Dhamal Frembgen

Journal of Sufĳi Studies 1 (2012) 77–113 brill.
nl/jss
Dhamāl and the Performing Body: Trance Dance

in the Devotional Suﬁ Practice of Pakistan*
Jürgen Wasim Frembgen

Munich State Museum of Ethnology
Germany
Abstract
Guided by the hypnotic repetitive sound of drums, the ritual trance dance known as dhamāl
belongs to the multiple worlds of Pakistani Sufĳi shrines and is characteristic of the concrete devo-
tional practices of rural people and the urban poor, especially in Sindh and the Punjab. Drawing
on Ronald L. Grimes’s concept of distinguishing various modes of embodied ritual attitudes, the
study explores the performance and aesthetics of this public, predominantly collective dance
at two selected ethnographic settings, diffferentiating three groups of actors in terms of ritual
structure, techniques of the body, gestural grammar and gender-related kinaesthetic styles. Apart
from marked diffferences between performers, these modes of ritual sensibilities co-exist and
interpenetrate each other whereby the celebrative form of interaction with the beloved saint
Lal Shahbaz Qalandar remains the central theme. Dhamāl is a full-bodied, active experience of
mystical devotion which belongs to the ‘social habitus’ of the dancers and can be considered a
pattern of appropriate ritual action embedded in the local cultures of both Sindhis and Punjabis
which is shared among Muslims as well as Hindus.
Résumé
Guidé par le son hypnotique et répétitif des tambours, la danse rituelle en transe connue sous le
nom de dhamāl appartient aux arènes multiples des sanctuaires pakistanais soufĳis. Cette danse
est caractéristique des pratiques de dévotion concrète des populations rurales et des pauvres
urbains, en particulier au Sindh et au Pendjab. Faisant appel au concept de Ronald L. Grimes qui
distingue entre les diffférentes modes de « embodied ritual attitudes » (attitudes rituelles incar-
nées), cette étude examine la performance et l’esthétique de cette danse publique et collective
sur deux sites ethnographiques. Nous distinguons trois groupes d’acteurs en termes de structure
* Preliminary versions of this article were presented at the Collaborative Research Center
‘Ritual Dynamics’ of the South Asia Institute in Heidelberg (19 June 2006), at the Institute of Eth-
nology of the Free University in Berlin (17 July 2007) and at the 20th European Conference on
Modern South Asian Studies (8–11 July 2008) at the University of Manchester. Discussions gene-
rated at those presentations have enriched my analysis. Furthermore I am particularly grateful to
several dear friends in Pakistan for their most valuable contributions and conversations, in parti-
cular to Dr Ashfaq Ahmed Khan, Dr Mehdi Reza Shah Sabzwari, Sayyid Asif Ali Zaidi, Atiya Khan
and Shahana Bhurghi. Finally, I would especially like to thank my colleagues Richard K. Wulf and
Michel Boivin for their careful reading of the text and important comments and suggestions.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/221059512X626126
78 J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufĳi Studies 1 (2012) 77–113
rituelle : les techniques du corps, la grammaire gestuelle, et les styles kinesthésiques qui sont
spécifĳiques au genre. Outre certaines diffférences frappantes entre les exécutants, ces modes de
sensibilité rituelle coéxistent et s’interpénètrent de telle manière que le thème central reste à la
célébration de l’interaction avec le saint aimé Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. D̲͟h͟amāl est une expérience
active de dévotion mystique de tout le corps qui appartient au « habitus social » des danseurs
et peut être considéré comme un modèle d’action rituelle appropriée qui s’intègre dans les
cultures locales des Sindhis et des Pendjabis et qui est partagée par les musulmans ainsi que
les hindous.
Keywords
aesthetics, body, dance, Pakistan, performance, Qalandariyya, ritual, trance, shrines, Sufĳism
Introduction
At a number of shrines in the lowlands of Pakistan, devotees of Sufĳi saints regu-

larly perform a trance dance and ritual practice known as dhamāl.1 This sacred
ritual is a characteristic feature of the devotional and ecstatic religiosity embed-
ded in the local societies of Sindh and the Punjab. Considering its popularity,
especially among the masses of the poor and dispossessed, it can be described
as ‘embodied religion’ or even as a form of ‘danced religion’ in the sense of
I.M. Lewis.2 In fact, Islamic mysticism is a very complex phenomenon with
many diffferent faces. It reflects a broad spectrum between more moderate,
ethically-oriented movements or schools of thought which are organized in
the majority of formal, well-established Sufĳi orders, and others—a not so small
minority—with a more ascetic, world-renouncing profĳile, consisting of non-
conformist groups of dervishes and devotees who emphasize ecstatic experi-
ences such as dance. Listening to samāʿ (vocal spiritual music) and moving the
body in rapture and abandonment nevertheless plays a role in both currents.
It marks an experiential state of merging with the saint, the Prophet and God
which—although debated controversially among Sufĳis themselves3—functions
1
On which see Shamim Burney Abbas, The Female Voice in Sufĳi Ritual: Devotional Practices
of Pakistan and India (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 33–5; Michel Boivin, ‘Le pèleri-
nage de Sehwan Sharif, Sindh (Pakistan): territories, protagonists et rituels’, in Les pèlerinages au
Maghreb et au Moyen-Orient, ed. S. Chifffoleau and A. Madoeuf (Damascus: Institut Français du
Proche-Orient, 2005), 334–7 (notes on dhamāl in Sehwan Sharif, Sindh); and Richard K. Wolf, ‘The
Poetics of “Sufĳi” Practice: Drumming, Dancing, and Complex Agency at Madho Lāl Husain (and
Beyond)’, American Ethnologist 33.2 (2006): 246–68 (study of dhamāl with an anthropological
and musicological focus on Punjabi dhōl playing).
2
I.M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession (London and New
York: Routledge, 1989).
3
There has been a long, controversial debate reflected in Sufĳi literature either arguing for
the legitimacy of samāʿ and defending it, but nevertheless setting strict rules for the decorum of
‘listening’ sessions, or rejecting it outright as un-Islamic accretions. Austere theologians and many
J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufĳi Studies 1 (2012) 77–113 79
as an ‘integrating modus operandi’, particularly within the Chishti Sufĳi order

