Dispensation of Justice in the Subcontinent during the 17th and 18th centuries

“Justice is ultimately connected with the way people’s lives go, and not merely with the nature of the institutions surrounding them.” This quote from Amartya Sen’s Idea of Justice aptly defines the main factor influencing the dispensation of justice during the 17^th and 18^th centuries in India: the people. The institutional paraphernalia were not as important as the people who gave and who were being given justice. Factors like gender, status, caste, community affected the working of the judicial system. The vast expanse of the subcontinent rife with gender and caste hierarchies made justice a highly subjective matter. There was no one law of the land. Justice was dispensed at various levels and with different laws. Rather than being based on reason, justice in India during this time either emanated from scriptures or from customary laws.

Even though the Mughal ruler was styled as just or adil and the rhetoric of the just rule was kept alive, the ground reality was quite different. The state in most judicial matters took a very politically correct view and justice could be bought, sold and bargained. The paper therefore tries to bring out both the rhetoric and the reality of the dispensation of justice during the 17^th and the 18^th centuries, the state’s judicial paraphernalia, the state’s ideals of justice and concludes by examining as to why there were such sharp differences between the rhetoric and reality of justice during the given time period.

In Islam, justice or adl was one of the rare divine attributes that God was willing to share with his creation. Allah was therefore not just adil but also the source of justice on earth. The Quran however does not define or explain justice. But it appears, as Prof. Najaf Haider says “either as a course of action which was right, fair, straight forward, balanced and impartial or in binary opposition to oppression or zulm, wickedness and lust or huwa.” The expansion of the rule of Islam (dar-ul-Islam) called for the need to prepare a specific code for the believers to govern their relationship with God through rituals or ibadat and with other people through social affairs or muamalat. This was called as the sharia (literally, straight path) and was based on the Quran, the prophet’s saying and doings in the Hadith, analogical reasoning or qiyas and consensus or ijma collectively called as usul al fiqh or the four principles of Islamic jurisprudence. The ulema from thereon defined justice as “an objective and universal moral truth which is engrained in the human soul as a permanent source of guidance; being an abstraction from the human nature of everything that is considered righteous by Islam, independent of particular spiritual beliefs or actions.”

Islamic jurisprudence had four major schools, namely, Hanafi, Hanbali, Shafi and Maliki. Out of these it was the Hanafi school, developed by Abu Hanifah, was popular in the subcontinent. M.B. Ahmed tell us that law in India was divided into four main categories: The Canon law (Akham-e-Shariyah) which was the personal law of the Muslims applied exclusively in religious matters, the Common law which was the Islamic Law of Crimes, Tort, Nuisance, etc., and applied to all the subjects of the state irrespective of religion, Qanun-e-Shahi which were regulations issued by the king in the form of proclamations, known as farmans or dastur-ul-amal and finally the Qanun-e-urf which were the local customary laws of the people. Apart from all this the Islamic jurists also referred to precedents established by other courts.

The king, being a humble servant of God (Nyazmand-e Dargah-e Ilahi) was responsible for dispensing justice either personally as Imam-e-Adil (just leader) or through officers appointed for the purpose. As M.B. Ahmed puts it “by virtue of his office he was the legislator, the defender of the Laws as well as the dispenser of Justice.” Ziya-ud-din Barani in Fatawa-i-Jahandari explains that the “king possesses an innate sense of justice (adli I jibilli) which enables him to dominate over his desires and accomplish the execution of justice in most perfect manner.” He also maintains that “the supreme object of kingship is to establish justice and equity (daddahi wa insaf)”. Accordingly, the King was the final court of appeal and exercised his original jurisdiction in select cases where men of high rank were involved. Apart from this the king was personally involved in selection of all the jurists in the empire.

Under the Mughal Empire the judicial system was rather extensive. At the centre was the chief justice or the Qaziul Quzat and his corps of jurists alongwith the Muhtasib, a member of the ulema appointed to, as J.F. Richards notes, “regulate urban markets to prevent disorder and fraud in public. The Muhtasib also enforced Sharia prohibitions against blasphemy, wine-drinking and gambling and other heretical or idolatrous behavior in public.” At the provinces (subas) was the qazi-e-subah, the provincial muhtasib with other jurists while at the districts (sarkars) were the qazi and the faujdar. The parganas had the qazi-e-pargana and the villages had their own village panchayats led by the village headmen or muqqadams.

The State’s jurisdiction in theory extended to both civil and criminal cases but in practice the latter was largely considered as the village panchayats’ prerogative. The state, when it came to civil cases, often found itself in a precarious position. The state left a bulk of the civil cases at the behest of the panchayats which decided these cases in accordance with customary laws even if they were in conflict with the law of the land. Commenting on the position of the state on civil disputes M.B. Ahmed notes “No attempt seems to have been made by the administrators to modify by legislation local traditions so as to bring them into strict accordance with the rules of the State Law.”

Arbitrating on civil cases, the state’s justice was often coloured by biases like gender, status and caste. Women, especially in the lower rung of the society, were economically productive which is primarily why the gap between the public and private sphere wasn’t much for them. But their economic productivity did not buy them equality in the society. They were not paid as much as their male counterparts as they were believed to do relatively easy tasks. They were not taught skills for fear that on their marriage the skills would pass from their natal family to their family of procreation. Most of all, issues of their sexuality and chastity were a constant source of worry of the village society. As Prof. Nandita Prasad Sahai puts it “there was a certain ambivalence and constant tension between the need to allow women autonomy to conduct work in public spaces, and patriarchal imperatives of policing their sexuality and tightly disciplining their lives.” So, a man’s infidelity was not as severely punished as a woman’s and in extreme cases the latter often had her nose and ears cut off to make her physically unattractive and thereby desexualized.

Yet their childbearing abilities and their high mortality rates due to lack of sophisticated medical facilities, put a premium on them. This is perhaps why marriages required payment of a bride price rather than dowry and remarriage was considered legitimate. In case of their elopement with their lovers, the husband was liable to receive from the woman’s lover a monetary compensation (bair ke paise) and only after this could he claim her legally.

Being scarce in number, death penalty was never inflicted upon women, no matter how severe their crimes were. Appeals from women concerning a man’s neglect of the household were heeded and acted upon.

Similar distinctions were made with respect to status. The state was often found to be following the being soft with hard and hard with soft rule. So men of means were favoured in most of these cases and could buy judgments in their favour. In fact this privilege to the favoured lot was also extended to documentation of cases where a number of times the cause of crime and punishment were tweaked to suit them. As Radhika Singha notes that “the Mughal emperor Akbar- in stating the ideal for determining appropriate forms of punishment- prescribed that they should vary according to rank and status of the offender.” Yet the State often had to give in to collective solidarity of a particular caste group and the state had to relent.

