The Graves Of Martyrs In Tirath, Upper Swat Valley, Pakistan

Prologue: sketches on space

“About four or five miles farther up the valley, beyond the Yúsufzí boundary, there are few hamlets, the two principal of which are called Chúr-ra’i, on the east bank, and Tírátaey, on the opposite side. These villages are inhabited by the descendants of the Akhúnd, Darwezah. At the capture of Tírátaey Karím-Dad lost his life. I was informed by the people here, that, some years since, a number of dead bodies were discovered buried in a mound at the side of a hill near Tírátaey. The bodies were quite perfect, as if but recently dead, and had been buried with their arms, consisting of bows and arrows, axes, and swords” (Raverty 1888: 236)

The Tirath Union Council, located in the upper Swat valley, on the left side of the Swat river, is composed of approximately twelve villages and inhabited mainly by Akhūnd Khel families. It comprises the villages of Damai, Kala Gram, Shegal, More Panari, Qandel, Nala, Dara, Garai, Aryana, Damana, Tirath, and Sameray.

There is a prevalent tendency toward endogamy, and matrimonial exchanges take place primarily among the different villages of the Tirath Union Council. Matrimonies outside this circle are not common. For instance, they do not usually contract matrimony with the Akhūnd Khel of Madyan, a city five kilometers to the north of Tirath.[i] And it was not unheard of for people in Tirath to address them as ṣhārian (ps. “from the city”).[ii]

According to their claim, the Akhūnd Khel are descendants of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dad (c. 1562-1661),[iii] the eldest son of Akhūnd Darwezah (d. 1638-39), both religious figures and prolific writers of their time. Akhūnd Darwezah,[iv] Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dad and their descendants have played a great role in preaching Islam in the upper parts of Swat (Dinakhel 2011: 18). In 1661, Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dad died at the capture of Tirath, fighting the Kāfirs (infidels) (see Khan 2011).

The tomb of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dad, also known locally as Shahīd Bābā (“the martyred saint”), is located on the riverside of Swat in Tirath. In the past, there was a dispute with the village of Kānjū (in the proximities of Mingorah) over the remnants of his corpse, and another tomb was constructed there. This is corroborated by sources from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see Raverty 1888).[v] The narration of this event also circulates among the local population of Tirath.[vi]

Other groups inhabit the area of Tirath: (a) the Gūjars, traditionally herders, and whose ecologic niche is located in the foothills surrounding Tirath; (b) those living in the immediacies of the shrine of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dad, the fakīrs,[vii] which are addressed as malāngan[viii] by the Akhūnd Khel (also ethnically Gūjars, but who assert their distinctiveness from the other Gūjars).[ix] There are also occupational groups (kasabgar, kisabgər), such as the barber (nāyī), the carpenter (tarkāṇ), the cobbler (močī), and the sweeper.

In the area there is a profuse presence of martyrs’ graves (shahīds), and about most of these graves nothing or little is known. I have identified several of these sites and around whom there is pilgrimage activity nowadays, and chose to divide these places according to categories based on their location or setting: the graves of shahīds, in the banks of the Swat river; the graves within the main villages of Tirath; and finally, the graves located on the edges of the mountains.

The above mentioned spaces also entail diverse types of relations between different groups: the Gūjars, whose ecological setting coincides with the location of the graves of shahīds in the edges of the mountains; the Akhūnd Khel, living inside the villages of Tirath; and the malāngan, living in the vicinities of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dad’s shrine, in the land contiguous to the cemetery. Hierarchies and relations among these different groups therefore inform these sacred spaces (see Kilde 2008). These relations deal with concepts of space and land, mobility and settlement, memory and history, and the making of ‘identity’. Claim, legitimacy, and conflict of ownerships of land and social identity take place in relation to understanding and narration of, as well as, relating to the shrine and graves of shahīds, in which use and manipulation of constructed genealogy are central.