in Pakistan and India.4
The genre of instrumental dhamāl, however, is a diffferent kind of Sufĳi activ-
ity mostly practiced outside institutionalized Sufĳi orders. Thus it is specifĳically
associated with the dervishes and devotees of the Qalandar movement in
Muslim South Asia—a radical, provocative, but also ascetic way of life which
rejects the social values and the formalism of the external world and instead
strives for states of religious rapture, abandonment and ecstasy. As such, the
rapturous dance is embedded in mastī-o-qalandarī which could be translated
as ‘Qalandarism’.5 Thus far, dervish dance and dhamāl within the context of
spirit possession at the main Qalandar shrine in Sindh have been dealt with by
Michel Boivin from a historical perspective, emphasizing its ancient local roots
in ascetic Shivaism and other regional cults with shamanistic elements.6 Focus-
ing on the interpretation of drumming and dancing at the shrine of Madho
Lal Husain in Lahore, Richard K. Wolf formulated an argument regarding the
poetics of Sufĳi practice from an anthropological perspective. In his M.A. thesis,
Rune Selsing explored the efffĳicacy of ritual action in the dhamāl taking place
at the shrine of Shah Kamal and of other Sufĳi saints in Lahore.7 He specifĳically
examined the distinct discipline of habitual dancers to attain a state of rap-
ture and the oral and musical transmission of the related practical knowledge
within a form of ecstatic Sufĳism which is not institutionalized. The present
study also urges empirical observations to investigate dhamāl as a concrete
sharia-bound Sufĳi masters objected to samāʿ and ecstatic whirling, being afraid that the perfor-
mance of love songs would distract the listener from concentrating upon the majesty of God only.
For an overview about the permissibility of music in the Sufĳi tradition, see Kenneth S. Avery,
A Psychology of Early Sufĳi samāʿ (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 10–52. For more
detail, see Jean During, Musique et extase: L’audition mystique dans la tradition soufĳie (Paris: Albin
Michel, 1988), 217–47.
4
Carl W. Ernst and Bruce Lawrence, Sufĳi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and
Beyond (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 36. In a masterful study of qawwālī Sufĳi music,
Regula Burckhardt Qureshi has described and analysed this samāʿ of the Chishti tradition (Sufĳi
Music of India and Pakistan: Sound, Context and Meaning in Qawwali [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986]).
5
Therefore also the genre of songs related to this dance and to the veneration of the famous
Sufĳi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar is known as qalandrī dhamāliaṅ.
6
Michel Boivin, ‘Reflections on La’l Shahbāz Qalandar and the Management of his Spiritual
Authority in Sehwan Sharif ’, Quarterly Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 51.4 (2003): 41–72
(48–9, 62–3); idem, ‘Note sur la danse dans les cultes musulman du domaine Sindhī’, Journal of
the History of Sufĳism 4 (2004): 159–67 (160–4); idem, ‘Le pèlerinage’; and idem, ‘Le samaʿ dans
la région du Sindh’, in Des voies et des voix: Soufĳisme, culture, musique, ed. Zaїm Khenchelaoui
(Algier: CNPRAH, 2006), 293–333 (308–11).
7
Rune Selsing, ‘Without Experience no Knowledge: A Ritual Study of the Ecstatic Sufĳi Practice
dhamāl in Pakistan’ (M.A. thesis, Department of Anthropology, Copenhagen University, 2010).
devotional, multi-faceted practice situated in the public space; the focus here
is on its complex socio-religious contexts throughout the lowland regions of
Pakistan. In particular, I diffferentiate between three types of dhamāl perform-
ers, thereby emphasizing the diversity of embodied ritual attitudes and related
aesthetic styles. To highlight this plurality, I use original quotations from a
variety of performers, as well as referring to a number of side arguments which
need to be studied in more detail in the future.
My initial interest in this trance dance arose from participating several times
in pilgrimages to Sufĳi shrines where I observed strikingly diffferent embodied
attitudes amongst performers (a problem also addressed by Wolf ).8 To under-
stand this complexity of ritual actions and to interpret its various levels, which
I grappled with during fĳield research, here I draw mainly on Ronald L. Grimes’s
useful distinction of modes of ritual sensibilities.9 That is, how can these difffer-
ences be explained in the context of dhamāl and to which frames of reference
are they related? How should distinctions in performance styles and aesthetics
be interpreted? These research questions serve as a guideline and central focus
throughout the present study. First, I give a short introduction to the historical
context of this dance, highlighting the genesis of dhamāl and its relation to
the Qalandar movement and its pivotal fĳigure Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. Secondly,
ritual space and ritual time are outlined as defĳining the socio-religious con-
text of dhamāl. In the main part of the study, I describe and examine the per-
formance and aesthetics of the dance at two selected ethnographic settings,
diffferentiating three groups of actors (namely dervishes, dhamālīs and devo-
tees) in terms of ritual structure, techniques of the body, gestural grammar
and gender-related kinaesthetic styles of the dance.10 The next section focuses
on embodied ritual attitudes and leads to a fĳinal discussion of dimensions of
experience and agency.
8
Thus I participated at the annual ʿurs in October 2003 (13th to 18th), October 2004 (2nd to
5th), September 2005 (22nd to 25th), August 2009 (7th to 14th), July 2010 (28th to 31st) and again
July 2011 (18th to 21st). Further visits took place in November 2007 (2nd to 9th), November 2008
(7th to 11th), November 2009 (15th to 21st), November 2010 (23rd to 25th), January–February 2011
(30th to 1st), and December 2011 (15th to 16th). I reflect about these pilgrimages and related fĳield-
work in my ethnographic narratives At the Shrine of the Red Sufĳi: Five Days and Nights on Pilgrim-
age in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2011) and Nocturnal Music in the Land of the
Sufĳis: Unheard Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012).
9
Ronald L. Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1995).
10
Thus, my main focus is on the dancing performers, not so much on ritual functionaries such
as the drummers. For the important role of the latter, see Wolf, ‘The poetics of ‘Sufĳi’ practice’, and
Selsing, ‘Without Experience’.
The Historical Context of dhamāl
In vernacular Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi and Gujarati dhamāl (lit. ‘noisy’) means
‘wild’, ‘boisterous’ and ‘over-excited’. According to common folk etymology,
this term is derived from the Persian word dam (‘breath’); hence one of the
most common devotional formulas is damā dam mast qalandar—‘through
your breath, O Qalandar intoxicated (by the divine)’.11 Therefore people at
shrines often say that in ecstasy the rhythm of breath as well as of the heart beat
should have the same rhythm as the drum beat. John T. Platts, however, claims
that dhamāl comes from dham, meaning the sound of stamping or jumping on
the ground, and explains this term as ‘jumping into, or running through fĳire’.12
But, according to recent scholarship, dhamāl is most probably derived from
Sanskrit dharm.13 It needs to be pointed out that the original name of Sehwan,
the centre of contemporary dhamāl situated in the southern province of Sindh
in Pakistan, had been Siwistan, that is to say the ‘place of Shiva’, the Hindu god
who is worshipped as the ‘king of dance’ (nātarājā). Thus dhamāl appears to
have been originally a ritual of mystical union with Shiva performed by the
Pashupatas, a Shivaite school of ascetics, which has been later associated with
the qalandar dervishes.14
As mentioned above, the latter belong to an antinomian movement which
stands in opposition to scriptural Islam as well as the established Sufĳi orders
and apparently spread from West and Central Asia during and after the Mon-
gol invasions of the thirteenth century, in other words at a time of destruc-
tion and chaos of war.15 It is renunciatory in character and allows anarchist
11
Boivin, ‘Note sur la danse’, 162; and Jürgen Wasim Frembgen, The Friends of God—Sufĳi Saints
in Islam: Popular Poster Art from Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 68.
12
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdū, Classical Hindī and English (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1884; rpt. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1997), 546; see also Wolf, ‘Poetics’, 254; and Boivin,
‘Reflections’, 48.
13
Personal communication by Richard K. Wolf (27 July 2009).
14
Boivin, ‘Note sur la danse’, 160; Michel Boivin, ed., Sindh through History and Representation:
French Contributions to Sindhi Studies (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 38.
15
On the Qalandar tradition, see for instance: Simon Digby, ‘Qalandars and Related Groups:
Elements of Social Deviance in the Religious Life of the Delhi Sultanate of the Thirteenth and
Fourteenth Centuries’, in Islam in Asia, ed. Yohanan Friedmann (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press,
The Hebrew University, 1984), 60–108; Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, Osmanlı imparatorluğu’nda marjinal
sûfîlik: Kalenderîler, XIV–XVII. yüzyıllar (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1992); Ahmet T.
Karamustafa, God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period 1200–1550
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994); Jürgen Wasim Frembgen, Journey to God: Sufĳis and
Dervishes in Islam (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 71–2, 83–90, 96–101; idem, ‘‘Ich weiß
nichts außer Liebe, Rausch und Ekstase’. Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (gest. 1274) und die Bewegung
individualism which also becomes apparent in peculiar costume and insig-

