poor pilgrims, offering their meager savings

Categories
photo religion Tibet

Tibetan Buddhism

Mural of Hayagriva, a Vishnu-related protector deity depicted in a tantric embrace with his consort, inside Gyantse Kumbum

I once read a quote from former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens arguing that maintaining the fantasy of a “pristine” Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for liberal city-dwellers on the east and west coasts was not sufficient reason not to exploit the land for the country’s energy needs and profits.  It is true that, from far away, it is easy to idealize something as untouchable and sacred.

Although I was born in a country that is largely Buddhist, being from a Catholic family I knew little of Buddhism.  In my travels I’ve seen quite a few Buddhist places, from Kyoto (Japan) to Kandy (Sri Lanka) and from Sarnath (India) to Sukhothai (Thailand), but I still haven’t gained as deep an insight into Buddhist belief and practice as I have into Christian or Muslim worship.  Some of this is probably due to my lack of a foundational understanding (I read some of the major texts in college, but I guess the esoteric nature of Buddhist thought didn’t penetrate), but I think it’s also because the Buddhist religion, certainly in East Asia but even in parts of Southeast Asia, doesn’t play as large a role in how societies are structured as the Abrahamic faiths do in the Middle East and West.  I would argue that it’s not as important that you understand Buddhism to understand Vietnam as it is to understand Catholicism to understand Mexico or Islam to understand Egypt.

In this my trip to the roof of the world, I finally have been compelled to learn something of Buddhism, in this case Tibetan Buddhism, in large part because the religion plays such a central role in Tibetan society, perhaps as dominant a role as any religion anywhere. And I discovered that I had, to an extent, orientalized the religion, recreated in my mind a sort of Western fantasy version of how Buddhism might be experienced in Tibet.  I had pictured remote monasteries, and with their remoteness a vision of asceticism and austerity, the latter perhaps associated with the practices of fellow Mahayana believers in East Asia. I imagined Tibetan Buddhism to be even more austere, as stark as the landscape of the high plateau. Finally, I thought that with the isolation of the geography came some sort of “purity” of belief–that Tibetan Buddhism would be a sort of concentrated isolate, relatively free of foreign influences.

In this post, some aspects of Tibetan Buddhism that were not known to me prior to this trip and did not to comport with my preconceived notions. All this is not to say that Tibetan Buddhism is somehow less holy, or any less worthy of awe or respect, but I do want to bring to light that in Tibet as elsewhere, religion is a manifestation of history and culture, a messy accretion tied equally to historical accident as to relevation or faith.

Links to Hinduism

Buddhism of course originated in (Hindu) India–in a sense could be said to have arisen from Hinduism–and Hindu influence is very much visible in Buddhism, wherever it is found.  (I recall speaking to one woman in Laos who recognized this and newly considered Hinduism a sort of ancestral faith, one that she might ultimately find to have supremacy over her native Buddhism.) However, in most Mahayana Buddhist countries, the link is somewhat more difficult to make out, as East Asian austerity reigns in certain Hindu excesses and geographical distance has diluted more obvious theological and iconographic connections. In Tibet, however, baroque aspects of Tibetan Buddhist iconography, the individual connection between a person and a deity of his/her choosing and the actual identification of certain Tibetan Buddhist deities with corresponding Hindu gods all make clear the strong link between Hinduism and Buddhism as practiced in Tibet. If I could say one thing about Tibetan Buddhism, it is that, as may have been guessable from geography, it is very much a bridge between Hinduism and Buddhism as practiced in other places.

Avalokiteshvara, or the Bodhisattva of Compassion, is clearly identifiable as Shiva in his many-armed form. Other Tibetan Buddhist deities, and their depictions, are readily tieable to Hindu gods, and just as a Hindu may be a Vaishnava or Shaiva, individual Tibetans seem to have connections to particular deities.

The Bon Religion

Before Buddhism came to Tibet, the Tibetans already had a state religion–the Bon faith–which was deeply enough entrenched that Tibetan Buddhism came to adopt many Bon practices, including the worship of physical places and deities related to those locales, shamans and other concepts that would not be considered “orthodox” Buddhism.  The Bon faith survives to this day, with a relatively small number of adherents and dedicated monasteries, but has come to be influenced by Buddhism as much as Tibetan Buddhism was affected by Bon, making it hard to determine definitively whether certain practices are originally Buddhist or Bon in origin. However, one would suspect that many of the practices that are unique to Tibet (and do not appear in other Buddhist countries) may be originally Bon.

The prayer wheel appears in both Tibetan Buddhism and Bon, as at the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa (above) and the Yungdrungling Bon monastery (below).

On the hillside of the immediately preceding picture prayer flags are visible. Prayer flags are strung all over Tibet, often in places of natural/shamanistic significance, such as mountain passes and river crossings. Below, prayer flags at Nam-Tso (Lake) north of Lhasa.

The kora, or circumambulation, of holy places is also common to both Tibetan Buddhist and Bon religious practice. First, pilgrims on the Barkhor circuit around the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa; second, pilgrims on the Lingkhor on the Saga Dawa holiday. Circumambulation is also performed around certain mountains and lakes.