This article, “The life-trees sprouting from tombs-death: the graves of martyrs in Tirath, Upper Swat valley, Pakistan” intends to be the first of a series that will consider the different graves of martyrs in Tirath (Upper Swat valley, Pakistan). In this series of chimerical tableaux, I rise as a medium that gives voice to the invisible. A pervasive interpreter of death masks and graves suffused with chronicles of time.

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[i] In the late nineteenth-century, Madyan marked the boundary between territory controlled by the Pashtun Yusufzais’ tribe, and the Torwali speaking Kohistanis (see Keiser 1991: n.p). This is corroborated by sources of the late nineteenth century, in which Piya (a village facing Tirath, situated on the other side of the Swat river) is mentioned as the “last held by the Yusufzi Afghans in the northern extremity of the Suwat valley, which here terminates (politically, at least)” (Raverty 1888: 236). Furthermore, I argue in my research how Tirath may be described as a “threshold zone” or “intermediary zone”, and on the complexities inherent to this definition.

For more information on the Torwali, see Barth (1956) and Torwali (2015).

[ii] Though I have once attended a marriage between a young man from Tirath and a girl from Madyan. It was a “love marriage” and the details surrounding their wedding are discussed in my Ph.D. thesis.

[iii] There is contradictory information regarding the date of birth of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dad.

[iv] The grave of Akhūnd Darwezah is located in the village of Hazār Khwāni, in the outskirts of Peshāwar city, District of Peshāwar, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

[v] “Leaving the village of ‘Ali-Gram, you proceed one kuroh to the east and reach the mazar—tomb and shrine—of the Shahid Baba, as the Akhund, Karim Dad, son of the Akhund, Darwezah (referred to at pages 236 and 243), is styled by his votaries. The village which has sprung up round his tomb is now known as Kanjuan, which lies on the left hand, near the road. You proceed from this place a short distance, about one kuroh, to the south-west, and reach Damghar” (Raverty 1888: 232-233). For more information on Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dad, see Dinakhel (2011; 2017) and Qadri (1988).

[vi] “When he died [Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dad], the Akhūnd Khel of Kānjū took his body there, while our [Tirath] Miāṇ brought the body here. This lasted for some time. Then, Shahīd Bābā appeared in someone’s dream and said: ‘Rest my body in one place, while built the shrines in both places, and I shall perform in both places equally’. So now people visit both shrines [in Kānjū and Tirath]” (interview during fieldwork in Tirath).

[vii] The terminology here employed is the same used by the people during the fieldwork. Let me open a parenthesis to remind how terms such as fakīr (among others) are imbued with relative complexity and may encompass different definitions and identities. “However, the body of people who identify as fakirs today is at best a mixed bag of subjects and identities” (Kasmani 2016: 50). In the case of Swat, fakīrs are defined as “religious mendicant without status” (Sultan-i-Rome 2008: 325) or as “a resident in someone’s quarter free of rent but liable to do some manual work” (called bigar or “forced labour”) for the proprietor. Such people were commonly referred to as faqir fuqara) (Sultan-i-Rome 2016: 261, note 24).

[viii] The term malāngan holds here, at times, a pejorative connotation. The term malāng may have different meanings: “the word is used to refer to madaree (stage-magicians), fakir (either beggars or holy men), qalandar (wandering Sufis), jadoogar (sorcerers who, in some instances, are distinguishable from shamans), charsi (hashish addicts), divana (possessed madmen), and, finally, palang dar libasi malang (literally, “tigers in malang clothing”: impostors and charlatans)” (Sidky 1990: 290).

[ix] “Basically we are Gūjar but we cannot speak the Gūjari language, because we were born and spent the entire life in the plain areas unlike other Gūjars, as they are living in the mountains. We can speak just one language and that is Pashto” (interview with a woman living in the immediacies of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dad’s shrine, August 2014).

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The king’s summit: the grave of Shāhī Sir

“Insan da khware peda dai aw khware ta ba zay.”