nia. ‘Qalandarism’ (qalandarī) in fact denotes a free-wheeling way of life open
to a variety of dervishes, some of them formally initiated into the Qalandari-
yya, others like the South Asian malangs only loosely associated with certain
Qalandar saints. Both aspire for direct divine inspiration through ardent love
of God. Their hearts enraptured by the love of God, they seem to be seeking to
be drowned in him, not considering themselves responsible for what they do.
Mendicant and peripatetic qalandars are known for their provocative, socially
deviant behaviour directed against prevailing moral and religious conventions,
thereby adopting the principle of malāmat, which means ‘seeking blame’, hold-
ing themselves in contempt in order to conceal their spiritual achievements
and to fĳight hypocrisy. Extraordinary states of rapture and ecstasy characterize
their religiosity.
According to the local South Asian Qalandar tradition, dhamāl dālnā (lit-
erally ‘to put on dhamāl’) or dhamāl karnā (literally ‘doing dhamāl’) which
both mean ‘dancing’ is attributed to Sayyid Uthman Marwandi (d. 1274), better
known by his laqab (descriptive epithet) Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, the famous
ascetic and leading master of the antinomian Qalandariyya who is the most
popular Sufĳi saint of Pakistan.16 In 1178 he was born in the town of Marwand
or Marand near Tabriz in Azerbaijan into a family who traced its descent to
the sixth Shiite Imam Jaʿfar al-Sadiq through his son Ismaʿil. Historical sources
depict Uthman Marwandi as a young man with a strong religious inclination
who made the pilgrimage to Mecca and was then initiated into the Qalanda-
riyya in Karbala. From Baghdad he wandered eastwards via the Makran coast
to Sindh where he briefly stayed in Laki, a village close to Sehwan, in those
days an important trading city and junction of caravan routes situated near
the Indus River. After travelling to Multan in southern Punjab and to other
parts of northwest India where he met a number of famous Sufĳi saints of the
Sohravardi and Chishti orders, on 8 December, 1251 he returned to Sehwan
with a large following of qalandar dervishes. He fĳinally settled in this town
where people venerate him to this day as a charismatic protector, healer and
miracle-worker. Thus he became known by the afffectionate title Lal Shahbaz
der Qalandar-Derwische’, in Mystik. Die Sehnsucht nach dem Absoluten, ed. Albert Lutz (Zuerich:
Museum Rietberg and Scheidegger & Spiess, 2011), 157–9.
16
Boivin, ‘Reflections’, 42–5; and Frembgen, The Friends of God, 62–70. According to Kaleem
Lashari (personal communication, 17 September 2005), in Sindh dhamāl is only found at Sufĳi
shrines which are influenced by the Punjab; see Uzma Rehman, ‘Sacred Spaces, Rituals and Prac-
tices: The mazars of Saiyid Pir Waris Shah and Shah ʿAbdu’l Latif Bhitai’, in Sufĳism Today: Heritage
and Tradition in the Global Community, ed. Catharina Raudvere and Leif Stenberg (London and
New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 141 (dhamāl at the shrine of Shah ʿAbdul Latif ).
Figure 1. Lal Shahbaz Qalandar dancing in abandonment with his shrine and
tomb in the background; the fĳigure of the saint had been borrowed from a
Christian devotional painting showing Jesus and his apostles (Sufĳi poster, 1970s
or 1980s, Pakistan; Munich State Museum of Ethnology, Inv.-No. 88–310 817)
which means ‘red royal falcon’, red like a ruby (lāl) which is the colour of mys-
tic ardour and passionate love of God.
As far as the saint’s religious afffĳiliation is concerned, the Ismaʿilis in Sindh
and elsewhere claim him to be one of them because of his descent from Ismaʿil,
but this is disputed by most local authors as well as devotees who consider
him either as belonging to the Twelver Shia or as a Sunni because of his name.17
Other sources point out that Lal Shahbaz Qalandar was related to the bī-sharʿ
branch of the Sohravardi Sufĳi order—bī-sharʿ (‘without the religious law’)
being a simplistic label often used as a reproach of heresy and non-belief by
orthodox representatives of Islamic mysticism, and especially ascribed to the
Qalandar movement.18 Louis Massignon, however, emphasized that a qalandar
dervish was not bī-sharʿ, but a staunch ascetic practicing celibacy and living
like a hermit.19 With regard to the local perception of the saint, Boivin argues
that ‘. . . evidence indicates that the Sayyid lineages of Sehwan have cleansed
the fĳigure of La‘l Shahbāz Qalandar of unorthodox features. Mostly attached
to the Qādiriyyah, and moreover to their very respectable status in the Sindhi
Muslim society, they could have imposed a “purifĳied” tradition of Laʿl Shahbāz,
although one part was impossible to remove, the dhamāl ’.20
References to this dance and to ecstasy in general are found in the saint’s Sufĳi
poetry. Thus, in his Persian ghazals Lal Shahbaz Qalandar calls himself insight-
fully the friend of the famous martyr-mystic Mansur al-Hallaj (d. 922) sharing
his emphasis on ecstasy as a means to draw oneself closer to God.21 Therefore
the last verse of one of his ghazals is quoted most often: ‘I know nothing except
love, intoxication and ecstasy’.22 Another ghazal starts with the verses:
I am burning with the Beloved’s love, every moment.

At one moment I am writhing on dust and in the other I am dancing on thorns.
Come, O Beloved! Give me passion for music,
I dance in the open market, in the ecstasy of union.
In His love, I became infamous, but O pious one,
I do not mind this infamy for thy sake and I dance openly.
Although the world calls me a beggar because I dance,
I have a secret in my heart that impels me to dance.23
17
See Boivin, ‘Reflections’, 42.
18
Inam Mohamad, Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar of Sehwan-Sharif (Karachi: Royal Book Com-
pany, 1978), 70; and Frembgen, Journey to God, 44, 66–127 (in this study the term bī-sharʿ is used
descriptively to structure diverse religious types).
19
Louis Massignon, Essai sur les origines du lexique technique de la mystique musulmane (Paris:
Edition du Cerf, 1922), 147.
20
Boivin, ‘Reflections’, 46–7.
21
Hallaj, an extreme lover of God and a saint of intoxication (saḥw), is especially known for
his ecstatic prayers (munājāt) and being gifted by divine speech (shaṭḥ); see Herbert W. Mason,
Al-Hallaj (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1995), 27, 16.
22
Anonymous, Qalandar Lal Shahbaz (Karachi: Ferozsons [published by the Department of
Public Relations, Government of Sind], n.d.), 20; and Boivin, ‘Reflections’, 45.
23
Anonymous, Qalandar Lal Shahbaz, 19–20; and Mohamad, Hazrat Lal Shahbaz, 9–11.
This God-given secret appears to refer to existential, esoteric knowledge which

cannot be expressed in words. Lal Shahbaz Qalandar is said to have danced for
the sake of love of Ali without restraint to the beat of the drums.24 He appears to
have redefĳined the Sindhi samāʿ (mystical audition) by transforming an impor-
tant indigenous musical ritual with shamanistic elements into a specifĳic corpo-
real form of dhikr (recollection), using it also as a method of attracting people
in the process of conversion to Islam.25 In line with Hallaj, he considered music
and dance as a form of dhikr.26 With regard to its local origin dhamāl thus rep-
resents a link between the Sufĳi tradition of Islam and Indian asceticism.27
The Socio-Religious Context of dhamāl
There is a considerable range of variation in the ritual performance of dhamāl

