Texts and Tombs

Abstract

The consolidation of a texted past around Sufi migrants in fifteenth-century Gujarat was accompanied by the development of the tomb-shrines of Aḥmad Khattū and two members of the Suhrawardi spiritual fraternity, Burhān al-Dīn ‘Abdullāh (d. 1453) and Sirāj al-Dīn Muḥammad (d. 1475). Texts and tombs represented conjoined processes that enabled ongoing community formation. The tomb shrines created regional networks of disciples and pilgrims focused on the burial sites of the Sufis just as texts increasingly cohered the history of the buried Sufis and their community into genealogies and overlapping personal connections. This chapter argues that the participation of the Gujarat Sultans in the creation of a sacral geography—through patronage, shrine veneration, and not least of all the building of palatial structures and royal tombs in close proximity—reflected the intertwined processes of state, community, and region formation in fifteenth-century Gujarat.