The State had to share its power of dispensing justice with the jati panchayats especially when it came to matters concerning caste hierarchies. Panchayat was an assembly of elders, usually important people of the village with hereditary rights over their property. Headed by the village headman (muqaddam), the panchayat derived its funds from contributions made by individuals to a common financial pool. Each jati or sub-caste had a jati panchayat whose main concern was the community over the individual thereby to preserve the caste order. The Jati panchayats reserved the right to levy fines (gunegari) and in some extreme cases of excommunication. The latter was always discouraged by the State primarily because the State believed that a man free of community pressures and robbed of his livelihood would take to crime and violence which would become a nuisance for the State. The decision of the panchayats were usually binding on its members but more often than not appeals were sent to the court in which case the State often consulted the panchayats to arrive at a decision.

Evaluating the State’s position in dispensing justice during the 17^th and 18^th century one can safely conclude that politics preceded justice. Styling itself as the patriarch or the mai-baap of the weaker sections of the society, the State often did the exact opposite of the rhetoric it so liked to maintain. During the time period under consideration, the Mughal empire in India was fast approaching its downfall and multiple foci of power were emerging. Rather than positioning themselves as a part of the whole, the state officials at the provinces and districts began to assert their independence. So, justice was dispensed not just at kotwalis or kachedis but also by jagirdars, thakurs, village headmen et al. Moreover the State did not itself wish to mingle much in petty affairs as it would mean unnecessary waste of time and resources. So in most cases of appeal, the State complied with the judgment of the panchayats. The fact that customary laws were tedious and difficult to grasp did not help either. The State therefore in most of the civil cases preferred not to assume centrestage and remain largely peripheral in its involvement. The State had community considerations too which is why the caste system was to be preserved by the State at all costs. The State had monetary considerations too. Favouring the wealthy was one and collecting fines (gunegari) was another. Yet the latter was largely limited by the ability of the guilty to pay. Quite often the state had to bargain the amount of fines precisely because a high amount would largely remain unrealizable if the guilty could not afford it. During the given time period, the State was, therefore, “far from being omnipotent and in fact had to constantly reckon with the relative power and resources of multiple foci of power, many of whom were often the offenders and the accused. They posed threats of retaliation against any penal action curbing their unjust ways and the state had few options but to reconcile to their status and accommodate their excesses.

On Spies, Newsreports and Postal Communication In Mughal India

 “Notwithstanding all these formidable numbers, while the Generals and Vocanovices (Waqia Nawis) consult to deceive the Emperor, on whom he depends for a true state of things, it can be never be otherwise but that they must be misrepresented, when the judgment he makes must be by a false perspective.” This is what John Fryer, Officer in the Royal Navy of England, noted about Aurangzeb’s non-success in the Deccan. He believed that despite having sufficient troops stationed in the Deccan, the Emperor was fooled by false information from his news writers.  

The above was just one of many examples to show how the Mughal Emperor relied heavily on his empire’s information and espionage system. So much so, that a number of historians like C.A. Bayly now concede that one plausible reason for the decline of the Mughal Empire in the latter half of the 17^th century could have been that “the Mughals' access to knowledge may in some cases may have decayed more rapidly than their military or financial resources.”

The essay therefore looks to answer certain questions about the information system under the Mughals like; who were the informants, what kind of information was sought, and how was information transmitted. The essay concludes by briefly examining as to what evidence does this provide in the greater debate of the nature of the Mughal state and to what extent can the decay of the information system be held responsible for the decline of the Mughals.

Information or kh-b-r in Arabic literally means “to know”. Initially, the word was used by the companions of Prophet Mohammad to categorize their reports of the Prophet’s words and deeds. Khabar loaned by Persian and then by Urdu came to denote variously: news, information, intelligence, notification, announcement, report, rumour, fame, story, account.

Gathering and transmitting information in the subcontinent was an arduous task. As C.A. Bayly writes “the cultural, linguistic and religious heterogeneity of the country put a premium on accurate intelligence.” Yet it was because of this heterogeneity that information gathering in India was indispensable.  Information was acquired for many reasons; to pre-empt any rebellion or conspiracy against the state, to know where to dispatch the army and against whom, to watch over the proper policing of law and to punish people flouting Islamic religious norms (especially during Aurangzeb’s reign)

Information was not just sought by the State but also elicited by specialist groups like the merchants. C.A. Bayly notes “Merchants had their professional knowledge. While account books had attained a pattern common to most parts of India by the seventeenth century, individual merchant groups and families within them, employed different types of merchant shorthand and argot (mahajani) which cloaked their secrets.”

The need for information was realized in India as far back as the Arthashastra. According to the text, the king should first increase his knowledge of politics or rajniti by training his spies, ‘his eyes and ears’ and then using his own enlightened knowledge or buddhi should work on the collected pool of information. Fuse this with the idea of Islamic record keeping and maintaining records and the office of Akhbar Nawis begins to make sense.  Michael Fisher informs us that “the word Akhabar, a broken plural form of khabar, came to mean variously as 'histories, tales, annals, gazettes, news, relations, advices, chronicles, traditions; a newspaper. The word further has a feminine plural sound akhbarat which came to denote pieces or bodies of information together or such a genre collectively.” The other part of the title, Nawis means writer. Therefore the title taken together meant a newspaper writer. During the reign of Akbar, the akhbar nawis sometimes often referred to as the waqia nawis, maintained a court diary called siyaha-i-huzur or account of the Presence which preserved accurately the official acts and words of the Emperor and the events of his reign. The process of maintaining this diary was tedious. The waqia nawis at the court collected and processed the information collected by the waqia nawis placed in every sub-district throughout the Empire. These men wrote regular reports on the doings of officials and local magnates, on plunderers and malefactors, occasionally on the affairs of merchants. They gathered material from other officials: local judges and the officers commanding in the cities.

The Ain-i-Akbari details the duties and responsibilities of the waqia nawis and also expounds as to how the emperor was keen on every piece of information being recorded precisely and without flaw. Once prepared, the court diary underwent synthesis and scrutiny by distinguished courtiers and then the emperor himself. A copy of the same went to the imperial archives to be used by the court chroniclers, who often referred to these diaries in order to obtain details and precise dates of events.