at Sufĳi shrines. In order to analyse its complexity, variance and interdepen-
dence, I have selected two settings which are both related to the veneration
of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar marking an important facet of ‘popular’ or ‘informal’
Sufĳism. Thus my empirical observations fĳirst draw on the spectacular large-
scale performance of dhamāl at the shrine of the great Qalandar in the pilgrim-
age centre of Sehwan Sharif, and second on trance dance at the medium-sized
shrine of Shah Jamal in Lahore. Their contextual frames are public-oriented
performative events in which devotees of the Qalandar play prominent roles.
However, their variations and diffferences in terms of access, scale, space, cho-
reography and style of the dance are striking, and call for a comparison of the
respective ritual modes enacted at these places.
24
In addition, the dance of the Qalandar is explained by diffferent mythic tales, see Selsing,
‘Without Experience’, 22.
25
Boivin, ‘Note sur la danse’, 161; idem, ‘Reflections’, 65; and idem, ‘Le samaʿ ’.
26
The problem whether dhamāl can still be considered within the framework of samāʿ is dis-
cussed in more detail in Boivin, ‘Le samaʿ ’.
27
Lack of space does not allow delving deeper into questions of the origin of dhamāl here.
There might be influences or borrowings from the local African diasporic community (known as
Shidi), studied by Helene Basu (‘Theatre of Memory: Ritual Kinship Performances of the African
Diaspora in Pakistan’, in Culture, Creation, and Procreation: Concepts of Kinship in South Asian
Perspective, ed. Monika Böck and Aparna Rao [New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2000], 243–70),
or from the Balochi qwatī exorcism ritual, studied by Jean During (Musique et mystique dans les
traditions de l’Iran [Paris and Tehran: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, 1989]), but in my
view evidence is not yet sufffĳicient to support such hypotheses. On the other hand, musicolo-
gists such as Denis Erin Mete do also support the hypothesis that the Qalandar saint might have
imported the gyrating dance along with shamanistic drum rhythms from his Northwest Iranian
place of origin (personal communication, 17 March 2010).
Ritual Spaces
The main ‘locus ritualis’ for dhamāl in Pakistan is the town of Sehwan Sharif,
the fĳinal abode of the enraptured Qalandar who is said to have expressed his
intense love for God and his union with the divine through whirling and spin-
ning dance movements. The saint is fĳirst of all commemorated, praised, evoked
and honoured through dance at his proper shrine, which has two courts used
for devotional dance; the larger one, which leads from the main eastern gate to
the mausoleum, is specifĳically intended for dhamāl and has a female-gendered
space cordoned offf from the space allotted to male devotees.28 In addition to
these ritual arenas of the central shrine, trance dance is also performed at other
localities in the town such as the various dervish lodges, smaller shrines and the
sacred places commemorating Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and Ali, cousin and son-
in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, fourth Sunni caliph and fĳirst Shiite Imam.
At these places, which constitute, so to speak, ‘secondary sources of charisma’,29
and in the makeshift tents of the pilgrims, men and women related through
family and kinship ties usually belong to the same association of devotees and
share the same ritual space, but they must keep to themselves and avoid body
contact. Thus, women and men (including dervishes and habitual dancers)
maintain a general separation of genders while dancing. Among female and
male devotees the girls join their mother and female relatives and likewise
boys dance close to their father or older friends. Nevertheless, in the context of
the dance, boundaries of gendered spaces are not always clearly demarcated
and instead at times blurred and permeable. This also holds true for dhamāl
performed in the streets as part of processions in which tomb-covers are cer-
emonially carried.
According to hagiographic traditions in the Punjab, the saint Shah Jamal (d.
1639), a Sufĳi of the Sohravardi and Qadiriyya orders who was apparently not
afffĳiliated to the Qalandar movement, once became furious because of the com-
plaint of a Mughal princess. As the legend goes, he started to dance ecstatically
to the rhythm of the drum, so much so that when he reached an altered state
of rapture a multi-storeyed fortress collapsed.30 This is the reason why the saint
is particularly associated with trance dance and venerated by local malangs
(dervishes) who are also keen devotees of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. Shah Jamal’s
28
While until November 2008 there had been only a long aisle between the women and family
space on the one hand and the space for male dancers on the other (whereby male dancers and
male spectators were separated by a rope), a year later the aisle had been marked by two long
ropes separating both spaces more clearly.
29
Boivin, ‘Le pèlerinage’, 320.
30
Frembgen, The Friends of God, 94–6.
shrine is situated in the quarter of Ichhra in Lahore. Dhamāl takes place in

a courtyard situated right below the terrace of the shrine where hundreds of
devotees and spectators can be accommodated around a circle of about 10–20
dancers. The dhamāl at this shrine, which originated as a devotional practice
of dervishes dancing in a circle, is in principle an exclusively male-gendered
ritual.31 The presence of hordes of young men in the dim light of the shrine and
the common consummation of drugs generally prevent women from attend-
ing this nocturnal event.
Ritual Time
As far as the ‘tempus ritualis’ of both dhamāl events under discussion is con-
cerned, it is important to note that the ritual at the shrine of Shah Jamal in
Lahore is a weekly gathering on Thursday evening after maghrib prayers (as is
common at so many other Sufĳi shrines) which is not embedded in the frame-
work of a pilgrimage. Here the performance of drummers and dancers follows
a customary sequence of the ritual.
The shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, on the contrary, is the focus and des-
tination of the largest pilgrimage in Pakistan on the occasion of the saint’s
annual ʿurs festival (lit. ‘marriage’; a ritual marking the saint’s death and his
mystic union with God).32 This is the liminal ritual period when the power of
the respective saint is thought to flow in particular abundance. The spectrum
of pilgrims covers diverse ethnic and social groups with the majority coming
from the masses of the poor, including many Hindus from Sindh who vener-
ate Lal Shahbaz as Raja Bhartrhari, a Shivaite ascetic of the fĳifth century. In
terms of age, young male devotees constitute the largest group. Pilgrims stay
at least three days, but usually between 7–10 days at Sehwan (sometimes even
longer) including the essential period from the 19th to the 21st of the month
of Shaʿban in which the most important ceremonies take place. In the con-
text of this ziyārat (ritual visit to a shrine) pilgrims feel a permanent flow of
barakat (blessings and power to healing) within a celebrative event marked by
an emotional intensity of Dionysian character where the divine is experienced
day and night with all the senses. This is what Roger Caillois has aptly called
31
Due to the popularity of this dhamāl event, in the course of the 1990s not only people from
the elite of Lahore (including college girls), but also female expatriates started to attend the ritual.
First these ‘outsiders’ were seated in a separate corner close to the musicians, but recently a metal
cage was constructed to protect the few female spectators from the frenzy of the otherwise all-
male audience.
32
For a general impression of the multi-sensory world of this pilgrimage, see Frembgen, At
the Shrine.
the ‘intermediate rule of intoxication, exuberance and flow’ in festivals where

