Place · Sufi dargah · India
Ghazi Miyan, Bahraich
Also known as Bahraich, Ghazi Miyan, Ghazi Miyan — Bahraich, Salar Masud Ghazi
The contested syncretic dargah of Masud Ghazi Miyan (also Salar Masud Ghazi) at Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh — the shrine of Sayyid Salar Masud (1014-1033), a nephew of Mahmud of Ghazni who died in battle against the Hindu ruler Suhaldev of Shravasti on 15 June 1033 at Bahraich. The dargah has grown into an unusually syncretic pilgrimage: lower-caste Hindu communities (particularly the Yadava, Pasi and Kumhar) worship Ghazi Miyan as a tutelary spirit who grants fertility, protection and successful marriage, while Muslims worship him as a Sufi warrior-martyr. The annual Jeth Mela each May-June draws over 2 million pilgrims. The dargah's lower-caste Hindu patronage has been contested by Hindu nationalist groups (which read Suhaldev's victory as a Hindu military triumph). The current structure is 15-century; the Bahraich district administration manages conservation.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Qualified / contested — The physical dargah and shared pilgrimage are documented; its syncretic identity is explicitly contested.
- Location
- 27.575, 81.594
Connections (1)
- Companion in the same setDewa Sharif, Barabanki
Ghāzī Miyān at Bahraich and Dewa Sharīf at Barabanki are the two Awadh shrines whose congregations are overwhelmingly not Muslim, and they have had opposite fortunes for it. Dewa Sharīf's colour-throwing urs is celebrated as syncretism; Bahraich's has been the target of repeated campaigns to close it, on the grounds that the saint was an invader. Both devotion and objection are several centuries old.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Ghazi Saiyyad Salar Masud”. Chishti tazkira literature; Carl Ernst and Bruce Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love (2002).
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