Talismanic markings on the outsides of houses appear to be a Bon practice that carried over into Tibetan Buddhism. First, markings on a Bon home near Yungdrungling Monastery; second, Buddhist markings as well as animal horns (see post of 2008.6.23 on pre-Islamic animal horn shrines in the Pamirs).

The coloration is reminiscent of Hindu gods, but this is also a god associated with a particular place–Nam-Tso (Lake) north of Lhasa–suggesting a pre-Buddhist origin.

Protector Deities and Violence

Definitely in the category of things I would not have associated with Buddhism, let alone Buddhism as I imagined for Tibet, fearsome Tibetan gods known as “protector deities” have an especially powerful and mystical connection to worshippers, holding court in their own mysterious chapels decorated with violent images (some of which are not open to women).

Flayed human skins on the doors to Nechung Monastery in Lhasa

Inside Nechung Monastery, a mural showing protector deities in their wrathful forms, with assorted human body parts hanging at the top

Below, pictures from inside the protector deity chapel in the Pelkor Chode Monastery in Gyantse. In the first picture, depictions of a Tibetan sky burial, where corpses are laid out to be eaten by animals (rather than corrupting nature by burying or burning the bodies–in a pre-Buddhist practice not dissimilar from Zoroastrian “burial”). In the second picture, a protector deity in his wrathful form is covered, because it is believed that the visage is too powerful for regular worshippers to view directly. In the third picture, frightening masks and an array of weapons. It was not uncommon, in Tibetan history, for monks to serve as armed soldiers in a political or theological dispute.


Other Mysterious Mystical Practices

In the pictures below, ritual cake–a sort of “cake” made primarily of flour and butter and presented at shrines (sometimes for up to a year) before being distributed and consumed. The decoration of the ritual cakes is about as strange as such things come.

To put it one way, Tibetans seem to subscribe to a range of “superstitious” practices that one would not imagine to have any connection to “orthodox” Buddhism. In the first picture, a woman in charge of a small shrine sells medicinal powders (ground up local rocks) to worshippers. In the second picture, pilgrims crouch and walk under shelves of books for blessings.

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China photo religion

Islam in China

This is a post similar to others I have written broadly summarizing certain aspects of Islam in various countries/regions we have traveled in (see post of 2008.08.16 on Indonesia, 2008.11.14 on the Balkans and 2009.03.06 on India).

No-one would consider China a Muslim country, and it is not.  At no point in history was China majority Muslim nor was it ever ruled by a Muslim power (although it came close during Mongol rule, since more westerly Mongol rulers converted to Islam).  There are, however, almost 20 million Muslims in China–a number that may be small in relation to China’s population of over a billion but is still larger than the Muslim populations of countries such as Syria, Malaysia or Senegal or the total number of Muslims in Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman combined.

China has 55 official ethnic minorities, ten of which are predominantly Muslim.  Below, some photos showing the diversity of Muslim history and experience in China.

Ruined mosque, Quanzhou, Fujian Province.  This Iranian-style mosque ruin on the south coast of China marks a city which was, in the 13th century during the time of Marco Polo, a great and important port for Persian and Arab traders known as Zeitoun.  One can imagine an era when Persian and Arab sailors did substantial business in the region, setting up local operations and perhaps even converting some locals.

The 13th century Quanzhou ship is a particularly tangible relic from the city’s era as an international port. See the museum’s Tripadvisor page.

Huaisheng Mosque, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province.  The Great Mosque of Guangzhou is said to be the oldest mosque in China, established by no less than an uncle of the Prophet Mohammed, who traveled east to spread Islam.  The mosque was rebuilt in the 14th and 17th centuries and is, like many other Chinese mosques and unlike the Quanzhou mosque, in Chinese rather than Arab or Persian style–it looks like a Buddhist temple.

Yunnan Province is said to have developed its significant Muslim population during the Mongol Yuan dynasty, after Emperor Kublai Khan appointed a Muslim governor (whose family originally hailed from Bukhara). The most famous Yunnanese Muslim is probably Zhang He, the great 15th century eunuch navigator who one author recently argued traveled all the way to the Americas before Columbus. Zhang He definitely sailed his huge ships as far as East Africa and is said to be in part responsible for outposts of Chinese Muslims in Southeast Asia. The Muslim population of Yunnan currently numbers in the hundreds of thousands.

Mosque, Dali. Again, in the style of a Chinese temple, but note the Arabic calligraphy on the doors, in gold.

Minaret, Dali

Some Dali Muslims. Almost half of Chinese Muslims, including those in Yunnan, are classified under the geographically dispersed Hui minority group. While all Hui are Muslim, Hui people fit in, in most respects (linguistic and cultural), with the local majority, be it Han in Guangzhou or Xian, or Bai in Dali.

Great Mosque, Xian, Shaanxi Province.  While Islam landed on the south Chinese coast with seaborne trade, it came to Xian through the overland Silk Road.  As the longtime imperial capital, Xian was not only the ultimate destination for Xuanzang, who brought the sacred Buddhist texts from India, an accomplishment commemorated by Xian’s great Big Wild Goose Pagoda, but the city also became a center of Chinese Islam, primarily in the city’s Muslim Quarter.

Yet further east, the Turkic Uyghurs of Xinjiang make up the greatest of China’s distinct Muslim minority groups. See my post of 2008.07.23 for more thoughts on the Uyghurs and the other Muslim ethnic groups of Xinjiang.