‘all conventional rules are temporarily dissolved’.33 The liminal ritual of trance
dance is embedded in the ‘communitas’ experiences of the pilgrims with their
heightened forms of communication sharing the attachment to the Qalandar
saint. It should be noted that, in addition to the visual spectacle of dhamāl dur-
ing the ʿurs, the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar is visited by pilgrims through-
out the year whereby trance dance is performed daily as a fundamental ritual
after maghrib prayers (with the exception of the 1st to the 10th of Muharram)
in the eastern court of the shrine.34
Performance and Aesthetics of dhamāl
Basically dhamāl can be described as a ritual dance which expresses a ‘com-

munal’, spiritual state of trance (ḥāl; or ‘presence’) or ecstasy (wajd ), in which
the subject dissolves his or her ‘self ’.35 In vernacular language the term mastī
or the formula ‘to be mast’ is much more frequently used to describe this emo-
tion of ecstatic rapture connecting the participants of the performance. Danc-
ers in Lahore and Sehwan, who I spontaneously addressed on the roadside,
described this devotional dance as ‘an expression of deep love of the Qalandar’,
‘a close link between the heart and God’, ‘an opening of the gates of paradise’,
and ‘a gift from God’. Some dervishes, with whom I discussed dhamāl, pointed
out that this dance of abandonment leads to ‘clearance of the soul’, ‘breaking
up the self ’ and thus to self-annihilation ‘making room for God’. The common
Sufĳi interpretation is that in ḥāl the moment of divine presence is realized
which opens the door to a spiritual space, where dancers, listeners and musi-
cians are united with their murshid (spiritual guide). This state is considered
to be bestowed by God, descending from him into a man’s heart, thus agency
is attributed to God only.36
The dance movements in the state of trance are essentially linked to rhythm
and ecstatic exclamations. Thus, dhamāl is also the term for the typical rhyth-
mic sequence mostly played on a barrel drum (dhōl )37 or—like in Sehwan—
33
Roger Caillois, Die Spiele und die Menschen. Maske und Rausch (Munich and Vienna: Albert
Langen Georg Müller Verlag, 1965), 97.
34
Boivin, ‘Le pèlerinage’, 334–5.
35
See Gilbert Rouget, Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and Posses-
sion (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), 26, 284. On the concepts of ḥāl
and wajd in the Sufĳi tradition see Avery, Psychology, 69–74, 26–8.
36
See Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Living Sufĳism (Lahore: Suhail Academy, 2005), 60–4.
37
The dhōl is made from shīsham (rosewood) or mango wood and both skins of this two-
headed drum from goatskin.
on large copper kettledrums (nagharō, naqqarah, nawbat).38 Thus dhamāl is

essentially linked to drumming.39 Master drummers, such as the pairs Pappu
Sain and Jhura Sain at Shah Jamal and Gunga Sain and Mithu Sain at Shah
Kamal (also a shrine in Ichhra, Lahore), use repetitive rhythmic patterns grad-
ually increasing in rapidity to create a trance-inducing state. In this way, drum
beats (with which specifĳic formulas are identifĳied) are transformed into dhikr.40
Experienced dancers point out that they hear dhikr formulas (also called bōl)
in the diffferent sequences of beats and also recite them silently or audibly
during their performance, such as:
ʿAlī, ʿAlī, ʿAlī, ḥaqq

dam mast Qalandar, dam mast Qalandar
lā ilāha illā ʾllāh
yā pāk, yā pāk
Ali, Ali, Ali, truth
Through your breath, O Qalandar intoxicated
There is no god but God
O pure one, O pure one
These hymnic formulas are essential sonic elements of the dance, uttered and
cried by dancers as well as the audience which mainly invoke God, Ali and Lal
Shahbaz Qalandar.41 In his thesis, Selsing focused on these dhikrs or bōls as a
central aspect of dhamāl in more detail, emphasizing that they are bestowed
by the saint himself in order to purify the devotee’s heart.42 In terms of the
structure of dance, ‘changes between diffferent zikrs correspond to changes
in the rhythm’.43 On 9 March 2006 I attended a dhamāl performance at Shah
38
In the Punjab dhōl-wālās usually belong to the caste-like group of Mirasis; in Sindh they
belong to the group of hereditary musicians called Manganhar (who perform, for instance, in Seh-
wan at the shrine of Bodla Bahar, but not at the main Qalandar shrine). The nawbat drummers in
Sehwan, who are also called dhamālīs, are Sindhis of the Channa and Unar caste. The rhythm they
play is: 1–2, 1–2-3, 1–2-3–4-5–6 (see Boivin, ‘Le pèlerinage’, 335).
39
Thus it is unusual and more of an exception when dhamāl is performed to the sound of
mystical qawwālī singing (e.g., at the shrine of Mian Mir in Lahore).
40
Arif, a dhamālī, who is attached to a minor shrine in Lahore where he runs the free kitchen,
complained that the other day during an ʿurs the drummers played so badly that dancers could not
get into ḥāl. Therefore it would be essential to enlist the services of master drummers (ustād).
41
In addition to invocations of the saint’s honorary names ( yā ʿAlī; mast Qalandar), the follow-
ing bōls are common: arē mast, dast bā dast; panjtān pāk ḥaydarī. For an analysis of the drumming
text in dhamāl, see Wolf, ‘Poetics’, 255–6, 260; and Selsing, ‘Without Experience’, 35–7, 53–7.
42
Selsing, ‘Without experience’, 56–7 (for additional dhikr-formulas used in Lahore, see
54–5).
43
Ibid., 54.
Jamal where Pappu Sain shouted the following dhikrs to which the dancers as
well as the crowd of spectators responded in chorus:
Allāh-hū, ḥaqq wujūd

Allāh-i mast, Mawlā-i mast
Mawlā ʿAlī, mast-i Mawlā
Allāh-i mast, ʿAlī zabardast
mast Qalandar, Jhūlē Lāl
damā dam mast Qalandar, Jhūlē Lāl
Qalandar mast, zabardast
God is One, [his] truth is eternal
Enraptured God, enraptured ‘Ali’
Master Ali, rapture of Ali
Enraptured God, Ali the powerful
Qalandar intoxicated, the ruby who rocks himself in a cradle
Through your breath, O Qalandar intoxicated—the ruby who rocks himself in a
cradle
Qalandar intoxicated, powerful
Besides this invocation of God and the saints, the initial rhythmic cycle of four
beats was later doubled to eight and sixteen in the course of the performance.
Sometimes the drum is accompanied by the metallic sound of fĳire tongs
(chimta, dast-panāh)44 or a metal rattle and accentuated by the sound of the
local oboe (shahnāʾī), dervish horn, trumpet, or conch shell. Music connois-
seurs such as Dr Ashfaq Khan from Lahore, who is widely respected within
circles of musicians, emphasizes that this instrumental trance music must be
‘round’ (gōl), without beginning and end, like whirling the head in ecstasy.45
Prerequisites for dancing to the rhythm of the dhōl are to move barefoot—
on the earth which God has spread like a carpet for man as Sufĳis used to say,
as well as a certain length of hair which supports the whirling movements of
the head. Often the adept also eats some ash from the sacred fĳire, rubs himself
with sacred oil and reverently touches the drums. Following proper etiquette,
the dancer fĳirst turns towards the saint’s tomb, crossing his arms before his
chest, thereby gently bowing and asking respectfully for permission to perform
dhamāl. Often he also touches the ground with his right hand, a gesture of
demarcating his or her dance from the complex ritual processes taking place.
In Sehwan the devotee should fĳirst, in commemoration of the ‘red Sufĳi’ Lal
Shahbaz Qalandar, tie a red thread around his right wrist before participat-
44
Jürgen Wasim Frembgen, Kleidung und Ausrüstung islamischer Gottsucher. Ein Beitrag zur
materiellen Kultur des Derwischwesens (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), 174–5, 186–7.
45
Personal communication (October 2002).
Figure 2. Enraptured dhamālī dancing to the sound of the dhōl in front of the
Qalandar shrine in Sehwan Sharif, Pakistan ( J.W. Frembgen, November 2010)
ing in dhamāl. The actual beginning of the ritual is marked by single, heavy
beats of the drum. At the end of their performance dancers in the courtyard of
Lal Shahbaz Qalandar prostrate themselves and pray in the direction of the
saint’s tomb.
Against the background of our two case-studies, in the remainder of this
section I will examine the performance and ritual structure of trance dance.
Special emphasis will be laid on the aspect of dhamāl as a multi-sensory
performing art, as a ‘fĳield of aesthetics’, on the borderline between religion

