100 Book Reviews

Jürgen Wasim Frembgen

At the Shrine of the Red Sufi: Five Days and Nights on Pilgrimage in Pakistan.
Translated from the German by Jane Ripken. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2011.
181 pages, glossary, general index. Cloth. isbn: 9780199063079. £13.99 / US $22.00.
And Nocturnal Music in the Land of the Sufis: Unheard Pakistan. Translated from
German by Jane Ripken. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012. 160 pages, listening
recommendations, glossary, general index. Cloth. ISBN: 9780199065066. €11.99 / US
$22.95.

Beyond the media obsession with rising fundamentalism and sectarianism

violence, religious life in Pakistan remains dazzlingly complex, dynamic and
diverse. Few scholars have done as much to document Pakistan’s rich cultural
matrix than Jürgen Wasim Frembgen. An ethnographer, polymath and Muslim
convert, Frembgen is Chief Curator of the Oriental Department at the Museum
of Ethnology in Munich and Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of
Munich. These books are part of a series of monographs published by Oxford
University Press that explore everyday life and local Islam “on the ground” in
Pakistan—and in particular the cultural, artistic and aesthetic expressions of
popular Sufism. Written in German, both books were translated into English by
Jane Ripken.
At the Shrine of the Red Sufi: Five Days and Nights on Pilgrimage in Pakistan
spotlights the annual pilgrimage to the tomb shrine of Pakistan’s most popular
Sufi saint, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (1178–1274), in the town of Sehwan Sharif in
southern Sindh province. More pilgrim’s diary than scholarly monograph, the
book’s nine chapters document Frembgen’s journey from Lahore to Sehwan
and back in mid-October, 2002. Joining hundreds of thousands of pilgrims for
the saint’s ‘urs (death anniversary), Frembgen brings to life the vibrant, sensual
experience of daily life with evocative descriptions of city streets, beggars, ped-
dlers and performers, butcher shops, train stations, tea houses, toilets, not to
mention the particular charms (and challenges) of the local cuisine and travel
by train, taxi, bus and motor rickshaw. Summarizing his fieldwork methods,
Frembren writes: “For hours, I sit watching the goings-on, drinking tea, smok-
ing, and chatting” (69).
Story-telling is central to Frembgen’s work. He has a vast network of local
Pakistani friends who provide access to a diverse community of Sufi teachers,
musicians, dancers and pilgrims throughout his travels. Immersing himself
into the chaos and cacophony of the pilgrimage to Sehwan, Frembgen docu-
ments everything he sees and hears—and it is these personal anecdotes that
bring Sufi piety, practices, miracle stories and popular legends to vivid, three-
dimensional life. He recounts the excitement and camaraderie among pious
pilgrims on the train en route to the shrine, an atmosphere “positively boiling

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/22105956-12341265

Downloaded from Brill.com06/03/2022 11:57:58AM
via Aletheia University
Book Reviews 101

over with the buzz of voices, people signing, the beat of drums, qawwali music
coming from cassette recorders, mixed with the bleating of sheep and goats”
(23). He examines the communal living arrangements, altruism, harmony and
communal spirit of the pilgrimage, marveling at the absence of sectarian ten-
sions and social divisions. Frembgen is especially drawn to the Qalandars,
groups of itinerant, antinomian Sufis “who live freely, not bound by religious
laws and their creed is conspicuous for rejecting the establishment in their
society” (1).
Pilgrims drawn to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine experience and express
their reverence for the saint most poignantly through dhammal—the devo-
tional “trance dance.” Frembgen describes the bending of normative social and
gender boundaries during these frenetic expressions of spiritual intoxication
and ecstasy. In a deeply conservative society, women who dance in public at
the shrine are often viewed as dishonorable, immodest and immoral. Yet when
Frembgen questions an exhausted female dancer about her participation in
the ritual she describes her dance as “an offering to the Qalandar” (59). Shifting
from ethnographic “thick description” to sociological analysis, Frembgen char-
acterizes dhammal as an “outlet for pain and suffering; a healthy release for the
rejection, tension, and pressure experienced in everyday life . . . Where else in
this society do women have the opportunity to find expression for the vitality
of their bodies, if not here in this parallel world of the Qalandar shrine?” (122).
Throughout the book, Frembgen highlights the growing rifts between
Pakistan’s Islamist and Sufi communities. An animated discussion between a
local Muslim preacher and several Sufi pilgrims on the bus ride back to Lahore
illuminates the broad spectrum of opinion about Islamic authority and
authenticity. Responding to the mullah, an angry young man exclaims, “The
mosque is no longer the house of God. There people are separated into
Wahhabis, Ahl-e Hadith, Ahl-e Qur’an, Deobandis, Barelwis, Sunnis, Shias.
Every group thinks only it is in possession of the truth! But at the shrines of our
Sufi saints, we have nothing to do with castes and sects” (151). By the end of this
detailed account of cultural and spiritual immersion, it is clear that Frembgen
feels much the same way.
Drawing on decades of extensive travel and fieldwork, Nocturnal Music in
the Land of the Sufis: Unheard Pakistan is a multi-layered expose of Sufi musi-
cal traditions. Like the wandering Sufis he so admires, Frembgen travels far
and wide across Pakistan in search of ecstatic poetry and music. “Taking my
background to date in blues, rock, jazz and what is known as Indo-jazz,” he
writes, “I now discovered paths to another, extremely versatile musical cul-
ture in which the music is absorbed not only by the ears but at live concerts
by the eyes as well” (35). The book’s five chapters document the author’s experi-
ences at distinct sites, mostly at Sufi shrines. Sixteen pages of color photographs,

journal of Sufi studies 3 (2014) 93–103 Downloaded from Brill.com06/03/2022 11:57:58AM