Inside the Id Kah Mosque, Kashgar

A Tajik woman, another of China’s Muslim ethnic minorities living in Xinjiang

Mosque, Lhasa, Tibet.  We were told by one local that this mosque was over 1000 years old, and only one of three mosques in the old part of Lhasa.  Although the Muslim presence in Tibet goes back hundreds of years, our small sample revealed that most of the city’s current Muslim inhabitants were recent immigrants, just like the Han Chinese who have flocked to the city.  However, instead of settling down with the Han in the more modern part of Lhasa, it seems that the Muslims (mainly from Gansu Province) prefer to live with the Tibetans in the city’s historical core.

Muslim man in Lhasa

There are certain ethnic groups in the world that have the advantage of having a great and popular culinary tradition to draw on, when emigrating and trying to make a buck.  Chinese people in the U.S., it seems, have often resorted to opening a restaurant; Egyptians and Turks are proliferating halal/shawarma/doner shops around the world; and in Tibet most of the new Han restaurants are owned by Sichuanese.  The usually Hui Muslim noodle shop can similarly be found in almost any city in China (and thankfully so, since they sell some of my favorite kinds of food).  Easily identifiable by their “Islamic” exterior–lots of green, strings of Arabic and pictures of sites such as Mecca or the Taj Mahal–friendly immigrants, many from Gansu Province, cook up delicious fresh made noodles all over China. Here, a Hui man making noodles in Yangshuo, Guangxi Province.

Inside a noodle shop, Lhatse, Tibet

A man selling nan in Shanghai

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Korea photo religion

Muslim Seoul

Korea is one of the most homogenous countries in the world–through most of history, save the many invasions, nearly everyone in Korea has been ethnically Korean and Korean-speaking. What regional dialects there are are largely mutually intelligible (though perhaps still surprising for such a small country), and outside of a small number of Chinese, ethnic minorities are virtually non-existent.

Well, things are changing, due to two great forces at work.

First, as has been much noted in the U.S. press, a relative lack of young women (as a result of historical sex selection by parents) and the undesirability in marriage of relatively poor Korean farmers have resulted in a large number of international marriages between Korean men and Vietnamese and other women from poorer Asian countries. This has led to quite a large number of Vietnamese women in the Korean countryside and resulting children of mixed marriages.

The second cause is Korea’s prominence in the global economy. Korea is, more or less, a rich country now, and many people from countries around the world are attracted to live and work in Korea. This ranges from American, Canadian and Australian 20- or 30-somethings who get jobs teaching English to Uzbeks and Indians coming to Korea to work in factories. Among these of course are some Muslims, who have carved out a niche in Seoul.

I knew that there was a mosque in Seoul because I could see it from the Seoul Grand Hyatt, where I would occasionally stay on business, but didn’t bother to seek it out until recently. As it turns out, there is in Itaewon (Seoul’s primary “foreigner” neighborhood) a whole mini Muslim Seoul, an unexpected and interesting facet of the huge metropolis.

Sign for the Seoul Central Masjid, seen from the main road in Itaewon (note Dubai Restaurant)

Gateway to the Seoul Central Masjid, just up the hill

Seoul Central Masjid. While the mosque is located in Seoul’s “foreigner” neighborhood, I was surprised to find several Korean Muslims inside. Since I do not believe there is any historical presence of Islam in Korea, I assume they are all relatively recent converts.


Islamic School attached to the mosque

The mosque forms the center of a mini Muslim Seoul, complete with Islamic bookstores, travel agencies catering to Muslims and restaurants ranging from Pakistani to Uzbek to Turkish. We chatted briefly (in broken English and Korean) to a very nice Syrian man working at an Turkish/Arab sweets shop (many Korean women seem to drop by to flirt with him).


The Muslim footprint in Korea is not limited to Itaewon. Here, an Iraqi man carves up doner to patrons near Namdaemun market.

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Bosnia Israel religion Sri Lanka

Jewish Terrorism, Christian Terrorism, Hindu Terrorism

Jewish Terrorism

It is said by some that the first terrorists in history were a first century Jewish group opposing Roman rule called the Sicarii (“dagger men”), who directed attacks and assassinations of Jews, including priests, who were collaborating with Roman authorities. Some of the most active and notorious terrorist groups in the 20th century were Jewish Zionist groups in now Israel: Irgun and Lehi. Irgun was formed in the 1930s by Zionist Jews who believed that Jews had to be more aggressive in their self-defense in order to support the Jewish Zionist enterprise. In the 1930s, most Irgun actions were retaliatory–conducting “eye for an eye” type campaigns in response to Arab violence against Jews–but by the end of World War II Irgun had begun engaging in actions against the British authorities, who they believed were managing Palestine against Zionist interests, including by limiting Jewish immigration. Irgun attacks included bombings of British government buildings, such as the immigration, tax and police offices, the bombing of the British Embassy in Rome and a car bombing of a British officers’ club. The three most infamous terrorist attacks by Irgun were the 1946 King David Hotel bombing, the 1947 Sergeants affair and the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre. On July 22, 1946, Irgun operatives bombed the King David Hotel, a luxury hotel in Jerusalem used by the British authorities as a headquarters, resulting in 91 deaths. It was one of the deadliest terrorist attacks of the 20th century, allegedly in part because warnings to evacuate the buliding were unheeded. In 1947, in retaliation for recent executions of Irgun operatives by the British administration, Irgun kidnapped and hanged two British sergeants. Their bodies were then booby-trapped with IEDs and hung up in trees, and a third British soldier was injured trying to recover the bodies. The deadliest of the three, however, was the Deir Yassin massacre, an attack against an Arab Palestinian village. The attack was so heinous that prominent Jews in the west (including Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt) wrote a letter to the New York Times condeming Irgun as a “terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization” and described how “terrorist bands attacked [the] peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants – 240 men, women and children – and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem.” Orphans were left at Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City.

