Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in India

Acknowledgment

. Acknowledgments . Many people and organizations have helped me in this lengthy endeavor. Funding for the initial research was made possible by grants and fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation, and the University of California, Berkeley. In India the Asian Development Research Foundation, the ARCE music archives in New Delhi, the Asiatic Society of Bengal Library in Calcutta, and the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library in Patna allowed me access to valuable archives and other materials. Thanks to all the employees of these institutions, who were most generous with their time, encouragement , and assistance. The final stages of this effort could not have been reached without the help and guidance of the staff at the University of South Carolina Press. I am especially grateful to Jim Denton and Karen Rood. This book has undergone many transformations from the first draft to its present form. It is a much stronger piece of work thanks to the comments and advice given to me over the years as I struggled to hone it into something that would do justice to the women Sufis whose lives are discussed , and to the men who support them. Suggestions by Jack Hawley, Fran Pritchett, Joyce Flueckiger, Carl Ernst, Richard Eaton, David Gilmartin, Shahid Amin, the late Qeyamuddin Ahmed, Mohammad Talib, and Tony Stewart were especially important to the early stages of the book’s development, while it benefited in no small way from close readings of later chapter drafts by Barbara Metcalf and Amy Bard. Gail Minault, Art Buehler, Katherine Ewing, Rob Rozehnal, Anna Bigelow, Francis Robinson , and Leslie Peirce also provided valuable advice through successive revisions, while Elizabeth Buettner, Jenny Takhar, Diya Mehra, Arun Ranganathan , Huma Dar, Janet Chawla, M. Sivanesin, and other friends in India and the United States provided moral support, a place to stay, and encouragement. Zahurul Miyan, Inam Miyan, and Apa have been sources of guidance, hope, and love to me over these long years, as have Mahnur, Meher, Bahar, and Sajid, with their much-appreciated blend of goodnatured teasing and serious lecturing. Along with them I thank the Gudri xxviii Acknowledgments Shah murids, especially Faiz bhai, Hamu bhai, Akhtar Miyan, Radha, and Jamil bhai for their friendship (and occasional clarifications) over the years. I also want to thank the Shah Sahibs of the Maner and Bihar Sharif Firdausi orders, Pir Shamim ud-din Munammi (and family) of Mitan Ghat dargah, the Firdausi women, and the khadims of the dargahs of Mu‘in al-din Chishti and Sharaf al-din Maneri, for their hospitality and willingness to entertain my sometimes naive questions. Thanks are also due to the families who shared their homes with me during my visits to India—J. P. and Asha Singh, Bimal and Vina Chadha and Ammi, and especially Subhash and Niki Arora (and Raju and Lakshmi), with whom I have developed a dear and lasting friendship over these years. Last but not least, I want to thank Jeff, who was with me during the greater period of research for this book. Although our marriage did not last, our friendship has endured, and for that I am grateful. This project has involved more work than I ever could have imagined, and it is a big relief to see it finally come to fruition. I hope I have done some justice to the subject of Sufi women. Whatever glitches, misunderstandings, errors, or omissions still remain in the text are, in the end, my full responsibility . To anyone else who helped and whom I may have inadvertently omitted in these pages, you know who you are. Thank you. ...