Re-membering History at the Shrines of Aurangabad

Abstract

This chapter draws on the oral traditions preserved at Sufi shrines in south India to show how the shrines serve as concrete anchors of historical memory that preserve the past into the present. Showing how stories of saints are linked to the memory of kings, empires and settlers, the chapter shows how with the emergence of Muslim communities in India, the institutions of Sufi Islam helped create places of belonging in new homelands. Early modern history and the present day are in this way seen to be connected through oral traditions rooted in specific urban spaces.