(Transl.: “Man is made from mud and shall return to mud”.)[i]

On my visit to the tomb of a martyr whom they call Shāhī Sir (“king’s summit”),[ii] I came across one of the most beautiful images: a large tree growing from a grave. What greater paradox than life emerging from the fertile land of death! The white stone adorned with black and fawn vertical stripes, embracing the robust trunk rising towards an infinite. I imagine that the memories of this corpse dangle from its branches: leaves torn from the book of life and inscribed with invisible inks. Joyful torments of thousands of years of moon-trees which only mountain ascetics can read.

The walk was long. The silence interpolated only by the conversations with my travel companions, or by the symphonic chaos of nature. I had been hearing about the grave of Shāhī Sir lately. While in the courtyard of a house, I was staying in, they pointed out a distant but visible hillock, locating the grave. The mystery that precludes this place is ineluctable. On a journey to the utter ends of myself, the mountain—an axial symbol and incorporeal marrow—encloses the earth and the heavens. I almost felt its pulse, in the profundities of the roots merging with the perspiration and tears of humanity. I listened to the dialogues in whispers between the beings that have passed through here. The spirits of the place, conjured up, roar biographies slaughtered by time.

We did not meet anyone along our ascension. Only, in the distance, one or another soul, that unfolded oblivious to our presence. A young Gūjar that returns from the river, carrying overhead like a silver crown, a bowl of washed clothes. Clay roofs in which children show themselves off to the ethereal mountains. The slumbering lives parading in the antechambers of deep dreams, in this month of pashakal, when the air seems to be absorbed by an invisible giant, and the breath, numbed. They rest in chārpāyīs woven together by well-worn threads, stretching the body like branches of trees looking for an impossible breeze.

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[i] Proverb (ps. matal) collected during fieldwork.

[ii] There are two possible names for this tomb: Shahīd Sir (“the martyrs’ summit”), or Shāhī Sir (“the kings’ summit”). Nevertheless, the name most commonly used by the local populations is that of Shāhī Sir.

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At last we approached the pinnacle of the mountain, having crossed a diffused cornfield, sculpting itself through the steep slopes of balconies, overlooking a paradise that like thick clouds veil, a treasure beyond measure. In a ritual initiation, the body dragged itself against the towering stems, tearing off each piece of me in a moment that seemed endless. Down below, the river writhes itself toward the sempiternal, in its ceaseless journey through the caesuras of the world.

From the summit, it is possible for us to have a look over the whole valley. I was not surprised, therefore, that it constituted a strategic point of defence in the seventeenth-century conflicts against the “infidels” (Kāfirs). Hence the location of Shāhī Sir grave, as well as those of other martyrs on the mountaintops, or along the banks of the river. But this is just one of the possible explanations, as I problematize in my research.

Most of these graves have no face or name. They are known only by their antonomasias, as characters in fantasy books that remain anonymous in devising concealments: Māshūm Shahīd (“the martyr-child”), Ṣhwāna Shahīd (lit. “martyr of the wild olive tree”),[i] Dabala Shahīd, Mulamai Shahīd, among many others.

We found a Gūjar, who was tending the cultivated fields. The Gūjars, an agro-pastoral ethnic group, are not traditionally landowners and the lands they occupy are from the Akhūnd Khel. The Gūjars generally inhabit the mountainous regions of Tirath and maintain and herds cows, sheep and goats, which graze in the plateau areas. However, new migratory patterns to the Gulf countries have allowed the emergence of a new class of Gūjars with the financial means to acquire land (Nichols 2013: 138). That is particularly visible in the case of Tirath, where some of the Gūjars have bought some land (contrariwise to the case of the malāngan families), or constructed houses of considerable size.

The grave of Shāhī Sir is hidden amidst the vegetation. Usually, the trees and bushes around the graves are never cut down and it is forbidden to use these places for agricultural practices; otherwise it may awaken the divine wrath. Many are the stories of the misfortunes that fell upon those who dared to disturb the magical and protective circle of these places.[ii] It is said that one day, someone decided to damage part of the mausoleum of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dad. He ended up ill and now his family lives in extreme poverty. Local people believe that it is a curse that falls upon all those who attempt to disrespect this sanctity. Even children are warned about playing around the cemeteries. I am interested, therefore, in the hidden traces chalked on the shadows of those spaces.