Fisher notes that the Akhbarat in Akbar’s court was often recorded in two different versions. Of these one was in which “akhbar nawis recorded the formal acts of the ruler and court. In language, forms of address, and content, these akhbarat tended to follow almost exactly the prescription set out by Akbar for the official imperial diary. In this type, there is no explicit intrusion of the voice of the akhbar nawis in the account. Because many of the functions and rituals of the court repeated virtually every day, these akhbarat tend to be very repetitive and formulaic.” While in the other version the writer tended to be reflective and often voiced out his understanding of the events of the court. This was often written by the agents of the nobles or khufia nawis who not only kept a check at the provincial waqia nawis but also copied the daily court proceedings with the date and time of the court session (pahar) under the heading Akhbarat-I Darbar-I Mualla or News from the Exalted Court. Bayly adds to our information stating that “Officials routinely divulged their contents to other literate men, so that the contents of the weekly or even daily news report, fleshed out in private news reports and merchant letters, were the main item of discussion in the morning bazaar.”

The khufia nawis and the waqia nawis stationed at the provinces obtained their information from various sources. The prime source was the religious men and astrologers. Just as the Brahmins were excellent source of information during the time of the Mauryas, during the Mughal times the Sufi saints were very popular and were revered by astute men of the emperor and other nobles who often consulted the Sufis for their problems. They gave counsel to the barren, disturbed and mentally ill but had their pulse on the whole society. So did the astrologers and soothsayers, as Manucci notes “the bazaars swarm with these folk, and by this means they find out all that passes in the houses.”

In a society rife with extended marriage networks, women were not just a source of wealth and political alliances but were a critical source of information too. News reports were read in princely harems; royal ladies were judged by their ability to act as intermediaries in diplomatic maneuvering; the emperors married often, and with care, to maximize intelligence as much as to secure support. Midwives, moving from door to door, helping in childbirth could also have collected and conveyed information.

Apart from the akhbarat, what were also widely circulated were proclamations of rights and duties of the subjects and the ruler. Called variously as mahzars or surathals, these were local memorials attested by the sheikhs, the local office holders or karoris and the respectable merchants or mahajans of the qasbah.

Several agencies for surveillance were also important for both exhortation and information collection. Right from the daroga or the chief police officer to the thanadar or the inspector and the barkandazi or the armed constable elicited information from village watchmen or pasobans and the bantirias or the foresters. The daroga and his corps of officers made extensive use of the informal networks of information run by the local landholders and people going on pilgrimage.

As Ashoka had employed the dhamma mahamattas to oversee that the subjects followed the principles of dhamma, Aurangzeb appointed a Muhtasib for similar purposes. The Muhtasib (literally, censor) was a member of the ulema appointed to, as J.F. Richards notes, “regulate urban markets to prevent disorder and fraud in public. The Muhtasib also enforced Sharia prohibitions against blasphemy, wine-drinking and gambling and other heretical or idolatrous behavior in public.” While there was only one chief Muhtasib, there were other muhtasibs posted in the major towns and cities of the empire.

Yet, it is important to realize that information obtained by surveillance officers were never intended to punish the wrong doers. As Bayly notes “Intelligence was designed to alert the ruler to infractions of moral law and true obedience rather than simply to punish 'crime'. For the latter was really the preserve of the community. The agents of intelligence were also the agents of persuasion and compromise, the men who sought to reassure the populace of the omniscience of the emperor's gaze.”

This protracted system of information was supported by an equally extensive postal communication system. Starting with the system of the dak darogas, the postal system matured with the coming of the harkara system. The dak daroga or the postmaster general openly forwarded official letters and reports alongside private ones, thus, revealing his official status. The harkaras (literally, the do-alls) were, therefore, the secret couriers, or provincial messengers, for oral as well as written reports on events in the provinces or armies. Hence the harkara system strengthened the powers of the networks of dak darogas by lending secrecy to the institution. Apart from the harkaras, who generally transmitted messages on camel back, there was a dense network of the foot runners, often called qasids or pathmars. These runners carried papers rolled up in bamboo containers. This system of foot runners was borrowed from the system of the uluq and dawa under the Delhi Sultanate. As described by Ibn Battuta, the former were horse post and the latter were the foot post. So like the dawa, the qasids also had three stations per mile and were said to be faster than the horse post. Alongwith the harkaras, there was a class of intermediaries whose main job was to track the status of the courier or the harkara. So if the harkaras manually transported the message, the intermediaries generally supervised them and tracked the progress of the message.  

Networks of information gathering, spies and informers, were more than useful adjuncts to power and legitimacy and such an efficient, flexible and powerful network of information did strengthen the empire. However, its over-dependence on the loyalty of a few individuals was an inherent weakness of the system. The very flexibility which lent the system strength also weakened it in the long run.

Putting in perspective the gradual decay of the information system of the Mughals in the larger debate of their decline, one can point out various correlations between the two. Firstly, the system in itself was highly vulnerable and concentrated in the hands of a few people who could easily be silenced. The Marathas, who the Empire was fighting during the latter half of the 17^th century, could intercept the imperial messengers and displace the news writers from the networks of small towns.

Secondly, the informants also had their own vested interests. As John Fryer, remarked that “the great nobles and administration live lazily and in pay, during the protracted campaigning. They have an interest in keeping the war spluttering on as do the news writers and literati whose wealth and influence were sustained by war.”

Thirdly, during the reign of Aurangzeb, the kind of information that was sought by the State was of an ideological sort. This distracted the system from its mainstay. So instead of searching for potential rebels and conspiracy hatchers, the informants were now looking for drunkards and heretics.

Fourthly, the Empire in its last leg was plagued by a massive financial crunch. This led to the informants being underpaid, who then became more susceptible to bribery and corruption while the quality of information suffered.

In the larger scheme of things, the extensive network of information system, when at its peak, gives a major fillip to the centralized theory of the Mughal State. It was by keeping a tab on the information from vast areas in the subcontinent that the Mughal State was able to exercise greater control over huge swathes of land. Not just information gathering but also information dissemination through the various akhbarat to the waqia nawis stationed at the provinces, made the power of a strong state felt to its subjects. Moreover, such a wide and extensive system of information, in a subcontinent rife with cultural and social heterogeneity, could have only been backed by a strong, centralized state who could marshal the necessary resources to keep the system running and not by a highly decentralized or segmentary state.

Early Medieval Formation in Western Europe: Crises and Continuities

Völkerwanderung, literally, the movement of people is perhaps not the best word to describe the third century crisis that baffled the Pax Romana. Not only because it doesn’t hint at the bloodshed involved in the migration and the subsequent assimilation of the barbarians but also because it undermines the long term effects of the same which shaped the early medieval society in Europe.  

