In the midst of a global resurgence of religion-inspired violence, it was heartwarming to watch a documentary “…dedicated to the great Sufis…” and hold on to a message written across a stark black screen: “Be certain that in the religion of love, there are no believers and unbelievers, love embraces all. Rumi (1207-1273).”

The film explores the distinctly South Asian form of Sufi song and music of rapture that blurs the boundaries between sacred and profane love, between pleasure and devotion: the qawwali.

It begins with stock images of the universe and a fanciful commentary with non-diegetic music suitable for a documentary about intergalactic space. But what follows is an interesting, informative and moving foray into contemporary Pakistani (mainly Karachi) contributions to Sufi thought in practice.

The documentary’s appeal lies in how the director (Shahrukh Waheed) and his editor (Husain Qaizar) have entwined the lives and practices of three typologies of devotees: the qawwals (those who perform qawwali), the patrons and the scholars. In diachronic synchronicity, the film captures the time (zamaan), place (makaan) and people (ikhwaan) conjoined through mutuality of a love of qawwali.

The story at the heart of it all goes back to Delhi to Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya (1238-1325), the Sufi saint, and his disciple Hazrat Amir Khusrau (1253-1325), a soldier, statesman and scholar of Turkic origin who wrote on warfare, governance and ethics, but who above all is famous for his contributions to poetry and music — especially as the instigator of qawwali. Many song texts performed today are attributed to Khusrau.

Songs of the Sufi explores the distinctly South Asian form of Sufic musical rapture — the qawwali — which blurs the boundaries between sacred and profane love

Critical sites for the performance of qawwali were and remain the Sufi shrines dotted across South Asia. Increasingly, from the 20th century, the space of qawwali has extended to include cinema, television, concert halls, private residences and digital media.

All the qawwals in this documentary are based in Karachi and those who refer to themselves as the ‘Qawwal Bachas’ [literally the Qawwal Children] are descended from the legendary Tanras Khan (1801-1890) of the Delhi gharana (a guild of musicians) linked to the court of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, who reigned 1837-1857.

The defeat of the Hindu and Muslim Indian confederacy that fought against the British occupation in 1857 resulted in either the butchering or exile of all Indians suspected of a role in the war — many were forced to leave Delhi. It was the end of a way of life in Delhi and its environs.

For survival and patronage, Tanras Khan and his family migrated to the princely state of Hyderabad in the Deccan. The central qawwals in the film are the progeny of Ustad Bahauddin (1934-2006), born in Hyderabad in Tanras Khan’s family.

The film includes other descendants of Tanras Khan, namely Abdullah Niazi, Subhan Nizami, Habib and Umer Manzoor.

After Partition, Muslims in Hyderabad found themselves targeted by Indian state violence, usually referred to as ‘police action’. Fleeing the onslaught, the fourth, fifth and sixth generations of Tanras Khan’s progeny migrated to Karachi in the 1950s.

In Karachi, the family of the Dilli Qawwal Bachas reconnected with the family of Juveria Nuzhatunnisa Begum, the granddaughter of Nawab Sadik Jung Bahadur of Hyderabad, whose nom de plume was ‘Hilm’ — Restraint — and who composed the text of the qawwali, ‘Kanhaiya’, an ode to the Hindu deity Krishna. More on that below.

Juveria Begum is the mother of Kamran Anwar, the producer of this documentary. An intrepid banker, Anwar inherited a passion for qawwali from his parents and became an enthusiastic pursuer and patron of the form. He took a year out from financial pursuits to produce this documentary. An illuminating moment in the film brings mother and son together, sharing and reciting in song (tarannum), their ancestor’s qawwali — also revealing how song texts circulate, and survive through written and oral traditions, and the agency of women.

The film gains from the insights of Katherine Butler Schofield at Kings College London — in her words, a historian of “music and listening in Mughal India” and also a co-producer of the documentary. 

Schofield has researched Persian treatises on Indian music and reminds us that, in the Ghunyat-i-Munya [Songs of Longing, composed in Gujarat in 1375, not long years after Khusrau], musicians who excelled in music both vocal and instrumental, and were masters of both melodic modes (raga) and rhythm (tala), were referred to as qawwals.

Both Schofield and the sons of Ustad Bahauddin underline the understanding of qawwali’s roots in ‘saying’ (qaul) the name of the Divine beloved, and the consequent ‘listening’ (samaa).

The documentary explores qaul and tarana — among the key concepts of qawwali. Schofield discusses how meaning is not always obvious (zahir), especially as the tarana deploys discombobulated syllables such as dir dir ta na, which reveal a hidden (khafi) truth known only to those with real knowledge (ilm).

Director Waheed intersperses song performances with images of old miniatures from Mughal albums, and stirring new works by dynamic, young Pakistani women artists such as Tazeen Qayyum’s Toum Tana Dana — done during a qawwali performance in 2023 —  and Saira Wasim’s Passion Cycle (2008), which captures the ecstatic rapture (wajd) that a mefil-i-samaa can induce. They are a pleasing extension of the ragamala paintings that express the essence (ras) of a musical form.

Today, as Muslims are lynched in India under the acquiescent eye of the state, and Hindu girls abducted and forced into marriage and forcibly converted to Islam in Pakistan, a poignant aspect of the film is Juveria Begum’s description of the world of qawwali as one immersed in a Ganga Jumani culture — a composite of practices, where Hindu customs, belief and rituals overlapped with Muslim, as evinced by Kanhaiya her grandfather’s ode to Krishna.

This composition does not stand on its own but alongside countless other famous qawwalis, such as ‘Bahaut kathin hai dagar panghat ki’ [How arduous is the path to the shore], sung by Qawwal Bachas Abdullah and Waqas Niazi in the documentary.

The world of qawwali practice was and remains a very masculine space, in particular as far as the performers go. Female agency, as exemplified by Juveria Begum, extends to women as patrons with knowledge, immersed in qawwali.

She describes the role of patrons in creating the required aura for samaa. Importantly, she discusses the ideal state of being for a listener of qawwali, as muraqabah — perhaps, best described as ‘self-reflection to attain an epiphany’ — a moment of a union with truth and the Divine beloved. Juveiria Begum’s devotion and faith in qawwali as a talisman of truth are a powerful aspect of the documentary.

Schofield has extended the scholarship on qawwali, mainly pioneered by the late anthropologist Adam Nayyar, and by another woman scholar, Regula Burkhardt Qureishi, whose Sufi Music of India and Pakistan: Sound, Context and Meaning in Qawwali is a seminal work. Saira Wasim and Tazeen Qayyum join other female artists in a long line of male masters working in ateliers across South Asia.

Perhaps Kamran Anwar’s most astonishing achievement was to get Pasha Begum, Ustad Bahauddin’s widow, to agree to appear in the documentary.

Waheed and cinematographer Nadir Siddiqui capture the concealed world of women with knowledge and understanding of the form, content and meaning of qawwali in the households of the qawwals. The women’s agency, however, is limited and constrained within the confines of their family homes.

Pasha Begum comes alive on screen, screened from view by a screen (chilman) — as hidden and enigmatic as the Songs of the Sufi. She passed away before the film was completed for screening.

The documentary opens up a new space for ongoing discussions on transformations in qawwali practice. I await Anwar and Waheed’s Opus 2.

Produced by Kamran Anwar and Directed by Shahrukh Waheed, Songs of the Sufi is 53 minutes long and will have its Pakistan premiere at Napa on October 22

The reviewer is a historian, a screenwriter, a translator and rights activist. X: @NasreenRehman1

Published in Dawn, ICON, October 15th, 2023