In the centre of a forest clearing, stands the grave with its various stone tiles, stacked on top of each other. The various items deposited on the leaden grave bear a symbiosis with the surrounding geography. There are pinecones and branches of trees on the grave. Oblations include small medicine bottles. Some of these bottles are tied in with coloured laces to the branches of bushes. Sometimes, fragments of clay jars and pots are also placed on the graves.

There is a strange force embedded in this enigmatic place. I search every nook, every tree and every branch. I do not know what I am looking for, however something compels me to do so. Perhaps it is my fecund imagination that imagines the most bizarre scenarios; or perhaps reveres every piece of nature as a pilgrimage to its veiled truths.

Hubbub of garments of varying colours scattered on the ground, blending in with the dry leaves and twigs that time has ripped off from the surrounding trees throughout the year.

Not far from the grave, inside a hollow tree, I find a plastic bag full of hair. This image distressed me for a long time. I have drawn the most varied conclusions. An immense desire to find something that no one has ever discovered exists within me. Perhaps reviving the emotions of those explorers who for the first time set foot on lands never traversed before, in an exoticization of the unknown. In a quest into the unlikely’

The first explanation would be that this could possibly represent a practice of magic or witchcraft (jādū) of any kind. Yes, magic is also practiced here, despite being seen as ominous (and this is another topic that interests me deeply!). However, after discussing this argument with several people and looking for similar cases in the anthropological literature I have found another explanation. There are accounts in various cultures, in which it is encouraged to bury the nails and hair (or deposit them in places considered safe) (see Frazer 1925: 233-237). These practices seem to emerge from the idea that there is a connection between a given individual and all that has been part of his body, and thus the possibility of being used for sympathetic (or empathic) magic. Some Muslim jurists also advise on burying hair and nails.[iii] In the Swat valley, for example, the nails are placed in the cavities of the walls. Another explanation relates to hair being offered not as “gift promised in exchange for the saint’s granting a favour but the supplicant’s attempt to establish a personal connection with the saint and to seal the bargain she had just made” (Doumato 2000: 114). Also Major Ridgway draws our attention to the fact that bunches of hair and remnants of coloured cloth were seen on trees in the vicinities of shrines, “being placed there by devotees in the performance of vows” (Ridgway 1997 [1910]): 39).[iv]

Man thus returns to earth. Geophasic being, immerses itself into the depths of the milky matrix, in cannibalistic rites.

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[i] Olea ferruginea (nom. illeg.), also known as olea europea subsp. Cuspidate, is a subspecies of olive tree. It has several names: wild olive tree, Indian olive tree, among others.

[ii] Sir Aurel Stein mentions that: “Time turns righteous and wicked alike into Shahids or holy martyrs, and the sanctity thus bestowed upon burial-places protects the trees from villagers’ otherwise reckless axe. In fact, these burial-groves become sanctuaries for whatever timber, hay, etc., may be deposited there by individual villagers for future use” (Stein 1929: 102).

[iii] Al-Nawawī (1233-1277), a Shāfiʿī jurist (one of the schools of Islamic jurisprudence), writes in Al-Majmū’ Sharh al-Muhadhdhab, 5.213: “It is preferred to bury what is trimmed or cut from a person’s hair and nail. They should be buried in the ground”.

[iv] On hair offerings, see Jim (2002); Tassie (1996); and Whitehead (2013). We cannot present here an exhaustive overview of the debates about hair offerings.