The Deir Yassin massacre was conducted by Irgun in coordination with a second Jewish terrorist group called the Lehi. Lehi’s politics were so confused that it actually proposed joining the Nazi cause in World War II in order to weaken British control of Palestine. A Lehi newsletter defended its acts thus:

Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: “Ye shall blot them out to the last man.” But first and foremost, terrorism is for us a part of the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances, and it has a great part to play: speaking in a clear voice to the whole world, as well as to our wretched brethren outside this land, it proclaims our war against the occupier. We are particularly far from this sort of hesitation in regard to an enemy whose moral perversion is admitted by all.

Just as some Palestinian organizations have taken an ethno-national cause–the cessation of the occupation of Arab Palestine–and turned it into a religious conflict, with violence activated by faith, Lehi justified violence in the nationalist Zionist agenda with a virulent reading of Jewish religious texts. Lehi was also responsible for the assassination of a British minister in Cairo and a UN mediator in Jerusalem.

Leaders of Irgun and Lehi went on to powerful positions in the State of Israel. Menachem Begin, the sixth Prime Minister of Israel, was head of the Irgun from 1943 to 1948. Seventh Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir was among Lehi’s leaders. Although both Irgun and Lehi have been labeled terrorist organizations by the State of Israel, in 2006, Natanyahu and former Irgun members celebrated the King David Hotel bombing’s 60th anniversary, and Lehi members have been honored by the Israeli government as martyrs of the state.

Christian Terrorism

There have been many Christian terrorists of various stripes, but the two groups that come to mind are anti-abortion terrorists in the United States and Serbian troops and their assistors in Bosnia.

Anti-abortion terrorists in the U.S., angry with the constitutionally protected (though circumscribed) right to abortion, have waged a terrorist campaign for decades against abortion clinics and doctors, justified by their own religious beliefs. Since 1977 in the U.S. and Canada, there have been 8 murders, 17 attempted murders and hundreds of death threats, as well as hundreds of bombings, arsons and bomb threats.

The Bosnian War was to a large extent an ethnic war among the different ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia, but it took a decidedly religion-based terrorist slant in the massacres of Muslim Bosnians in Srebrenica, where about 8000 defenseless Bosnians were slaughtered by Serbians and other Christian “volunteers” from countries such as Russia and Greece.

Hindu Terrorism

The most widely publicized terrorist attacks in India have been those in Bombay by Muslim groups, but there has also been substantial violence by Hindus against Muslims, as in the 2002 Gujarat riots, in which almost 800 Muslim Indians (and 200 Hindu Indians) were killed, aided by local Hindu authorities and political leaders. (Hindu-on-Muslim violence was memorialized in the movie Slumdog Millionaire.) Some Muslim-targeted bombs have also been attributed by some to Hindu “Saffron terror.”

Although the Tamil Tigers primarily represented an ethnic struggle rather than a religious one–the Tamils were both ethnically and religiously distinctive from the majority Sinhalese–some of the attacks of the Tamil Tigers against Tamil-speaking Muslims could be said to be religious terrorism perpetrated by the Hindu Tamils. As far as I am aware, however, the attacks were not justified on religious grounds.

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India photo religion

Reuse of Religious Sites III

This is the third in a series of posts on reuse of existing religious sites by new/different religions. Please read my posts of 2008.11.10 and 2009.02.01 for additional background and examples from Europe and the Middle East.

Religious sites tend to be converted according to whoever is in power, of course, and religious sites in the Middle East often went from pagan to Christian to Muslim, while religious sites in Spain went from Christian to Muslim back to Christian. In India, religious sites generally went from Hindu or Jain to Muslim, and in some cases back to Hindu again after independence. The reuse of religious sites is an extremely controversial topic in India, because it touches on Muslim/Hindu rivalries which are fraught with tremendous historical weight.

The single most controversial (in recent years) temple-to-mosque conversion was the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. Built by Mughal Emperor Babur in the 16th century, Hindus claimed that it was built on the site of a Hindu temple commemorating Rama’s birthplace (while Jains claimed that it was built on the site of a Jain temple). (Indeed, the destruction/conversion of “heathen” temples has been a favorite activity of Abrahamic faiths–the zeal with which medieval Christians destroyed and converted pagan temples is well-recorded in literature. Similarly, some of the Muslim conquerors from the west arrived in India and felt compelled to wreak havoc to the native polytheistic faith.) Controversy over the site raged through the British Raj. In 1949, a couple of Hindu idols were furtively erected in the mosque, and in the 1980s the mosque, which was previously under lock and key, was opened to Hindu worshippers. Finally, in 1992, a crowd of Hindu extremists known as the Kar Sevaks gathered outside the Babri Mosque and formed a rampaging crowd that completed destroyed it. A Muslim mob retaliated in 2002 by attacking a group of Kar Sevaks heading back from Ayodhya, killing 58 aboard a train, after which horrific mob violence resulted all over Gujarat State, resulting in over a thousand deaths, largely Muslim. The violence was said to be aided by local Hindu nationalist authorities–post to come.

