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About This Book
Horse of Karbala is a study of Muharram rituals and interfaith relations in three locations in India: Ladakh, Darjeeling, and Hyderabad. These rituals commemorate an event of vital importance to Shia Muslims: the seventh-century death of the Imam Husain, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at the battlefield of Karbala in Iraq. Pinault examines three different forms of ritual commemoration of Husain's death - poetry-recital and self-flagellation in Hyderabad; stick-fighting in Darjeeling; and the 'Horse of Karbala' procession, in which a stallion representing the mount ridden in battle by Husain is made the center of a public parade in Ladakh and other Indian localities. The book looks at how publicly staged rituals serve to mediate communal relations: in Hyderabad and Darjeeling, between Muslim and Hindu populations; in Ladakh, between Muslims and Buddhists. Attention is also given to controversies within Muslim communities over issues related to Muharram such as the belief in intercession by the Karbala Martyrs on behalf of individual believers.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Half-Title
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Illustrations
- ONE Initiation: Hyderabad, 1989
- TWO An Introduction to the Shia Tradition in Islam
- THREE Blood, Rationality, and Ritual in the Shia Tradition
- FOUR "Would That You Could Bury Me, Too, Beside My Brother!": Women's Roles in Shia Devotional Literature
- FIVE Shia Ritual in a Sunni Setting: Muharram Observances in the Hill Station of Darjeeling, West Bengal
- SIX Horse of Karbala: Ladakh, Shia Ritual, and Devotional Literature Relating to Zuljenah
- SEVEN Muslim-Buddhist Relations in a Ritual Context: An Analysis of the Muharram Procession in Leh Township, Ladakh
- EIGHT Shia Lamentation Rituals and Reinterpretations of the Doctrine of Intercession: Two Cases from Modern India
- NINE The Day of the Lion: A Ladakhi Shia Ritual Determined by the Zodiacal Calendar
- TEN Shia Encounters in the United States: Notes on Teaching the Shia Tradition in American Classrooms
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index