Songs of Wisdom and Circles of Dance: An Anthology of Hymns by the Satpanth Isma ili Muslim Saint, Pir Shams.

• Author: Asani, Ali S.
• Position: Review

By TAZIM R. KASSAM. McGill Studies in the History of Religions. Albany: STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, 1995. Pp. xiv + 424.

This book addresses a broad range of issues related to the study of Satpanth, the "True Path," the Nizari Isma ili tradition in South Asia. Focusing particularly on the ginans, the hymns in several South Asian languages that are a unique characteristic of the tradition, it highlights the significant role these devotional poems play in the religious life of the Nizari Isma ili community today. The book also includes a partial survey of scholarship on the Satpanth tradition, in which the author observes that the tradition's folk character and apparently heterodox nature have resulted not only in biases academically but also outright neglect. Refuting those who would view the syncretistic Hindu and Muslim elements within Satpanth as a haphazard mishmash of ideas, the author persuasively argues that these elements constitute, in fact, an intricate and complex synthesis which needs to be evaluated on its own terms rather than by external norms.

Dr. Kassam is certainly correct in pointing out that there is much about the history and development of the Satpanth tradition that we have yet to understand adequately. Significant questions relating to the origins of the tradition in South Asia and its connections with Isma ili movements centered in medieval Egypt and Iran remain unanswered. There are also many questions concerning the identity of the various preacher-saints (pir) who propagated Satpanth, such as Pit Shams, and their activities, as well as the processes by which individuals "converted" to the tradition. It is in response to some of these questions that the author presents the book's principal hypothesis: the foundation of Satpanth tradition can be traced primarily to political motivations and not merely the "missionary impulse" to convert Hindus to Islam, as has been popularly believed thus far. Specifically, she sees the beginnings of the tradition evolving from an alliance of Arabs, Hindu chieftains, and converts to Ismailism from the Sindhi Sumrahs, which sought help from the Isma ili state of Alamut in Iran to establish a state in the region of Multan and Sind. She argues that it is only after an initial, politically activist phase that Satpanth evolved towards a more inward, pacifist, and mystically oriented form.

The hypothesis is certainly intriguing; Kassam supports it by referring to earlier studies by Abbas Hamdani, Derryl Maclean...