Especially given the destruction of the Babri Mosque, but even before its destruction, the most famous temple-to-mosque conversion, for tourists, is the Quwwat ul-Islam Mosque next to the Qutb Minar in southern Delhi. The Qutb Minar and Quwwat ul-Islam Mosque were built by India’s first Muslim ruler and the founder of the Delhi Sultanate, Qutb-ud-din Aibak, in the late 12th century. According to an inscription, the mosque was built by parts taken from the destruction of twenty-seven temples, believed to be Jain.

The Qutb Minar, as seen from the columns of the ruined mosque, and a second image of the columns. In the first picture, note that the head of the small figure on the corner has been defaced, a common occurrence given Muslim prohibitions on representations of human forms. The elaborate carvings on the columns are clearly non-Muslim, and are said to be from preceding temples or created by local (non-Muslim) artisans.

Near the lower right corner of this picture, an empty space where there would have been a figure of a Hindu or Jain deity.

One of the most famous objects at the Qutb Complex is the “iron pillar of Delhi,” cast in the 4th century, centuries before the arrival of Aibak. The pillar is celebrated for its astonishing purity of 98% and its resistance to corrosion for all of these centuries.

We were quite struck by the resemblance of some of the ceilings at the Quwwat ul-Islam Mosque to ceilings in the Pamirs and Hunza, as well as Timbuktu.

Ceilings in the Tajikistan Pamirs and Pakistan’s Hunza Valley

Ceiling in Timbuktu. This ceiling was at a market, but I believe references another famous structure in Mali.

Another conversion by Qutb-ud-din Aibak is the Adhai Din ka Jhonpra, or “Two and a Half Day Mosque” of Ajmer, the Muslim city located in otherwise Hindu Rajasthan. The name of the mosque references the supposed (and astonishing) story that it was built in two and a half days–I imagine this can’t be wholly accurate, but certainly time was saved by reusing an existing Jain temple. Again, the columns are a dead giveaway.

I mentioned in my post of 2009.03.13 Deogiri or Daulatabad Fort, a fortress believed to be have been built in the late 12th century that was captured by the Delhi Sultanate about a hundred years later and starting in 1317 briefly was used as its capital by Delhi Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq, who marched all of the citizens of Delhi to the city hundreds of miles away. The principal mosque of Daulatabad was a conversion from a Jain temple, as is visible not only from its columns, but from blocks of non-Muslim carvings nearby. In the twentieth century, locals placed a Hindu idol inside, effectively converting the mosque ruin into an active Bharat Mata (Mother India) temple.

Mosque overview, with detail showing the multi-armed Hindu idol in the place of the former mihrab

Blocks of stone found at the site, showing Jain and tantric carvings

The 15th century Adina, or Friday, Mosque of Pandua, located some 250 miles north of Calcutta, incorporates parts of a Hindu temple. (See post of 2009.03.13 on Pandua.)

The bases of the columns are lotus-shaped, while the mihrab uses the swastika, both motifs associated with native Indian religions. Note that the pattern near the top of the mihrab is broken, suggesting that the stones were not originally cut for their current placement/arrangement.

Outside, more obvious clues. The entrance contains carvings with clear (but now empty) niches for Hindu deities while the outside wall incorporates decorated blocks from an older structure.

Malik Mughith’s Mosque at the ruins of Mandu in Madhya Pradesh also reveals reuse, in the empty niches of the column bases.

I do not want to defend the Muslim conquerors/rulers of India, who in any event were alive hundreds of years before ideas of historic preservation or cultural sensitivity had fully developed, but I do want to note that, to a medieval monotheistic outsider, especially one from such an austere tradition as Islam, certain Hindu
shrines must surely have seemed particularly evil and befitting destruction. Not only were the Muslims establishing their authority, but in an age before pluralism, they thought that they were doing everyone a favor by ridding the world of pagan shrines.

Shrine to Hindu Deity Chinnamasta in Gour, West Bengal, near the ruins of Pandua

Categories
India photo religion

Pre-Mughal Muslim India

As I have mentioned in previous posts (see posts of 2008.03.28 and 2009.03.06), Islam in India is not at all synonymous with the Mughals, who were really the last in a series of Muslim powers to arise in India. In this post, I wanted to go over some of many Muslim rulers of India that existed prior to the Mughal rulers, and to show some of their grand architectural remains.

The story of Muslim rulers in India starts with Mohammad Ghori, who invaded from now Afghanistan into now India and Pakistan in the 12th century. Muhammad’s general, Qutb-ud-din Aybak, established the Delhi Sultanate, which through various dynasties lasted until the arrival of the Mughals in the 16th century. The most notable of the Delhi Sultans included Shams ud din Iltutmish (1210-1235) and Muhammad bin Tughluq (1325-1351). It is during the rule of Sultan Mohammad bin Tughluq that Ibn Battuta landed in India, acting as a waqif, or judge (see post of 2009.01.23).

