Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi by Anand Vivek Taneja

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi by Anand Vivek Taneja Georgina Drew Anand Vivek Taneja, Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018. 336 pp. Despite the periods of colonization and modernization that have refashioned much of the city now known as New Delhi (henceforth Delhi), glimmers of past ways of being are apparent in the ruins of the centuries-old buildings that have been left behind. For Anand Vivek Taneja, these relics of Delhi's medieval and Mughal past speak not only to what is lost; they also offer a bridge to recognizing what is still present, inviting discovery for the sincere and the faithful. This observation is part of the inspiration for his book, Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi. Taneja's work is guided by what he declares to be a love of these living Islamic artifacts from a bygone era—buildings that are often otherwise misunderstood and underestimated in their revelatory powers. The affection for these buildings includes a reverential awe in the spirits known as jinn that believers contend are capable of healing real and invisible wounds, of righting past and present wrongs, and—perhaps as much as anything else—providing solace in the conviction that powerful forces are operating beneath the mundane. In a seven-chapter text, Taneja explores a range of themes and topics that weave the past with the present, the ethnographic with the archival, and the academically astute with the prose of Rekhti poets. In his introduction and his first chapter, for instance, Taneja sets up his conceptual framework for Jinnealogy—which, in an early articulation, he refers to as "a theological orientation that encompasses the registers of ironic commentary, counter-memory, and apotropaic magic" (25). He later also describes it as a study of "the superseding of human transmission of memory by the longevity of the jinn" (44). To explain how the study of the jinn illuminates [End Page 295] pasts, histories, memories, and practices that are not only human in origin and scope, he offers a second chapter on "Saintly Visions: The Ethics of the Elsewhen" and a third chapter on "Strange(r)ness" (which includes an interesting discussion of an act of humility known as gharib nawaz(i) which demonstrates kindness to the meek, the poor, and the foreign). These chapters permeate the text with a longstanding fascination for the jinn for those present and past who have encountered these powerful beings. In Chapter 4, "Desiring Women," Taneja explores the allure of jinn for women devotees from a range of faiths who occasionally engage in surprisingly bold and candid discourse—and of the lure that these women hold for men visiting the ruins that jinn inhabit. Chapter 5, "Translation," and Chapter 7, "The Shifting Enchantments of Ruins and Laws in Delhi," converge to capture the different registers of value that the jinn and their habitats hold for devotees from a range of religious backgrounds and historical groundings. Along with the book's conclusion, Chapter 6 offers ecological insights and anecdotes to be elaborated upon in further detail below. Throughout the book, the belief in jinn is made visible in acts of everyday worship and religiosity at the ruins of Delhi's Islam-influenced past, and of a particular building and its environs known as Firoz Shah Kotla. They are also made visible in the numerous letters and petitions to jinn that the faithful leave posted on or near the ruins to plead for the help of the supernatural, the more-than-human. Each petitioner has their own requests to save a loved one (especially, it seems, from alcoholism), to marry a lover, to leave an abuser, or to find better employment and improved economic standing. To those familiar with these practices, and even some of the successful outcomes, they are evidence that something lurks in Delhi's ruins. For Taneja, the aggregate of these practices and the myriad socio-cultural worlds that grow around them are evidence of an enchantment with ruins, and with jinn. To be more precise, following the author's arguments, these...