Acknowledgements

I would not have thought of writing this book had the late Professor Muhammad Mujeeb not suggested to me to study the life of Bībī Zulaikha, the mother of Ḥaẓrat Nizāmu’d-Dīn Awliyāʾ. Though I began reading about this pious woman, I kept postponing my writing. Finally, I decided that it was time to finish writing this book and thereby honour the memory of Professor Muhammad Mujeeb.

Through the long years working on this book, I have received inspiration from a number of people and events. I am deeply grateful to friends, scholars, and students who have inspired me and assisted me in various ways to undertake this study. Dr. Khanday Pervaiz Ahmad of the Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad (India), helped me by sending me the most recent images of the shrine of Bībī Zulaikha from Delhi. Though I had visited this shrine several times in the past, these photographs transported me virtually to the shrine complex. I am indebted to Dr. Pervaiz Ahmad. Kaleem Chughtai and the late Dr. Ansar Zahid Khan of the Pakistan Historical Society were of great help in identifying some sources and providing me with photocopies of some of these works. My two research assistants, Huma Afaque and Tanazza Sakha, helped me at every stage of this research. I would like to thank them for their valuable assistance over the period of one year. I also thank Dr. Saud Rohilla of Lahore who made photocopies of the two manuscripts, Akbāru’l awliyāʾ min lisānu’l aṣfiyāʾ and Maʿāriju’l wilāyat, for me. I remain highly grateful to him. Sarifah Abdullah, Senior Deputy Chief Librarian, Dar Al-Hikmah Library, International Islamic University Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, was so quick in helping me that within no time she emailed me a copy of al-ʿunwān fi sulūk an niswān of ʿAlī Muttaqī alʿunwān fi sulūk an niswān. I am highly grateful to her. In Karachi, the library of Anjuman Taraqqi-ye Urdu Pakistan, a treasure house for researchers, helped me tremendously. I pay my deep respects to the memory of Maulawī ʿAbdul Ḥaqq Ṣāḥib for the legacy he has left behind for us. Professor Masud Anwar Alavi of the Department of Arabic, Aligarh Muslim University was very kind in sending me some material on the Sufis of Kākorī.

I am also greatly indebted to the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan for its generous grant for a period of twelve months in 2015. Historical investigation and interrogation coupled with ethnographic observations was made possible by this grant. Earlier, in 2002–2003, Gettysburg College, in Pennsylvania (USA), funded a small project titled “Women and Religious Authority in Pakistan.” Fieldwork was completed in Karachi with the help of this grant. An exhibition of photographs of women’s shrine visitation, taken during this research, was mounted in March–May 2003 at Gettysburg College. In 2004–2006, a research project, Women’s Experience of Reproductive Health in Pakistan and Indonesia, and Canada: A Comparative Life Story Project, a collaborative team research between Universitas Indonesia, University of Karachi, and Memorial University, Canada, and funded by IDRC, Canada, led me to visit shrines in Karachi and Lahore, where women devotees sought blessings for healing their health. During these visits, I listened to the stories about women of all ages and social backgrounds, suffering from physical ailments, emotional distress, and physical abuse, who came to seek the blessings of the saints buried in the shrines. I watched rich women, particularly in Lahore, dropping their gold ornaments through the slits of padlocked green boxes kept for collecting nazrāna (offerings), and poor women making an offering of small coins or even a home-raised chicken to the shrine keeper, as an oblation, in Thatta. All these women, whether they talked to me or remained silent, have added tremendously to my understanding of life around and inside the shrines. I owe my gratitude to them. Over the long years of my active teaching career, countless young men and women in Pakistan, and at campuses outside Pakistan, helped me in keeping my academic pursuits agile. My indebtedness to them remains unbounded. Finally, I would like to thank Nicolette van der Hoek, Acquisitions Editor Middle East and Islamic Studies and Nienke Brienen-Moolenaar for their professional assistance throughout the whole publication process. I have no words to thank my children and grandchildren. It is because of them that I enjoy the bliss of motherhood and they continuously inspire me to make my life meaningful.