Qutb-ud-din Aybak ordered the construction of the Qutb Minar (in now southern Delhi) as a symbol of his establishment of Muslim rule in North India. One of the most spectacular architectural ruins anywhere, and said to resemble precedents in Afghanistan, it is perhaps the greatest symbol of the Delhi Sultanate. The Quwwat ul-Islam Mosque in the Qutb complex is said to be a conversion from Hindu or Jain temples–post to come.

The Qutb Minar

The Quwwat ul-Islam Mosque, with the Minar in the background

Tomb of Iltutmish, in the Qutb complex

Ruins of Tughluqabad, located to the south of New Delhi

Daulatabad, or Deogiri Fort. In 1327, Tughluq forced the entire population of Delhi to move to Daulatabad, thousand of miles away in the Deccan, a horrible and failed experiment.

Some of the tombs of the Lodi and Sayyid dynasties of the Delhi Sultanate are in an undervisited Delhi park known as the Lodi Gardens.

The Delhi Sultanate held on to power in the core northern areas around Delhi for most of its duration, but conquests outside of Delhi often split off into other sultanates and kingdoms, resulting in a great number of other Muslim rulers in the Subcontinent.

The Bahmani Sultanate, founded by a governor of Tughluq, ruled over much of the Deccan from 1347 to 1527, but then splintered into various smaller kingdoms, the most important of which was Golconda/Hyderabad. The Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda was originally founded by a minister for the Bahmani Sultanate, and at its height built the new city of Hyderabad nearby. Hyderabad was eventually conquered by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, but then restored to independent rule under the Nizams, when Mughal control grew weak. For more information on the history of Hyderabad, see my post of 2008.03.28.

Golconda Fort. One of Golconda’s great claims to fame is as the origin of most of the world’s most famous diamonds, including the Koh-i-Noor, now part of the British crown jewels, the Darya-ye Noor, part of the Iranian crown jewels and the Hope diamond, now part of the U.S. Smithsonian collection.

Qutb Shahi Tombs details. Note the Iranian influence of the glazed tiles in the second picture below.

Hyderabad’s famous Char Minar, built in 1591

Jaunpur, located near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, became an independent state controlled by the Sharqi dynasty after the 1398 sacking of Delhi by Tamerlane substantially weakened the Delhi Sultanate. Mughal Emperor Akbar incorporated Jaunpur into the Mughal Empire in 1559.

Atala Mosque, Jaunpur, built in 1423

Friday Mosque, Jaunpur, built in 1470. The Sharqi dynasty developed its own particular architectural styles, as seen in the Atala and Friday Mosques.

Medresa student, Friday Mosque, Jaunpur

The Ilyas Shah dynasty was created in Bengal in 1338, during another period of Delhi Sultanate weakness, and had its capitals at the cities of Gour and Pandua, located in West Bengal some 250 miles to the north of now Calcutta. Mughal Emperor Akbar incorporated the region into the Mughal Empire in 1576.

Adina, or Friday, Mosque, Pandua, which was built around 1430 and is said to incorporate parts of a Hindu temple (post to come). It was at one time the largest mosque in what is now India.

Bara Sona, or Big Golden, Mosque, Gour, built in 1526 by Sultan Nusrat Shah

Qadam Rasul Mosque, Gour, built in 1513 by Sultan Nusrat Shah and said to house a footprint of Mohammed

A contemporary of the early Mughals, Sher Shah Suri was a Muslim ruler who founded the Sur dynasty in 1540, based out of Sasaram in now Bihar. Sher Shah Suri was able to defeat Humayun, leaving him to retreat and seek assistance from Safavid Iran (see post of 2009.02.16), but was killed in battle after a reign of only five years.

Tomb of Isa Khan Niazi, an Afghan noble in the court of Sher Shah Suri, located near Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi

The Ghuri Kingdom, or Malwa Sultanate, of Mandu (now Madhya Pradesh) was established by Dilawar Khan, then governor of Malwa, when Delhi was sacked by Tamerlane. First Humayun, and later Akbar, added it to the Mughal Empire.

Mandu’s Jahaz Mahal, or Palace of the Winds

Malwa Sultan Hoshang Shah’s Tomb at Mandu is said to be a precursor to the Taj Mahal

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food India photo religion

Food of Muslim India

Muslim restaurant, Fatehpur Sikri (786, on the wall, is a somewhat controversial mystical number in Islam)

How distinct are the Muslim and Hindu cultures of the Indian subcontinent? As we know, Indian Muslims eventually felt that their culture was different enough to warrant an entirely separate nation state, that of Pakistan, but of course Muslim and Hindu Indians have lived together for centuries and are indistinguishable in many respects. Some Muslim Indians/Pakistanis may think of themselves as ethnically distinct, tracing their family’s origins to Iran, Central Asia or even Arabia, but a quick facial read suggests that most Muslim Indians are of the same genetic stock as their Hindu bretheren. The languages of Urdu and Hindi have sadly diverted since Partition, but they are still mutually comprehensible enough that India and Pakistan constitute one market for Bollywood films.

