The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual

By Shemeem Burney Abbas
Foreword by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

6 x 9 in.
240 pp., 29 halftones, 2 maps, 5 graphs, 6 tables
ISBN 0-292-70515-8
$45.00, hardcover with dust jacket
Web Special: $30.15
2002

The female voice plays a more central role in Sufi ritual, especially in the singing of devotional poetry, than in almost any other area of Muslim culture. Female singers performsufiana-kalam,or mystical poetry, at Sufi shrines and in concerts, folk festivals, and domestic life, while male singers assume the female voice when singing the myths of heroines inqawwali andsufiana-kalam. Yet, despite the centrality of the female voice in Sufi practice throughout South Asia and the Middle East, it has received little scholarly attention and is largely unknown in the West.

This book presents the first in-depth study of the female voice in Sufi practice in the subcontinent ofPakistan and India. Shemeem Burney Abbas investigates the rituals at the Sufi shrines and looks at women's participation in them, as well as male performers' use of the female voice. The strengths of the book are her use of interviews with both prominent and grassroots female and male musicians and her transliteration of audio- and videotaped performances. Through them, she draws vital connections between oral culture and the written Sufi poetry that the musicians sing for their audiences. This research clarifies why the female voice is so important in Sufi practice and underscores the many contributions of women to Sufism and its rituals.

Shemeem Burney Abbas is Professor of English Language and Applied Linguistics at Allama Iqbal Open University in Islamabad, Pakistan. She is currently teaching in the English Department of the University of Texas at Austin.Table of Contents:Author's Note: Transliterations, Translations, and Conversation Analysis Transcript Notation
Foreword by Elizabeth Warnock Furnea
Preface:Woman's Place in Sufism
Acknowledgments
Chapter1.History and Economy of Women in Sufi Ritual
Chapter2.Ethnographies of Communication
Chapter3.Female Myths in Sufism
Chapter4.The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual
Chapter5.Closing the Circle of the Mystic Journey
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index