Shiite Shrines of the Old City

Abstract

The city of Hyderabad in southern India, in what is today the state of Andhra Pradesh, has for centuries been one of the major Shiite population centers in the subcontinent. This Shiite presence can be traced back (as I noted in part I) to the Deccani Bahmani kingdom and the sixteenth-century founding of Hyderabad by the Shiite Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda. But even under the Asaf Jahis, Sunni successors to the Qutb Shahis, ministers of state gave public support to the great Shiite shrines in the city and patronized the religious liturgies held in connection with Muharram.¹ Hyderabad, once the capital of an independent princely Native State in the time of the British Raj, dwindled in power after absorption into post-independence India in 1948; but even today it remains one of the best localities in India for observing Shiite rituals surrounding Muharram. Despite this, relatively little has been written on the subject of Muharram in Hyderabad and still less on the Shiite men’s guilds of Hyderabad.² In Hyderabad the men’s associations are identified by the terms matami guruh (“lamentation guild,” plural matami guruhan) or anjuman (“association”). While residing in this city during the Muharram seasons of 1989 and 1991, I became acquainted with members of six guruhan; this led me to investigate how they help arrange the liturgies and rituals culminating in Ashura. Since in what follows I make some distinction among the types of worship found in various localities in Hyderabad, I will begin by discussing briefly the Shiite neighborhoods of the city. I then describe the ashurkhanas or shrines where liturgies are celebrated and thereafter focus on the men’s associations themselves and their function in the observance of Muharram in Hyderabad.