Located at the fringes of the Roman Empire, the so called barbarians started cutting across the empire from the third century (233 CE) and continued to do so well within the fifth century. Though the migrations may have taken the empire by surprise, this wasn’t the first time that it was dealing with the barbarians. The expanse of the empire necessitated that the areas located at the frontiers be governed by the barbarians. LeGoff tells us that the attitude of the Romans towards the barbarians was ambivalent. While the emperors gave them the status of federates, the traditionalists found them “closer to beasts than men”. Therefore if the relationship between the barbarians and the Romans was workable what drove them to besiege the empire?

Georges Duby blames the cold spell that gripped the area from Siberia to Scandinavia. The Alps experienced a glacial advance causing the forest cover to recede and famines that followed starved the barbarians. That the Pax Romana was ravaged by the hunger of the barbarians is just a tip of the iceberg. What lay deeper were the centrifugal forces in the empire. From the time of Marcus Aurelius (161-180 AD) the focus of the empire had shifted from Italy to other provinces so much so that in the Severan dynasty the emperors were African. This shift was formalized by granting Roman citizenship to all the inhabitants of the empire in 212 AD. Thus the provinces lying on the borders began asserting their independence adding to the misery of the empire.

When the tutelary deities of Rome failed to provide relief, Christianity bagged imperial assent under Constantine and the empire entered into the era of late antiquity. Stretching roughly from the fourth to the seventh centuries, the period refers to the oxymoronic evolution and disintegration of the empire. The empire was just beginning to absorb the shock of the first wave of invasions that another wave thrashed the shores of Rhine in the fifth century. This wave was bigger and gorier than the one before. Rome was sacked by Alaric, the leader of the Franks, in 410 and Carthage was seized in 439 by the Vandals. This ushered in a new era of acculturation and assimilation between the barbarians and Romans and shaped the early medieval society of Europe which reached its peak under the Carolingian empire in the 8^th century.

While the terms barbarian and Roman sound almost antithetical to each other, the acculturation happened because the barbarians were not the savages they were thought to be. Living on the fringes of a highly evolved empire, they had evolved much. Though accustomed to the culture of fleeing in search of new lands, the Germanic tribes were not nomads. They had halted more often and only extreme external pressures such as climatic changes had made them move once more. It is primarily because of this that they were able to fit themselves into the changing social reality of the empire.

Prior to the coming of the barbarians the empire was experiencing a dip in its population. This was started by two major epidemics which hit the empire in the second and third centuries wiped out nearly one third of the empire’s population. The cold wave called for a decrease in harvests and resulted in famines. Unable to pay taxes, townsfolk fled to the countryside. Thus in the fourth century the Roman state made laws to tie peasants to their lands and prevent them from fleeing. As Chris Wickham states “These laws were part of a general legislative package aimed at ensuring that people essential to the state stayed in their professions, and that their heirs would do so too.” Thus the society of manants developed where the Latin word manere (to remain was the principle). This society thrived on the villa type formations. The fact that place names started having words like ville, (Martinville and Buozonville) indicate the shift.

So to the small barbarian peasant his allod (personal property) was a way to show his superiority over the conquered others. The attachment was intrinsic for him to assert his independence. Moreover the barbarians were in no way egalitarian. Slavery existed among them too. Thus from the third to the fifth centuries the empire had three major social categories: totally alienated slaves, free peasants and the magnates. But from the sixth century onwards the tendency was to create more slaves. Given their heavy dependence on slaves, the Roman economy faced a crisis. With no new wars to replenish them, the tendency was now to create slaves from the small tenant farmers or the colonii. Gradually it turned into bondage in the Middle Ages where the serf was tied to his lord’s manorial estate in perpetuity.

With respect to trade Henry Pirenne’s argument seems plausible. Despite the sack of Carthage which cut off Rome’s supply of grains, on the whole trade did not decline. What happened in essence was that trade which had earlier been monopolized by the Roman state, dissipated into the hands of private merchants, primarily Jews and Syrians residing in the eastern half of the empire. Studies done by Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse in Rome and Carthage indicate that while amphorae carrying wines and oils from the eastern Mediterranean to Rome can be dated well within the fifth century, Carthage’s grain trade to Rome continued under the Vandals whose coinage widely circulated around the Mediterranean till the earlier half of the sixth century.

Unlike the Romans the barbarians did not have a single system of laws. Every man was not subject to a single law valid for all the inhabitants of a territory. One was judged on the basis of the judicial customs of one’s tribe. Hence when the two legal systems were fused together the differences were astonishing. While the rape of a virgin was punished by death for a Roman, a Burgundian was merely fined for it. The confusion caused by such divergent legal systems necessitated the need to codify laws which began in the fifth century.

Though the barbarian influence over the empire was pretty strong, the barbarians were well aware that they were in minority. Post their settlement in the western half of the empire, the barbarians formed only 5% of its whole population. This fear motivated the Merovingian rulers to make those cities as their capitals which had the barbarians in majority. The Merovingians lead by Clovis set up their kingdom in the seventh century. Though the barbarian languages altered the syntax and vocabulary of Latin, it was still made the language of the state.  Their rulers accepted high sounding titles like their Roman counterparts had done in the past. By the time of the Merovingians the villa type formation had disappeared in Gaul and Britain. They were now replaced by fortified hilltop centres. This could also have stemmed from the need of the barbarians to protect their selves from the local Roman populace which clearly outnumbered them. 

The barbarians feasted on the decay of the Roman Empire, preserving some traditions and discarding others. Yet, for Christianity as a religion and the Church as an institution this period of chaos and continuity was a win-win situation. Christianity’s biggest challenge was Paganism which was still deeply entrenched in the barbarians. So the church decided to use the imperial authority, its strongest weapon, to defeat its rival. To begin with Paganism was relegated to private sphere with Christianity gaining imperial assent under Constantine. In the fifth century Justinian enforced baptism through confiscation and at times execution.

However, the most novel innovation of the Church was to convert Pagan festivals into Christian festivals. Pagan festivals like Lent, Easter, Pentecost were festivals which involved feasting and merrymaking. The Church turned these into days of penance. Sunday, the day of the Sabbath was made as the day of complete rest when everything from farming to sexual intercourse was forbidden. The performance of these activities on a Sunday, it was believed, would end up producing bad crops and demon babies. Next up Christianity pressurized the Merovingians to codify their laws in accordance with Christian practices which lead to strengthening of sexual taboos and piety through penance.