But one argument in favor of distinctness of identity is cuisine. Most Indian foods are consumed by Hindus and Muslims alike, but there are clearly certain dishes that are more frequently served and eaten by Muslims or have definite ties to other parts of the Muslim world. (Dietary rules–such as Hindu vegetarianism–may have contributed to the development of such distinct foods.)

Restaurant just outside the Friday Mosque in Agra

The single defining characteristic of Muslim food in India (and, to an extent, Muslim food all over the world), is meat. It might have to do with the fact that many Muslim societies were pastoralists, but meat is much consumed in the Muslim world, often in the most basic grilled form–kebab. (Note, however, that while beef is consumed by Muslims outside the subcontinent, it is almost never eaten in India, even by Muslims, perhaps following the advice of Babur, see post of 2009.02.16.)

Muslim butcher in Crawford Market, Bombay

Meat on the grill, Old Delhi

Meat on the grill, Uzbekistan

One of the most famous categories of Indian food is Mughlai cuisine, which is served at some of the top restaurants in the country. Said to be the food of the Mughal court, Mughlai food is not dissimilar from the Punjabi fare that most people are most familiar with, but particularly rich and meaty.

Khyber, Bombay, one of our favorite restaurants in the world

Seekh kebab at Karim’s in Old Delhi, one of the most famous Mughlai restaurants in India. The founding family of Karim’s is said to have worked in the kitchens of the Mughal court, and some of the dishes bear the names of Mughal emperors. (Read this hilarious post on Karim’s on a great expat Delhi blog, Our Delhi Struggle.)

In addition to rich Mughlai cuisine, there are certain dishes that are especially associated with Muslims in India. Foremost among these, and perhaps one of my favorite dishes anywhere in the world, is biryani. It is said that the Nizams of Hyderabad had a biryani recipe for every day of the year, and had different dinner outfits to go with the various recipes. To this day, Hyderabad is the capital of biryani, and no biryani we have had anywhere else (and trust me, I order it often) comes anywhere close to the texture and fragrance of Hyderabadi biryani (and this, despite our not having been to the most famous of Hyderabadi biryani shops, Paradise). Muslim Indian Biryani has also become one of the most common foods in the Gulf, due to the large number of restaurants run by workers from the Subcontinent (and perhaps in some cases because the local cuisine isn’t very good!).

Biryani, served in a Muslim restaurant in Cochin, Kerala

Other dishes are even more closely tied to the religion. Haleem, a paste-like dish of slow-cooked meat with wheat, is a food that is commonly eaten for iftar (the breaking of the fast) during Ramadan, and can be found in Muslim areas in the Subcontinent.

Finally, sweets. Sweets can carry a great deal of cultural meaning and identity–desserts are often some of the most elaborate dishes of a cuisine and are tied to festivities and ritual. Traveling throughout Muslim India, one frequently encounters sweets that have connections to other parts of the Muslim world, sometimes making one scratch one’s head wondering in which direction the recipes traveled.

Rice pudding, in the form of kheer, is of course a very common Indian dish, prepared mostly for festivities but also featuring heavily in overseas Indian buffet menus, but baked rice pudding, called firni, is found particularly in Muslim restaurants. Here, a very standard form, in nice clay pots, sold in a Muslim neighborhood of Calcutta. (Similar clay pot firni is available at Karim’s in Delhi.)

Firni sutlac served in Turkey. Both in India and Turkey, one of my favorite desserts.

The first time we saw faluda, in Iran, we were somewhat puzzled at this odd, noodle-y dessert. We found faluda in both Delhi and Bombay, in somewhat different forms.

Faluda, at an Old Delhi restaurant

Faluda, at famous Badshah Cold Drink House near Crawford Market in Bombay. The red flavor, with rose water, was called the Shirazi.

Faluda, from a shop in Esfahan, Iran

Can a fruit have a religion? I hesitate to call the pomegranate a Muslim fruit, but it is definitely seen more frequently in Muslim countries. Pomegranate juice was a delightful streetside treat in the Levant. The Quran does say that the fruit is a gift from God!

Pomegranates, sold in Hyderabad

Pomegranate seeds adorn Turkish ashure, or Noah’s pudding

The Ghantewala Halwai on Old Delhi’s Chandni Chowk is said to have served the Mughal court. (To be honest, not all that tasty.)

Categories
India photo religion

Islam in India

Prayer at Nakhoda Mosque, Calcutta

The title of this post is somewhat over-general, but I did want to make certain broad points on Islam in India, as I have done in previous posts (see post of 2008.08.16 on Indonesia and 2008.11.14 on the Balkans).

India has the third largest Muslim population in the world. This is an oft-cited fact and one you’ve perhaps already heard. The Indian Subcontinent taken together has almost a third of all of the Muslims in the world, and India has just about as many Muslims as Pakistan or Bangladesh. These three countries and Indonesia are, by far, the greatest countries in terms of Muslim population–no Arab or Middle Eastern country even comes close. They are, in one sense, Islam’s center of gravity.

The history of Islam in India goes way back. Perhaps because Hindus make up the majority of India’s population and because Hinduism is by far the more ancient religion, Islam is often thought of as a relative newcomer, an alien seed taken root in the subcontinent. However, Islam is no newer to the Indian Subcontinent than it is to almost anywhere else outside of the Arab world. Parts of now Pakistan were conquered by Arab armies as early as the 8th century and parts of now India were conquered by Muslim invaders as early as the 12th century. Islam came to India as early or earlier than it came to such places as Turkey, Central Asia or West Africa.