and drama which contains distinctive patterns of bodily techniques observ-
able among the protagonists of this ‘poetics of movement’.46 In this context it is
important to diffferentiate between three groups of actors which are character-
ized by overlapping categories and styles of this music-dance form:
(1) The dance of dervishes (malang/malangnī, faqīr/faqīrānī), that is to say

of mystic and ascetic seekers of God—both male and female—who are
permanently or temporarily individuals-outside-the-world; they are
classifĳied by others as bī-sharʿ (‘without the religious law’) and jalālī
(incorporating an awe-inspiring emotional state).47
(2) The dance of dhamālīs, that is to say of dedicated and experienced
dancers—both male and female—who are part of the shrine culture
and sometimes earn a living from performing in public. Apart from part-
time performers (shawqīn dhamālīs), full-time dancers over the years
often turn into malangs or faqīrs, and are respectfully called sāʾīṅ.
(3) The dance of devotees, that is to say of male and female laymen who
are only temporarily—during pilgrimages and ritual gatherings
(ziyārat)—in that liminal, outwordly state of an intense relation to God
and the saints.
I want to emphasize that these distinctions between dervishes, dhamālīs and

devotees, which are aimed to focus on their performing activities, are not clear-
cut, but in fact fluctuating, and should therefore not be understood as a form of
classifĳication. It should be mentioned that the devotees’ dhamāl is nowadays
often influenced by the popular fĳilmī dhamāl of folk singers and dancing girls
which is likewise influenced by mundane Punjabi bhangra dance.48
46
In principle, what I prefer to call a ‘fĳield of aesthetics’ (including the aesthetic features of a
saint’s shrine and the dress of dervishes) corresponds to Richard K. Wolf ’s concept of ‘poetics’ of
music and movement in South Asian Sufĳi practice (Wolf, ‘Poetics’).
47
Boivin, ‘Le samaʿ ’, 308.
48
I wish to add that attention should also be paid to the distinctive performance style of
the local Shidi population (descendants of former African slaves and soldiers) in Sindh and the
Makran coast with its spacious body movements, high jumps and hurling arms (observations in
July 2010 in Sehwan). Shidi generally use the term dhamāl or their indigenous term goma for their
ritual dances in the context of the veneration of saints (see Helene Basu, Habshi-Sklaven, Sidi-
Fakire. Muslimische Heiligenverehrung im westlichen Indien [Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1994],
49). Also, see Boivin, ‘Note sur la danse’, 165.
Dancing Dervishes
The peculiar whirling dance regularly performed in Sehwan Sharif is charac-

teristic for the red-robed dervishes ( faqīrs) attached to Bodla Bahar, the most
beloved disciple of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar.49 Their form of spinning devotion,
which is specifĳically known as lāl phērī (lit. ‘whirling of the red’, ‘red rotation’)
or chakrī (lit. ‘gyrating’) and thought to be practiced for centuries, has the char-
acter of a sacred mimesis and spiritual exercise venerating the movements of
the great Qalandar so as to attain a vision of the spiritual master.50 Moreover
according to local oral dervish lore, the latter inherited this dance tradition
from Ali, who, after being proclaimed by the Prophet Muhammad as his right-
ful successor, in a gesture of confĳirmation and out of joy is said to have whirled
three times around his own axis. Lāl phērī is performed daily in the evening in
the courtyard of Bodla Bahar’s shrine to the sound of the kettledrums in which
about 10–25 male dancers stand in three or four rows in the courtyard facing
the tomb of the saint. A few simple dance steps (fĳirst the right foot is placed to
the front, then the left one, wherefrom the dancers raise both arms) alternate
with spinning around to the right. As a form of dhikr characterised by circu-
lar movements, it is reminiscent of the well-known Persian mystical motif of
moths fluttering around the flame, an analogy frequently activated by word or
deed as mentioned by Wolf.51 Sayyid Asif Ali Zaidi from Lahore, who occasion-
ally does dhamāl, claimed that it has ‘a liberating efffect, getting rid of all the
dirt’ and compared its efffect to ‘a soul which like a bird wants to be set free
from its cage’.52 After the spinning, all dancers prostrate themselves and then
form two long rows, standing shoulder-to-shoulder while praying litany-like
invocations to Ali and other saints. The dervish ritual ends with a ceremonial
form of greeting.
Participation in this form of ritual action at Bodla Bahar is in principle
exclusivist in the sense that only faqīrs initiated into the Qalandar tradition
(through ritually shaving their hair, eyebrows, etc.) and wearing the proper
bell-shaped red frock belong to the group of performers.53 Nevertheless, a
few common devotees at times also participate by dancing in the last row.
Even female devotees are free to dance towards the side of this otherwise
49
On the specifĳic groups of world-renouncers in Sehwan Sharif, see Boivin, ‘Le pèlerinage’,
328–31.
50
On the spinning of dervishes and other movements in Sufĳi dance, see During, Musique et
extase, 125–34.
51
Wolf, ‘Poetics’, 259.
52
Conversation in Sehwan on 30 July 2010.
53
On the ritual initiation among Qalandar dervishes see Frembgen, Journey to God, 89–90.
male-dominated space The dervish robe in red, the symbolic colour of the
Qalandar, marks the ritual identity of the performers. Their flowing, gyrat-
ing movements in abandonment are often gradually increased and raised to
the level of divine attraction ( jadhb), fĳinally achieving the trance state of ḥāl,
but always convey the impression that the dancer masterfully controls his or
her dhamāl. Nevertheless, the visual Gestalt of their structured dance appears
Dionysian and wild in comparison, for instance, with the perfect harmony of
the well-regulated Mevlevi ritual. On every new moon and on the 27th of each
lunar month the dervishes of Bodla Bahar also perform at the shrine of the
Qalandar where they dance in front of all the other dancers cordoned offf from
them by a rope.
Then there are individual dervishes of the malang-type who do not per-
form collectively within a group, but celebrative their own distinct style. For
instance, at Sehwan I observed the spinning dance of a rather portly elderly
malangnī who is known as Lal Pari Mastani.54 During one of the daily ritual
performances (on 7 November 2008) in the eastern dhamāl court of the main
Figure 3. Devotional dhamāl dance at the shrine of Bodla Bahar in Sehwan

Sharif, Pakistan ( J.W. Frembgen, November 2007)
54
William Dalrymple portrayed her recently in a literary essay about Sehwan (Nine Lives: In
Search of the Sacred in Modern India [London: Bloomsbury, 2009], 119–22, 125–32, 140–5).
Qalandar shrine, she rotated with full vigour, her red robe swinging like a bell
around her, whereby her mace-like stafff and her patched bag (both worn on
her back) acted as a counter-weight intensifying the whirling movement. She
performed with complete control of her body movements.
In addition to lāl phērī, Qalandar dervishes also dance in a more individual
way with an emphasis on stamping the feet on the ground. The latter intensi-
fĳies the sound of the large bells, occasionally worn around the waist, and of the
rattling ankle-bells (ghungrūs). I have been told that in ecstasy, dervishes may
even, in rare cases, tear their garments to pieces. Such a frenzied dance was,
for instance, masterfully performed by Saqi Baba on the beginning of a musi-
cal gathering organised in honour of Sayyid Mehdi Raza Shah Sabzwari, the
guardian of the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, during the latter’s ʿurs on 11
August 2009 in Sehwan Sharif. The red-robed dervish combined spinning with
stamping the ground as well as other dramatic actions mimetically re-enacting
the sufffering of the Shiite Imam Zain ul-Abidin in Karbala who is considered to
be one of the ancestors of the Qalandar saint. Saqi Baba, an impressive dervish
with matted hair in his fĳifties, was born in Gujar Khan (Punjab) and spent his
initial seven-year period as a candidate to become a malang of the Qalandar in
Pakpattan. During other nightly performances, I observed that dervishes occa-
sionally raised their burning hashish pipe in a celebrative mood. Dervishes like
Amir Husain, the well-known nāg-wālā faqīr from Sehwan, perform entranced,
presenting the construction of ten wood-carved snakes (nāg) impressively
draped around his body, stamping on the ground, raising one of the snakes
and occasionally blowing his horn. There are also dervishes who perform lāl
phērī carrying bells attached to their whole body.
Dancing dhamālīs
At both settings, in Sehwan as well as at Shah Jamal in Lahore, experienced

