At the Shrine of the Red Sufi: Five Days and Nights on Pilgrimage in Pakistan - Hardcover

Frembgen, Jurgen Wasim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199063079 ISBN 13: 9780199063079

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2012

Synopsis

Refuge for the Taliban, nuclear power, terror camps, sinister secret police and assassinations-this is what everyone, who follows the media, associates Pakistan with. But how different is the country?

Munich cultural anthropologist, Jurgen Wasim Frembgen, shows us in one of the most exciting reports we owe to German cultural anthropology in recent decades. Frembgen's visit to the shrine of the "Red Sufi" Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in the little town of Sehwan in southern Pakistan shows a side of Islam which-translated into its western equivalent would closely resemble the carnival in Rhineland or the anarchic potential of Flower Power. At the same time, the event abounds in superstition, asceticism, and spirituality-the kind which have long since disappeared in the West.

At one point, Frembgen describes this annual pilgrimage as Dionysian-but not in the sense of opulent-the poverty, whether chosen or of necessity, is conspicuous everywhere-but in its exuberance and ostensible disorderliness.

About this title

About the Author

Jurgen Wasim Frembgen is Chief Curator of the Oriental Department at the Museum of Ethnology in Munich as well as Privatdozent (Private Lecturer) in Islamic Studies at the University of Munich. Since 1981 he has been teaching anthropology and Islamic Studies at different universities in Germany; in addition he had been a visiting professor at the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad (National Institute of Pakistan Studies), National College of Arts in Lahore, and Ohio State University in Columbus, OH/USA. He has been conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Pakistan (for instance in Nager and Hunza/Karakoram, Indus Kohistan, Punjab and Sindh) on an annual basis since 1981.

He has written extensively on cultures of the Eastern Muslim world between Iran and India, focusing particularly on Pakistan. Many of his books and articles deal with Islam, Sufi tradition, veneration of Muslim saints, art and material culture, the anthropology of the body, social outsiders and facets of popular culture.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0199063079
• ISBN 13: 9780199063079
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 350