The Church was no one’s ally. It changed with the change of time. It always kept its interests first. It demanded grants, revenues and exemptions. The Church affected production by draining it away so much so that in eighth century the papal estate at Capracorum supplied staples that imperial Rome had obtained from all over Mediterranean!  

In these times of confusion the Church assumed various roles. To their religious role they added a political one of negotiating with the barbarians, an economic role of distributing foodstuffs and alms and a social role of protecting the poor against the rich.

The western half of the empire was in shambles when the Carolingian empire under Pippin forged unity by conquering three directions to the South-East in Italy, South-West in Spain and East in Germany. The motive was two pronged conquest and convert. Christianity travelled with the Carolingian empire. LeGoff goes as far as to state that “the re-establishment of the empire in the west seems in fact to have been an idea of pope’s” The Carolingian Empire had the papal consent with the anointment of Pippin with holy oils. The Empire in essence was a Christian one where the Pope was the religious head of the Carolingians and the Emperor was the political head. It was an intricate nexus of politics and religion where the Pope needed political liaisoning to shore up the papal office and vice versa.

Apart from its close connections with Christianity the Carolingian Empire also gained legitimization through benefices which were landowning rights given to the aristocrats of the areas bought under the Empire. There was a ritual of gift giving to the aristocracy which brought the empire loyalty. Justice was dispensed according to the written word. Governance was done through the assembly which was a congregation of lay and ecclesiastical officers. Capitualaries were ordinances issued on aspects like administration of royal estates and educational reforms. To supervise the same a class off officers, missi dominici, was established. These officers were counts, dukes and marquises which formed an important place in the sub-in-feudation of land in the Middle Ages.  Capitualary of 789 was issued as models for moral behaviour of the clergy. This was followed by the oath where an oath of loyalty to the king was sworn on holy relics. It is here that the oath came into existence and forged the bond between the lord and the vassal in the Middle Ages.

In conclusion, the crises mixed with the continuities and converged under the Carolingian Empire. Yet, it is important to ask to what extent was the crisis responsible for the disintegration of the Pax Romana and the formation of the early medieval society. It wouldn’t be an overstatement if one was to say that the Roman Empire was already decaying when the barbarians came knocking on its doors. Roman society in its essence was a violent society. The sadistic pleasure of watching the gladiatorial wars was very dear to the Romans. Their laws were stringent and their omission called for gory punishments. Moreover the empire had begun to crumble under its own weight much before the third century. The expanse was too vast to be managed effectively which lead to unguarded fringes. These became the breeding grounds for rebellion and barbarianism. The empire’s heavy dependence on slaves crippled it when they became scarce in times of peace. All this has led to a decline in the state driven trade which the empire had thrived on for centuries. Thus the economic sluggishness had set in the empire as early as the second century and people had begun to depopulate cities for villages. All that the barbarian invasions did was fast track the changes which were already underway. The Pax Romana which ruled the seas and roads alike and gave birth to poets like Virgil and Homer died a rather gory and painful death. The void which it left was filled up by the sermon giving Church which ruled most of medieval Europe selling indulgences to sinners and promising them a better afterlife!   

On Historical Imagination

When history was conceived in the 18^th century as being the younger sister of science, it was involved in a painful struggle to emulate her objectivity and notion of progress. It had to regard facts as sacrosanct and had to accept authority unquestionably. Thankfully, history was rescued from the Whiggish notion without significant damage having been committed to its craft. What liberated history thus from the drabness of reporting mere facts was imagination. It introduced the concept of narrativisation and interpretation. History was then on the brink of being drawn towards the other extreme of “history as an art.” But historians in time have realized that there is much that history can take from both ends and marry it to inculcate certain practices and principles of its own. This marriage of science with art or in other words facts with narratives was brought about by imagination. Over the years imagination has served as both a constructive and destructive agent enabling historians to understand the past in new and different ways.

Imagination as construction

In this regard imagination is what Bertrand Russell perceived it to be when he stated “What a man loses in knowledge he gains it in imagination.” Historically this imagination pieces together fragments of evidence and weaves them into a coherent understanding of the past. Hayden White in his book Tropics of Discourse is of the view that “the historian must inevitably include in his narrative an account of some event or complex of events for which the facts that would permit the plausible explanation of its occurrence are lacking. This means the historian must interpret his materials by filling the gaps in his information on inferential or speculative grounds.”[1] Thus, imagination in its constructive role aids the historian not only in narrativisation but also interpretation. How it does so needs further explanation.

a)      Imagination as an aide to narrativisation

The act of narrativisation, as purported by Louis Mink and Hayden White, consists of forming a story. What is implied by a story here is continuity. A narrative demands a chain of events stringed together by a common thread. This thread is supplied by imagination. It lends the narrative its flow. In another sense, as White informs us, imagination is what converts knowing into telling. However, White’s conception here is incomplete. Imagination aids not just in telling but also in knowing. Ricouer in his work Time and Narrative is of the view that “writing in history is not external to the conceiving and composing of history.”[2] Thus, the act of narrativisation is “knowing” first and then “telling”. Imagination being the essence of a narrative, therefore, helps in both knowing and telling. It helps the historian contextualize facts and plug in lacunae due to incomplete evidence at one level and at the other helps him coalesce these into a compelling plot.

Collingwood’s understanding of imagination is twofold. On one hand it is a priori and on the other structural. The a priori imagination develops a plot in a manner determined by a necessity internal to it. As Collingwood informs us “a story, if it is a good story, cannot develop otherwise than as it does.”[3] Imagination then sequences a narrative not arbitrarily but in sync with the need of the narrative. In other words, to Collingwood, “a historian cannot imagine what cannot be there”.[4] In other words what a historian can imagine is what could possibly have been there. His imagination unlike the poet’s cannot run amuck. It has to be in line with the pieces of evidence that it is trying to connect. A historian’s imagination therefore has to work within certain paradigms which differentiate a historical narrative from a purely fictional one. Ricouer calls this kind of imagination as productive imagination which assists in emplotment of facts.[5] However, imagination not only structures a narrative but also lends meaning to it. This meaning is shaped by the historian’s interpretation of past which is explored in the next section.

b)      Imagination as an aide to interpretation

The act of imagining the structure of a historical narrative is not separate from imagining its form or dominant theme. The two actions happen in the historian’s mind almost simultaneously. When putting historical facts in perspective, the historian invariably interprets the facts according to his own imagination. In the act of interpreting them, thus, he forms a structure of the narrative in his head. In this way, the historian is very similar to the poet who fashions the rhyme scheme of his poem just when he perceives the fanciful object of his poem. He does not first pen his thoughts and then structure them. The thoughts come in his head replete with an ornate flow.  