dancers called dhamālīs perform under a ritual leader (for instance a malang)
and in close coordination with the drummers. At Shah Jamal, the weekly event
of trance music and dance in the lower courtyard is dominated by the main
dhōl player Pappu Sain, who directs and controls the dancers’ movements
through the hypnotic strokes of his drum. The dancers follow his rhythmic pat-
tern (thekah), so to speak the heartbeat of the drum consisting of four, eight
or sixteen beats. Wolf further explains: ‘. . . drummers create interest for the
dancers by inserting breaks (torā) and tripartite cadences (tiyās) as well as
other patterned gaps in the otherwise thick texture of strokes’.55 Together with
55
Wolf, ‘Poetics’, 255.
his co-drummer Jhura Sain, Pappu thus creates a pulsing space in which the
dancers move ecstatically: whirling, jumping, and stamping their feet on the
ground, anticipating and responding to the drummers’ rhythmic articulations.
Wild movements, caprioles and abrupt leaps are said to reflect the jalālī nature
of the saints of the Qalandar tradition, that is to say their majesty and frighten-
ing power, reflecting an attribute of God, whereas the body language is gentler
in the case of saints who are said to embody the ‘beauty of God’ ( jamāl). Wolf
aptly emphasizes that ‘these forms of musical and kinaesthetic synchronicity,
coming together, are critically valued from the artistic perspective of some par-
ticipants’.56 Swirling their long hair creates a further aesthetic dimension in
addition to the rhythmic patterns of body movements.
The dancers visually dominate the performance and attract the attention
of the audience. In addition to the musicians, they are the key actors in this
nocturnal ritual at Shah Jamal. The choreography is dramatic not only when
the lead drummer starts spinning and rotating in the middle of the dance
floor, ceaselessly beating his drum, but especially when a dhamālī instinctively
reacts to the sound of the dhōl, sensually nestles against it, as if in intimate
embrace, and then both dancer and drummer accelerate to an ecstatic run.57
In comparison to the enraptured dance of the dervishes, dhamālīs specifĳically
indulge in the frenzy of ecstasy ( jadhb), seeking its utmost peak. As I observed
at Sehwan and at Shah Jamal, their ḥāl is often induced through drugs (hashish,
opium). Accomplished dhamālīs are brilliant in their individual kinaesthetic
style dancing with instinctive assurance. At Sehwan, for instance, I observed a
sturdy younger woman, with a shawl draped around her upper body, her eyes
almost closed, who gyrated for a full hour, at times swirling her long hair and
rotating her head at such a speed that I could hardly distinguish between head
and hair—virtually like a spinning top. She alternated this gyration with a par-
ticular fĳigurative choreography, namely spreading her arms like a cross, then
bending her body forwards and moving her arms like a flying bird—obviously
mimetically enacting the image of her beloved Qalandar saint miraculously
flying like a ‘royal falcon’ (shāhbāz).
A particular ecstatic circling movement which I only observed among
dhamālīs is rotating the head in frenzy, virtually like the head of a drill in
motion.58 This is commonly known as sar kā dhamāl. At Sehwan, one of the
56
Ibid., 248.
57
Frembgen, Nocturnal Music, 78.
58
During comments on this whirling with the head: ‘Il est possible que le mouvement rotatoire
de la tête, accompagné d’une respiration rythmique créant par sa cadence rapide une hyperven-
tilation, produise des dérèglements de l’oreille interne, qui, se combinant aux efffets de la respira-
tion forte, engendrent un état de stupeur ou d’obnubilation’ (During, Musique et extase, 159).
most accomplished trance dancers in this respect is the young, about twenty
to twenty-fĳive-year-old Abdul Qayyum who has been dancing since the age of
six. Born into a Pashtun family in a small town in Baluchistan, he lives now per-
manently in a dervish lodge in Sehwan while his parents live in Karachi. While
whirling his head, he occasionally performed diffferent habitual gestures, such
as raising his arms, pointing his right index-fĳinger into the air and beating his
chest with his right hand in the Shiite gesture of mātam.59 When I observed
him a year later, he had added a new movement to his repertoire of bodily
actions, namely explosively shooting his arms in the air to the rapidly whip-
ping rhythm of the drums.60 Another year later he had further enhanced his
performance style through an occasional half turn as well as explosively shoot-
ing his arms forward. Both movements served as a break to control the trance
and to complete an ecstatic part of it. In December 2011 he added several spins
of utmost rapidity at the climax of his spectacular performance.
Another example of outstanding individual agency as well as performance
art in dhamāl is the respected dancer Muhabbat Sain at Shah Jamal in Lahore:
dressed in a loincloth and a long black shirt, he remained in a standing position
almost like a statue, only his head spinning in frenzy and at times swinging his
arms and hands.61 He stood in the middle of the circle representing the axis,
the rest of the dancers rapidly moving around him. This magnifĳicent dhamālī,
whose real name is Haq Nawaz, is around seventy years old, had been married
with fĳive children and is long since the care-taker of a small shrine in Kainchi,
Lahore. In his youth he acted for some time in Punjabi fĳilms. He told me that
he learned sar kā dhamāl at a young age from his elder brother.
The dhamāl at Shah Jamal is only partly inclusive in the sense that untrained
neophytes in the circle of experienced dancers, who try to mingle with them,
quickly realize that they are hardly able to dance within the congested space.
They might even fall and disturb others, therefore most of them drop out soon,
if they dare to step into the arena at all. Staggering dancers, who are unable to
59
Observations on 7 and 8 November 2008.
60
Observations on 15, 16, 17, 19 and 20 October 2009. Older Sehwanis tend to denounce such
kind of dance movements as ‘disco-style’.
61
Observation on 9 March 2006 (Frembgen, Nocturnal Music, 80–1). On 5 November 2009,
I met Muhabbat Sain again at the shrine of Shah Kamal (the younger brother of Shah Jamal)
in Lahore where he did sar kā dhamāl, but due to his advanced age he was no longer able of
mastering the whirling movements. The weekly Thursday night event at Shah Kamal, which had
been started in Spring 2009, turns out to be a pastiche of drumming, singing qaṣīdas and dhamāl.
Trance ritual has thus been transformed into religious entertainment and merriment. Rune Sels-
ing, who selected this ritual space as the basis for his research on dhamāl, critically questions
the business of dhamāl and the ‘self-branding’ of dhamālīs in the context of a discussion of ritual
ossifĳication and the decline of ritual as well as the growing New Age appeal (Selsing, ‘Without
Experience’, 74–7, 89–92).
control their trance and to align themselves with others, are rudely removed
from the circle either by an older malang or by the leading drummer. The
same treatment awaits frauds who just try to show offf or otherwise behave
improperly.62 Thus, responsible ritual experts take care that the pattern of per-
formance remains structured and its quality ensured. That means there should
be a ‘somatic mode of attention’ among dancers in relation to other bodies
while they form a collective body.63 In fact, as I frequently observed at Shah
Jamal, experienced dhamālīs and malangs (such as Baba Firuz Sain) dance
with closed or almost closed eyes, instinctively responding to each other’s
movements. Firuz is a charismatic, saint-like Pathan with long hair, now about
sixty-fĳive years old, who had long been respected as the most accomplished
dancer at Shah Jamal, and who always used to dance with ghungrūs. When I
visited him on 19 March 2010, he told me that he had been working for years
as an oilman at Lahore airport, but that he would now earn his living by trans-
porting vegetables on a donkey cart. Dancing dhamāl since his youth, he is also