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References

1. Barth, F. (1956). Indus and Swat Kohistan: An Ethnographic Survey, Volume 2 of Studies honouring the centennial of Universitetets Etnografiske Museum, Oslo, 1857-1957.
2. Dinakhel, M. A. (2011). Beginning and Evolution of Pashto Literature in Swat State (1915-1969). Islamabad: Allama Iqbal Open University, Department of Pakistani Languages.
3. Dinakhel, M. A. (2017). “Da Miāṇ Karīm Dad Zwand aw Adabī Khidmāt” [“Life and Works of Miāṇ Karīm Dad”], Mandur, Government Afzal Khan Lala Postgraduate College, Matta, Swat, pp. 1-9.
4. Doumato, E. A. (2000). Getting God’s Ear: Women, Islam, and Healing in South Arabia and the Gulf. New York: Columbia University Press.
5. Frazer, J. (1925). The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. New York: The MacMillan Company.
6. Inam-ur-Rahim & A. Viaro (2002). Swat: An Afghan Society in Pakistan. Urbanization and Change in a Tribal Environment. Karachi: City Press.
7. Jim, T. S. F. (2002). “Naming a Gift: the Vocabulary and Purposed of Greek Religious Offerings”, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 52, 310-337.
8. Kasmani, O. (2016). “Woman [Un] like Woman: The question of spiritual authority among female fakirs of Sehwan Sharīf.” In Devotional Islam in Contemporary South Asia: Shrines, Journeys and Wanderers, ed. M. Boivin, and R. Delage, 47-62. London & New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
9. Keiser, L. (1991). “Notes on the Ethnography of Bishegram”, Paper presented at the 20th Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin.
10. Khan, Z. (2011). “A Persian Inscription from the Swat Valley: A Fresh Discovery”, Ancient Pakistan 22, 125-130.
11. Kilde, J. H. (2008). Sacred Power, Sacred Space: An Introduction to Christian Architecture and Worship. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
12. Nichols, R. (2013). “Class, State, and Power in Swat Conflict”, in Beyond Swat: History, Society and Economy along the Afghanistan-Pakistan, ed. B. Hopkins & M. Marsden, 135-146. New York: Columbia University Press.
13. Qadri, M. T. S. (1988). Akhūn Darwezah Bābā. Madyan, Swat: Maktab-i Ǧūšyīa.
14. Raverty, H. G. (1888). Notes on Afghanistan and Part of Baluchistan, Geographical, Ethnographical, and Historical (Extracted from the writings of little known Afghán and Tadjík Historians, Geographers, and Genealogists; the Histories of the Ghúrís, the Turk Sovereigns of the Dihlí Kingdom, the Mughal Sovereigns of the Houses of Tímúr, and other Muhammadan Chronicles; and from personal observations). London: Printed by Eyre and Spottiswoode.
15. Ridgway, R. T. I. (1997 [1910]). Pashtoons: History, Culture and Traditions. Quetta: Mansoor Bokhari.
16. Sidky, M. H. (1990). “Malang, Sufis, and Mystics: An Ethnographic Study of Shamanism in Afghanistan”, Asian Folklore Studies 49 (2), 275-301.
17. Stein, A. (1929). On Alexander’s track to the Indus, personal narrative of explorations on the North-West frontier of India. London: Macmillan & Co.
18. Sultan-i-Rome (2008). Swat State (1915-1969): From Genesis to Merger. An Analysis of Political, Administrative, Socio-Political, and Economic Developments. Karachi: Oxford University Press.
19. Sultan-i-Rome (2016). Land and Forest Governance in Swat: Transition from Tribal System to State to Pakistan. Karachi: Oxford University Press.
20. Tassie, G. J. (1996). “Hair-Offerings: An Enigmatic Egyptian Custom”, Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 7, 59-67.
21. Torwali, Z. (2015). “The ignored Dardic culture of Swat”, Journal of Languages and Culture 6 (5), 30-38.
22. Whitehead, A. (2013). “Hair offerings, the gift and giving of devotion”, Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief 9 (1), 131-133.___

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About the feature image:

In the background, we can see the peak of the “Gunāngār mountain” (“the mountain of sins”). It is called Kushujan in Torwali. 

Salma told me that, in an antediluvian time, only this mountain had rocks and pebbles. God commanded to offer some of the stones to the other mountains, but Gunāngār refused to do so. As punishment for her avarice and disobedience, God cursed her, removing her from any rebound: “Your summit will always be covered with snow and stripped of trees.” Since then, the summit of the Gunāngār mountain lies always with snow, be it winter or summer. Ana Tomas