White takes this view and propounds that imagination helps the historian decide the theme of his narrative. He might view the past he is inquiring about as romantic, idealist, tragic, comic and so on.[6] The explanation of the past requires an explanation of the why more than the what. The “why” often plagued by a dearth of evidence is not always sufficient enough to explain the event. Thus relying on his imagination the historian constructs the past in a certain way.  However, even if the why is replete with evidence the historian will still have to perceive it in order to make sense of it. It is in this perception that imagination lies. Collingwood calls this perceptual imagination which “supplements and consolidates the data of perception by presenting to us objects of possible perception.”

Ricouer though does not side with White and Collingwood and critiques them by arguing that the past has a plot of its own and it is the task of the historian to trace that. Instead of creating his own plot, the historian’s job is to find the pre-configured past. Therefore, to Ricouer, emplotment is not an act of re-emplotment. It is an act of searching for the plot structure inherent in the past.[7] While Ricouer’s view is compelling, the act of finding the past’s pre-figured plot is both an arduous and unimaginative task. True, the past has its own storyline, but often its storyline is incomplete. Moreover, the past plot is drab and lackluster in the sense that it is merely a compendium of facts. Finally, the prefigured past or res gestae is difficult to produce as it is when seen through the lens of the present. While the historian must always try and teleport himself to the world he is studying, he cannot do so with complete objectivity. His currently held worldview and perceptions of the present will inadvertently reflect in his reflection on the past. Thus, this is where White’s tropes of interpretation (comic, satirical etc.) and Collingwood’s perceptual imagination steps in inevitably.

Thus, imagination is necessary for constructing the past not only because it helps in assembling facts together in a cogent whole but also because it lends perspective to the past. Operating within the confines of certain paradigms of the discipline (which are also a product of imagination as explained in the next section of the essay), historical imagination lends a flow to the narrative, a flow which binds together the writer/historian and the reader and makes an otherwise drab account of the past more interesting. Not only does it form a story, imagination also paints the plot in the hues of the historian’s interpretation of the past. It is courtesy these varied hues that the past can be analysed in several new ways and each time reveals something new about itself.

Imagination as de-construction

Another way in which imagination helps a historian is by freeing him from the shackles of authority and temporality.

a)      Imagination as historical criticism

Authority in history has two meanings: one authority is wielded by facts and the other by influential historians. Imagination helps the historian overcome both sets of authority. When a historian sets himself to the task of ascertaining himself with facts of a particular event he tends to reject several of them and accept several others. These facts he gains from his predecessors who like him were interested in the question that intrigues him now and in their process of inquiry came up with certain facts. Therefore, the historian does not need to regard facts as sacrosanct as most of them are established by human authority. A historian can choose to challenge the authority if in the process of his inquiry he comes across new facts. But he can only do so if he imagines a different past from the one constructed by his influential counterparts. Only then can he look for more evidence and select from the available pool of facts those which harmonise with his view of the past. Thus, in doing so the historian’s imagination deconstructs the old and establishes the new only to be deconstructed again by another historian’s imagination.     

Collingwood is of the opinion that the historian can “discover what, until he discovered it, no one ever knew to have happened.”[8] This he achieves by critically analysing his sources or by using unwritten sources and at times even by taking an interdisciplinary approach to decipher a particular piece of the past. The more the historian becomes adept in his craft and the more he learns the less he is bound by authority. He comes to rely on his own powers and constitutes himself as his own authority while other authorities are now relegated to being just evidence.

White however would not go as far as Collingwood in letting imagination take over factual authority. For him “unless at least two versions of the same set of events can be imagined, there is no reason for the historian to take upon himself the authority of giving a true account of what really happened.”[9] Yet, when it comes to imagination the matter becomes highly subjective. So, to say that two different imagined narratives are more authoritative than one, is a moot point. It is true that more the out of the box connections a historian forges between his facts, the more matured his perspective becomes. But if we regard the narrative as being a story then that narrative is an authority in itself. It is replete with its own set of facts, arguments and imaginative perceptions. In this way that narrative has been established as an authority.

b)      Imagination as distortion

Another way in which imagination works in favour of a historian is by liberating him from the narrow notions of temporality. Time in history is fluid. Therefore, the historian does not need to stick to the pulse of time when writing his narrative. His imagination can spur him to sync the temporality of his event to the tune of his narrative. Hayden White calls this distortion and defines it as the “departure from the chronological order of events’ original occurrence so as to disclose their true or latent meanings.”[10] Therefore, imagination deconstructs the paradigm of chronologically determined narratives and instead gives birth to adjusted chronologies for a meaningful narrative. Just as a fiction writer starts his work with a specific point in time and then keeps moving back and forth in it as the narrative demands so can a historian. When describing the First World War he can start with 1916 instead of 1914 or 1918 and then can move in either directions or in both directions simultaneously. All this is a factor of his imagined narrative’s needs.

White further goes on to say that distortion can have two meanings; negative, entailing the selection of facts and positive, consisting of arrangement of events in an order different from the chronological order of their original occurrence. In this way for White a historian employs the Freudian tactics used in interpreting dreams to reveal their hidden meanings. [11]

Thus imagination as a de-constructing agent then brings down two major paradigms of the discipline; authority and time. As discussed in the first section, imagination then determines its own paradigms and operates within it. It is the historian who imagines a view of the past and the rest follows. As Collingwood says in his book The Idea of History “the supposedly fixed points between which the historical imagination spins its web are not given to us readymade, they must be achieved by critical thinking.” [12]

Thus, there are several ways in which a historian employs imagination as a tool to delve deeper into the innards of his craft. With imagination, not only can history be rest assured of newness in perspectives but also can be confident of being completely freed from the suffocating designs of positivism in times to come.