By the time Babur, the first Mughal Emperor, arrived in India in the 16th century, Muslim rulers had been in charge in Delhi for hundreds of years, and Muslim rulers were already installed in other parts of the Subcontinent, including as far south as Golconda/Hyderabad. (post on pre-Mughal Muslim rulers of India to come)

Tombs of the Qutb Shahis of Golconda, near Hyderabad

While Islam came largely from the North (generally through conquest), it also arrived on South Indian shores (generally through trade). It is easy to think of the Delhi Sultanate or the Mughals when thinking of Muslim India, but one often forgets the significant Muslim populations of South India, some of which arose even before northern Muslim conquests as the belief washed ashore with Arab traders following the monsoon winds. Some Urdu-speaking Muslims in the North may with varying degrees of credibility associate themselves with Greater Iran/Central Asia, even going so far as to say that they are Iranian or Mongol rather than Indian, but South Indian Muslims are very much the same as their Hindu brethren–just of a different faith. (Orthodox Hinduism and harsh adherence to the caste system incentivized some Keralans to convert to Islam and Christianity.) It has been said that because of the different history, religious tension does not exist in the south as it does in the north.

Alimood Mosque near Varkala, Kerala

Sufism played a huge role in the extension of Islam in the Subcontinent. In my post of 2009.02.21 on Akbar and Fatehpur Sikri, I mentioned sufi saint Salim Chisti. Sufis played a principal role in spreading Islam throughout the subcontinent, far greater a role than direct contact with Muslim invaders from the north or Arab traders from the sea. The most famous of these is Muin-ud-din Chisti, buried in Ajmer, who hailed from now Iran and studied in Bukhara and Samarkand before arriving in now India with Mohammed of Ghor. Sufis appealed to Indians not only through personal holiness and piety, but by incorporating certain Hindu forms and practices. Sites related to sufi saints, such as the tomb of Muin-ud-din Chisti in Ajmer and the tomb of Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi are by far the most venerated Muslim religious sites in India, and sufi practices such as the use of music are widespread. (Compare to the orthodoxy of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, who is said to have forbidden music altogether, for both Muslims and Hindus.)

Shrine of Khawaja Muin-ud-din Chisti, in Ajmer

Qawwali music played at the Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi, in the direction of the tomb

Itinerant sufis are perfect analogs of Hindu sadhus, and Indians sufis often adopt a sadhu-like form, with a different color palette (green instead of yellow or saffron).

In its expansion, Islam in the Subcontinent adopted Hindu forms and practices. Syncretism is a natural development of religion, and Islam adopted certain (relatively superficial) aspects of Hinduism in its spread across the Subcontinent. I imagine that these practices were adopted not only by sufis seeking converts but also by recent converts continuing past practices. In addition to music (which is admittedly of a totally different style than Indian Hindu music), there is the use of flowers and the importance of pilgrimage. Of course, pilgrimage exists in Islam around the world–including the all-important hajj–but it is practiced with a particular intensity in the Subcontinent. (I should note that one can see Hindus visiting Muslim sites in India, just as Muslims visit Christian sites in the Middle East.) All in all, the end result is a form of Islam that is somewhat less austere than in many other parts of the world.

Flowers for sale at the Nizamuddin Dargah

Categories
India photo religion

Muslim Varanasi

Alamgir Mosque, rising above the ghats on the right. The mosque is said to have been built by Aurangzeb on the site of a former Hindu temple and so is a point of contention–police guard the building against attacks. The minarets have been shortened in order to reduce the building’s profile.

Varanasi is of course one of Hinduism’s holiest cities, and so nearly all of a visitor’s time in Varnasi is spent in marvel at the Hindu activity in the city–navigating the chaos surrounding the Golden Temple, watching the morning bathers on the ghats and listening to the nightly puja. Stay for slightly longer in Varanasi, however, and one quickly comes to realize that the city also has a substantial Muslim population (one estimate is one third of the city). Muslims can be seen around Munshi Ghat and the neighborhood nearby as well as in other distinct Muslim neighborhoods not far from the Hindu core of the city. Given the general theme of our trip, we wanted to seek out the Muslim population of Varanasi, and so spent an entertaining afternoon chasing skullcaps and mosques.

The Muslims of Varanasi are often seen around town, riding rickshaws and at Muslim restaurants.

Munshi ghat

This mosque is not far from the heart of the old city.

Weaving in Varansi–of the famous Baranasi saris–is a Muslim domain, and somewhat inland is an entire Muslim neighborhood dedicated to weaving.



Note the decidedly “Muslim” door–not dissimilar from ones you would find in Central Asia or the Middle East.

The banner advertises a Muslim school named after famous Indian Muslim leader Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, founder of Aligarh Muslim University.

As in many other places in India, one is left to wonder what Muslim Varanasi was like before the Partition. Were there substantially more Muslims? Was it the better educated or more well-off who left? Was life more difficult for those who stayed behind, or worse for those who left? Muslim India, and therefore India as a whole, is in many ways only a fragment of what it was, because it was so abruptly and cruelly divided. What would peaceful coexistence, if possible, have looked like?