Tracing the Footsteps of the Prophet across the Indian Ocean: The Materiality of Prophetic Piety in Mughal India

This dissertation adopts theoretical and methodological insights from the study of religious materiality to explore how Indian Ocean travel gave rise to religious discourses and practices in South Asia. It traces how the circulation of people, objects, and knowledge between North India and the Hejaz led to new forms of Muslim piety in the imperial centers of the Mughal Empire. A characteristic feature of this piety was belief in the auspicious nature of the Prophet Muḥammad’s body. This belief was expressed both in scholastic discourse and ritual practice as evidenced by the history of Prophetic relics and tradition examined in this dissertation.The introduction lays forth the concept of Prophetic piety and outlines what it means to study it from the perspective of material religion. It draws attention to the way material culture has been mobilized to preserve the memory of the Prophet Muḥammad. Chapter one looks at the arrival of a qadam or footprint relic associated with the Prophet to the court of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), and focuses on the religious debates and royal rituals of veneration it engendered. The analysis offers insight on the practice of religious inquiry at the Mughal court and its role in the performance of sovereignty. Chapter two looks at the development of two monumental reliquary shrines, one in Delhi and the other in Ahmedabad, whose central relics shared a connected history. By focusing on the religious economy of the shrines, the chapter looks at how various actors invested in the shrine, including the Mughal court, Chishtī Sufis, and Sayyids, and how their interventions may have shaped devotees’ relic practices. Chapter three contextualizes these ritual practices at the reliquary shrines within new scholastic discourses that began circulating in seventeenth century Delhi. These discourses are found in the scholastic writings of North Indian Sufis who expressed a strong devotion to the Prophet and who had travelled to the Hejaz for pilgrimage and studying hadith. It is in their writings that we see clear expression of the belief in the auspicious nature of the Prophet’s body.Ph.D