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[1] Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, John Hopkins University Press, p. 51

[2] Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Volume 1, University of Chicago Press, p. 161

[3] R.G. Collingwood, the Idea of History, Oxford University Press, p. 579

[4] Ibid, p. 579

[5] Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Volume 2, University of Chicago Press, p. 2

[6] Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, John Hopkins University Press, p. 51-68

[7] Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Volume 1, University of Chicago Press, p. 170

[8] R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, Oxford University Press, p. 579

[9] Hayden White, The Content of  the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, John Hopkins University Press, p.  31

[10] Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, John Hopkins University Press, p. 111

[11] Ibid, p. 111

[12] R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, Oxford University Press, p. 581

Women in Islam

Having finally triumphed Mecca in the 8^th year of Hijra (630 AD) from the hands of his arch enemy Abu Sufiyan, Mohammed is said to have asked Hind Bint Utbah, Sufiyan’s wife, to lead a delegation of Meccan women in taking the oath of allegiance to Islam. Detesting the Prophet and his religion, when Hind was asked to swear not to commit adultery (zina), she replied rather mockingly “Does a free woman commit adultery?” Hind’s oath, to put in Mernissi’s words, was “a masterpiece of humour and political insolence by a woman forced to submit.”

Renowned for her sexual liaisons with many men, including the second caliph Umar, Hind was the last of the “jahilyya” women desperately clinging to her sexual and financial independence before Islam stomped on it. Many a woman believed, as Leila Ahmed tells us, that Islam expunged their rights and rebelled against it in full gusto once Mohammad was dead. The women of Hadramaut rejoiced at his death and were duly executed for their blasphemy by Abu Bakr. Similarly, Salma bint Malik, a slave captured by Mohammad’s followers, rebelled post the Prophet’s death to avenge the death of her mother, apparently tied to the foot of two elephants and torn apart. Mohammad’s own lineage is said to harbor such views. Sukaina, the great granddaughter of the Prophet when asked why she was merry and her sister Fatima somber replied that it was because the former was named after her pre-Islamic great-grandmother and the latter after her Islamic grandmother!

To credit Islam with the lofty achievement of liberating women from the clutches of jahillya would be an overstatement. That the jahillya was largely fabricated in the Islamic texts in order to portray Islam as the other, rescuing Arabia from its barbarian clutches, is hardly news. But to what extent did Islam rescue the women? If the example of Khadija is to go by, Islam instead suppressed whatever little freedom women enjoyed in pre-Islamic Arabia. Khadija, a wealthy widow was Mohammad’s employer and a dabbler in the highly profitable Meccan trade. At 40, she proposed to and married Mohammed (then 25). Freed from the burdens of having to earn a living Mohammad could now go meditate in the caves of Mount Hira and be visited by Gabriel. Khadija thus was not only financially independent but also sexually liberated. She not only initiated her own marriage but also did not require a father/son/brother to give her away in marriage. To Ahmed, Khadija is wrongly attributed as the first lady of Islam. To her she is a jahillya woman reflecting pre-Islamic values and prevalent customs. Pre-Islamic Arabia, largely tribal in nature, followed the norm of an uxorilocal marriage and a matrilineal family. Polyandry was the common practice and Mohammad’s own mother Amna bint Wahb stayed with her maternal clan even after she was married and bore a child. In fact Mohammad had to stay with her mother till she breathed her last and only then was he passed on to his paternal kin.

Yet, with the growth of the Meccan trade things began to change for Arabia, particularly Mecca. Exposure of Mecca to “culturally and materially advanced north” made it vulnerable to Christian and Judaic influences both of which were predominantly patriarchal. Thus, the old nomadic ways were being shed and communal property now gave way to individual property. Rich Meccan traders now needed an heir to pass it on. In essence, what Islam did then was to consolidate the change from matrilineal to a patrilineal society. As Ahmed points out, perhaps this is why “Islam introduced the greatest reform in the area of marriage and sexual relations” most of which sought to suppress rather than empower women. 

The one thing that greatly secluded women from the public sphere was the hijab. Islam spread far and wide primarily by conquest. Thus, most places in Arabia during this time were in turmoil and women on the streets were being harassed and molested. Women, including the Prophet’s wives were being pursued by men asking them to commit ta’arrud (literally, taking up a position along a woman’s path to urge her to fornicate). Hence the hijab descended on Islam. The observance of the hijab involved covering oneself with a jilbab. Literally, a piece of cloth worn by a woman, a jilbab could range from a simple chemise to a cloak. Thus, God in a revelation post Uhud advised the Prophet’s wives to cover themselves with a jilbab. The jilbab was exclusive. Only the elite women were to observe it. A woman wearing a jilbab on the street was not to be harassed. As Mernissi puts it, “Islam sacrificed women slaves in order to protect women aristocrats.” So, slaves/lower class women could be approached by men on the streets for ta’arrud. If hijab came in response to sexual aggression it also came as a support to it. It legitimized the street as a place to commit zina with the “uncovered women”. Hence, a woman’s body came to be considered in Islam as essentially naked/vulnerable without a jilbab.

This seclusion became rigid with time. Women of aristocratic families were now not to be seen in the streets. Their names were not to be known to men other than those of their family. Moralists like Ibn Abdun advised men to keep their women, a family’s honour, be kept out of sight of unrelated males. If necessary, women should go out veiled. Women’s seclusion meant purity of the male lineage. She was less at a danger to commit zina when inside the home than when outside of it. A common way to shame/dishonor a man was to name his women in public or mention them in satirical poems.

The seclusion of women in the streets was met by seclusion of women in political and religious leadership positions. There were no female imams or qazis. Women were thought unfit to preside over men. The only exception to this rule seems to be the Fatimid Arwa and the Ayyubid Shajar al Durr. While the former reigned over Yemen after her husband abdicated in favour of her, the latter, of slave origins, controlled the Ayyubid army and finances for while. Shajar was only a titular sovereign though. She couldn’t preside over public ceremonies and military parades and was finally “murdered in obscure circumstances”

Mernissi informs us of a hadith duly noted by al-Bukhari. When Kisra, a Persian king, died the Prophet is said to have asked Abu Bakra, “Who has replaced in command?” Abu Bakra informed him it was the King’s daughter. The Prophet upon hearing this is said to have remarked “those who entrust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity.” Abu Bakra is said to have revealed this hadith at the opportune time of the Battle of Camel when Aisha, the Prophet’s wife rallied against Ali for not having adequately punished the murderers of Uthman. Mernissi, highly doubts the character of Abu Bakra, a low born man who owed his fame and fortune to Islam. Islam on paper makes no difference between men. They only differ in terms of their piety. Thus, male slaves found this religion to be rather emancipating and quite correctly so (Slave dynasties of India and Egypt). So to Abu Bakra the schism came as a jolt. He thought of this as a warning sign of Islam’s downfall. Thus, holding Aisha responsible for the Battle of Camel, Abu Bakra narrated this hadith. He used the schism as an example to show what happens when women try and wrest power. Mernissi accuses Bakra of forging the hadith just as he lied when he was summoned as a witness before Uthman for a case involving zina. Whether Bakra was lying or not, the hadith stuck. Notable tarikh and tafsir writers included this in their treatises and hence the tradition of having no women rulers continued.