via Aletheia University
102 Book Reviews

along with an appendix of resources on Pakistani Sufi music (website archives,

cd recordings), add vital dimensions to the written text.
At the isolated rural shrine of Sayyid Imam Gul in the wilderness of the
northern Salt range mountains Frembgen encounters the emotive power of
sama‘, the quintessential Indo-Muslim Sufi concert. Enraptured by the poetic
verses of such Sufi luminaries as Bullhe Shah (d. 1752), Shah Husain (d. 1593),
Mir Taqi Mir (d. 1810), and Ghulam Farid (d. 1901), he examines the subtlety,
fluidity and complexity of the musical performance as a catalyst for states of
mystical insight and spiritual transformation. “A beautiful soft voice is heard,”
Frembgen explains, “tender verses of crystalline beauty in the short, filigree
form of the ghazal adopted from Persia. In rich poetic metaphors the words
circle around feeling, but in a veiled, ambiguous form—shimmering between
divine and earthly love, the infinite and the finite” (20). Back in the Old City of
Lahore, Frembgen goes in search of the traditional baithak—private rooms for
musical gatherings and concerts. In numerous vignettes from a decade of field-
work Frembgen charts his interactions with a host of the city’s poets, singers,
dancers and musicians. His guide into this hidden world, Dr Ashfaq Khan,
communicates a palpable sense of nostalgia and loss: “One baithak after the
other is then torn down and replaced by an unsightly shopping mall. Our cul-
tural inheritance has been dying out very fast since the middle of the twentieth
century. Only a few masters of classical music attract groups of pupils as they
used to in the old days. Refuges like this are becoming rare” (47).
In another part of the city, Frembgen describes the “extraordinary jam ses-
sion” (73) at the tomb of Shah Jamal (d. 1639). On Thursday evenings each
week, Pappu Sain, a master of the dhol (the double-sided barrel drum) drives
devotees into states of ecstatic frenzy during all night dhammal sessions. Amid
the boisterous crowd of dancers and curious onlookers, Frembgen ponders his
own-self positioning as he focuses on a single dancer. “What I saw before me
was the power of ecstasy which had touched and moved the figure dressed in
white,” he writes. “Together with the other dancers and drummers he formed
the centre of the event. Their bodies and minds experienced an emotional
state of rapture somewhere between this world and another. I, in contrast,
remained a passive observer and listener—distant, inexpert, someone unable
to truly deliver himself up to the ecstasy of passionate love of God, who could
not let loose routinely like the dancers.” (82). During the 2006 ‘urs pilgrimage to
the shrine of the renowned saint of the Chishti order, Baba Farid (d. 1265),
Frembgen stumbles upon a private Sufi spiritual concert (mehfil-e sama‘). On
this occasion, he drops all scholarly pretenses, surrendering to the power of
the musical performance. “In addition to the vocal intonation of the verses, the
rhythm becomes the basic matrix of my experience,” he exclaims. “I am awe-

journal of Sufi studies 3 (2014) 93–103

Downloaded from Brill.com06/03/2022 11:57:58AM
via Aletheia University
Book Reviews 103

struck, feel a prickling everywhere as if I’m receiving electric shocks. The sound
of the music carries my soul away, to scenes far beyond rationality. I fall into a
trance, a total experience of emotions. My eyes fill with tears” (114).
In the book’s final chapter, Frembgen returns to interior Sindh to visit the
tomb of Shah Abdul Latif (d. 1753) in the town of Bhit Shah—an important
first stop for Sufi pilgrims en route to the nearby shrine in Sehwan Sharif. As
they have each night for the past 250 years, Sufi musicians, dressed in black,
play the lute (dambuur) as they sing the saint’s Sindhi poetry in high falsetto
voices. While such performances continue to attract devotees to Sufi shrines
across Pakistan, they also provoke harsh condemnation from conservative
Muslims who reject the permissibility of music in Islam. With typical rhetori-
cal flair, Frembgen denounces Islamist critics for their “Calvinist tyranny of
virtue” (410). “I suspect,” he asserts, “that many of the so-called fundamental-
ists (or better, ‘scripturalists’)—barricaded by their strict concepts of right and
wrong—have themselves never felt spiritual joy and were never able to feast
on ‘food for the soul’ ” (44).
At the Shrine of the Red Sufi and Nocturnal Music in the Land of the Sufis are
significant contributions to the extant scholarship on lived Islam and popular
Sufism in South Asia. The books say little about Sufi institutional history, the
ritual practices at the center of the Sufi master-disciple relationship, or the
nuances of Sufi metaphysical doctrine. Instead, Frembgen offers first-hand
accounts of the visceral experience of everyday Muslim piety in practice by
allowing his Sufi informants to speak for themselves. Although each book con-
tains a glossary and general index, they lack footnotes, a formal bibliography
and attention to critical theory. Avoiding the usual scholarly apparatus,
Frembgen adopts a descriptive, impressionistic and deeply personal style. As
he admits, “My diary entries and reflections are not scientific or analytical, nor
are the ethno-musicological or ethno-sociological studies, but memories of
enjoyable journeys to extraordinary musical events. Naturally, they can only be
interpretations of reality such as I have personally experienced” (135). With
their thematic approach, rich details and accessible style, these books will pro-
vide an important addition to undergraduate and graduate level courses on
Sufism and comparative mysticism—as well as useful primers for a broad
audience interested in cultural anthropology, Islamic studies and daily life in
twenty-first-century Pakistan.

Robert Rozehnal
Lehigh University (USA)

journal of Sufi studies 3 (2014) 93–103 Downloaded from Brill.com06/03/2022 11:57:58AM

via Aletheia University