Mernissi makes a pertinent point. There is a plethora of fake hadith. She records other hadith such as one recalled by Abu Hurayra that if a dog, ass and woman interrupt prayer if they pass in front of the worshipper.  Aisha is said to have refuted the hadith but her refutations have been ignored by several authors, according to Mernissi. Again, Mernissi raises serious doubts on Hurayra’s character and contends the veracity of the hadith. Even if we discount several misogynist hadith as fake we still are left with considerable instances which inform us that Islam since its inception was never in any way emancipatory for women.

In terms of marriage too Islam was no messiah for women. Although on paper men and women were equal in marriage, yet in practice women suffered. Pre-Islamic jahillya had four distinct types of marriage out of which temporary marriage in which a man and a woman could cohabit with each other without getting married for a stipulated amount of time. Islam abolished all forms except for the “nikah”. Moreover, polyandry was abolished and polygyny was upheld. A Muslim man could have four wives but a woman could only have one husband at a time. The latter was forbidden to have sexual liaisons with anyone else except her husband (otherwise she committed adultery, zina, which attracted death by stoning) but a man could keep as many concubines and slaves as he liked for his sexual fulfillment.

Like marriage divorce was also biased in favour of the superior sex. The wife could be repudiated by her husband any time but when the wife wanted divorce she had to initiate proceedings in a court of law. In khul (literally, to free), a form of divorce, a woman could buy her way out of marriage. Khul was a divorce for personal reasons (like impotency) and a woman either had to forego payment of the delayed part of their dowry by their husbands or they had to compensate them by giving them a share of their property. Many a men would force their wives to divorce them in order to avoid paying a part of their dowry. Divorce rules, reckons Ahmed, were skewed towards men for Mohammad’s personal reasons. It was because many women, primarily daughters of tribal leaders, divorced him before consummation of their marriage and this irked Mohammad enough to make divorce a tougher nut to crack for women.

Post divorce/widowhood, women could remarry just as men could. Yet, women had to wait for a stipulated amount of time, usually a few menstrual cycles (idda), before she could remarry. The practice ensures that the woman was not pregnant with her previous husband, in a sense, that she would now not corrupt the lineage of the man she marries next. Moreover, it was the man who retained custody of the kids. Men, in Islam, had unconditional rights over their offspring, as soon as the nurturance period of the child was over.

Islam did nothing to eradicate the female infanticide and child marriage prevalent in the pre-Islamic society. If anything it encouraged the former by the Satanic verses. In order to appease the Meccans, Mohammad in a verse sanctioned the worship of Lat, Manat and Uzza alongside that of Allah. Yet, soon these verses were abrogated. Mohammad dismissed these as verses coming from Satan and not God. After all “the absurdity of Allah’s daughters while mortals could have the preferred sons” was a serious consideration. As for child marriage, Islam if anything encouraged it. Aisha, the Prophet’s favourite wife, was only 6 when she was betrothed to him and only 10 when Mohammad consummated their marriage.

While women could inherit, much like jahillya times, their inheritance was more often than not managed by men, either husbands or brothers. Thus, many women preferred to sell their estates and obtain cash instead. This cash was then dispensed of either as loans to the family or in charitable endowments or awqaf to religious institutions. Jurists such as Malik ibn Anas even defined the goods fit to be owned by a woman as opposed to a man. For women household wares, clothes, linen, jewellery, cooking utensils etc were the possessions. Women possessed no books, weapons or riding animals.

The condition of slave women was even worse than their veiled elite counterparts. Not only was an owner of a female slave legally allowed to use her sexually but could also if wanted give her the status of the mother of his child or umm al walad. Having too many slaves was considered unhealthy for the patriarchal family as that could produce many kids and confuse/corrupt the patrilineage.

Women’s sexuality was another hotly debated issue. For all its faults, Islam acknowledges the sexual desires of both men and women and does not advocate its suppression as does Christianity. As Manuela Marvin tells us, “Islam is a sex positive religion” devoid of the “repressive aspects” of Western cultures towards sexuality. Yet, for women, it had to be regulated or controlled. The reason was crystal clear; protection of the male lineage. A woman was forbidden to meet unrelated men and could only enjoy sex with her husband. Girls were married early in order to keep their virginity intact. Men, however, enjoyed far more sex than women. They could have coitus interruptus with slaves to avoid having children and they could of course keep more than one wife. Thus, Islam, despite acknowledging the sexual desires inherent in both men and women, let only their men have complete sexual independence.

Old women and mothers enjoyed a considerable position of power in Islam. While the Prophet emphasized that parents should be taken due care of, he mentioned that the person deserving the most love and care was one’s mother. Annemarie Schimmel informs us that the word reham or mercy is derived from the word, rahim or womb. Thus, the mother was privileged due to her abilities to give birth. Mothers were then in this respect hailed by Rumi as the “men of God”, those who the Quran says “carry and bear the names of God in themselves”.  The old women were revered for their wisdom and for their piety. It was assumed that an old woman’s piety was stronger than the “mightiest prince on earth”. 

Schimmel also makes us aware of the embodiment of women in the sufi tradition as the soul or nafs. The connotation of nafs here although is a negative one. Nafs is the soul inciting to evil. Thus, in several sufi poems, God is the male beloved and poet is the feminine lover. Forever striving to unite with the Beloved, the struggle of the nafs was according to the Prophet the greatest jihad. But each one of the nafs can become a true “man of god” if it wills so. The nafs is the ascetic’s fear of lust and desire, the merchant’s fear of avarice and worldliness. She is the tempting seductress enticing men to herself and deviating them from the path of God. This concept of nafs has been portrayed in Sassi’s wandering for her King Punhu, whom she lost as she slept a little too much, in Eve’s frivolity, her expulsion from paradise and her separation from Adam and in Bilqis’ attempt to charm Solomon with her wealth and her repentance for it. All of them yielded to their desires and were lost till they wandered and struggled to become one with their beloved.

Islam prides itself on making no distinction between the worshippers of Allah except in their degree of piety. Yet when a bleary old woman is said to have asked the Prophet if women like her go to heaven he is said to have replied, “No. Old women like you do not go to heaven. You are all transformed into beautiful virgins." No matter how much they try, Muslim women will always be the inferior sex according to their religion, even in terms of their piety, in which case they become a man of God. The nafs, she can only suffer in vain and it is in her sufferance that her salvation lies.