a gifted singer of qalandrī songs. Many years ago he became the care-taker of a
shrine in Kot Lakhpat, a lower class area on the periphery of Lahore. Although
married with one son and one daughter, he lives alone in his dervish lodge
at a graveyard in the same locality. A couple of years ago he stopped dancing
because of his age.
Arif Sain is one of those respected malangs who has the authority to super-
vise the dhamāl; he also mingles with the dancers and contributes to the aes-
thetics of the performance not only by blowing his horn at times, but also
through his sheer presence as a dervish in traditional robe with patchwork
cap.64 Similarly, the long-haired drummer Pappu Sain wears an ankle-length
garment and several necklaces.65 While mostly playing with his co-drummer
at the edge of the circle facing the shrine, at an advanced state of the trance
session he himself moves into the centre of the arena and circles around with
small toddling steps, followed by the dhamālīs, thereby shouting bōls invoking
God, Ali and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. Audience and dancers alternately respond
to these formulas. Pappu himself gradually works himself into the state of
ḥāl.66 His fĳinal spinning while steadily and competently playing the heavy dhōl,
which flies horizontally in front of him through the power of rotation, marks
62
Wolf, ‘Poetics’, 256–7.
63
Thomas J. Csordas, Body, Meaning, Healing (New York: Palgrave, 1993), 244–5; see also Chris-
toph Wulf, ‘Anthropologische Dimensionen des Tanzes’, in Tanz als Anthropologie, ed. Gabriele
Brandsteller and Christoph Wulf (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2007), 123.
64
See Frembgen, The Friends of God, 3; and idem, At the Shrine, 37–9, 89–91.
65
For biographic data on Pappu Sain, see Wolf, ‘Poetics’, 249.
66
See ibid., 254.
the sonic-visual climax of the event. The dramatic efffect can even be increased
when a second person puts his arms around the drummer’s neck from behind,
thus flying and gyrating on the back of the musician like a counter-weight to
the drum. Such an acrobatic and spectacular performance, which I had the
chance to observe at the ʿurs of Baba Bullhe Shah on 26 August 2004 in Kasur
(performed there by the rather frail Bijli Sain, a drummer from Lahore), is part
of the drummer’s training by his master. Another spectacular efffect is when
the drummer holds his heavy instrument only with his teeth while continuing
to play and whirl.
Among the dhamālīs, who perform with drummers at Sehwan and during
melās at other shrines, are mostly young, single males as well as young and
middle-aged females. The latter are usually members of small groups under the
leadership of a malang. For their performance these male or female dhamālī
entertainers receive a share of the donations given by onlookers to the main
drummer, or cash is showered on them in the traditional gesture of vel; at times
they are also paid in kind (for example hashish). Similarly, professional nāch-
wālīs (dancing girls and prostitutes from the Kanjar-caste) and gharvī-wālīs
(women, often speaking Marwari, who belong to peripatetic groups and play
on a small metal pot) also perform for money. Offfering cash to dancers is con-
sidered auspicious for the donor. Drawing on Grimes’s modes of ritual sensibil-
ities, the dance of these dhamālīs might have a pragmatic component, yet this
does not exclude deep feelings of devotion.67 Those dancers, who are labelled
by devotees as ‘true’, ‘full-time’ dhamālīs, however, rarely dance for money,
but in abandonment for the saints and for God. They frequently identify with
and become malangs/malangnīs or are identifĳied as enraptured mastānas/
mastānīs. Male dhamālīs emphasize that long hair (called jōg) is indispens-
able for real dhamāl and that dedicated dancers should in any case also wear
ankle bells.
Dancing Devotees
Contrary to the gatherings at Shah Jamal, Sehwan vibrates with dhamāl per-
formances which are open for everybody. Particularly during the ʿurs day and
night a unique soundscape is created with the rhythm of drums continuously
overlapping. Here dhamāl is a collective ritual taking place within various
67
Grimes, Beginnings, 41. Selsing also considers the issues of sincerity and authenticity con-
cluding that ‘. . . to the practitioners of dhamāl “belief ” cannot be seen as some separate pure
realm of the sacred in opposition to something profane; “belief ” rather constitutes an activity in
the world. To dhamāl practitioners it is not a matter of belief or unbelief but rather of “doing it
right” ’ (‘Without Experience’, 97).
circles of drummers and dancers. Apart from performances in the two courts of
the central shrine, dances are arranged spontaneously at any place within the
precincts of the holy town. At times men and women dance side by side within
a group of devotees.
While visiting the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar several times,68 I was able
to study this context of dhamāl in detail whereby I could diffferentiate distinc-
tive kinaesthetic styles and ‘techniques of the body’ among male and female
devotees. As to the fĳirst, dhamāl is predominantly performed by men, whose
dance, in comparison to women, appears more conventional, patterned/
choreographed and routinized. Often, they dance collectively in a group (some-
times of 20–40 persons), their faces and bodies all turned towards the saint’s
tomb. Men move with ‘restrained unrestrained’ to quote an expression coined
by the German anthropologist W.E. Mühlmann. Usually they dance with their
arms raised and elbow-angled—a central gesture attributed to Ali, who is ven-
erated as the pivotal and founding fĳigure of the Sufĳi tradition.69 Occasionally
both index fĳingers are pointed towards the sky, hands are placed together in
the prayer gesture of supplication (duʿā) or both thumbs are placed at the ear-
lobes in the traditional gesture of repentance (tawba). Further characteristic
body movements include swinging the head rapidly from right to left, which
can be intensifĳied to whirling and is a method to induce trance, as well as bal-
ancing from right to left and toddling backwards and forwards with short steps
in tune with the rhythm of the dhōl. There is also room for devotees to difffer
from this rather structured repetitious pattern of dhamāl and to dance indi-
vidually in a wild, frenzied and feverish way with abrupt leaps.
As to the second, there are very few shrines in Pakistan where women are
traditionally allowed to join in dhamāl.70 During the ʿurs in Sehwan their style of
dhamāl appears not only more varied and idiosyncratic, but also more impul-
sive and eccentric in comparison to men. Their dance typically starts with one
arm akimbo and with the other hand opening their long, tied hair. The latter
can be interpreted as part of the embodied self which is now presented in pub-
lic. Overpowered by the presence of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, women literally
‘sweep’ the floor of the shrine with their hair swinging in a circle while sitting
on the ground, kneeling or standing with their upper body bowed forwards.
While many women whirl with their hair, covering themselves after their
trance, others are conscious never to let their shawl slip down; thus, there is
a dialogue going on between covering (or concealment) and uncovering. In
68
See note 8 above.
69
During, Musique et extase, 126.
70
Women also join, for instance, in the dhamāl at the shrine of Shah Abdul Latif in Sindh
(Rehman, ‘Sacred Spaces’, 141).
addition to the movements mentioned above for male devotees, women ‘go
into ḥāl’ or ‘play ḥāl’ (ḥāl khēlnā) by gracefully waving their arms wide and
sweepingly, making circling gestures with their hands and fĳingers, swinging
their hips, gradually going into spinning with their whole body (either to the
right or to the left). Having thus gone into ḥāl they may increase their trance
through rotating their head, pirouetting with their body, jumping and other
frenetic and spontaneous movements. The intense sensual expression of their
body moving in abandonment has a strong erotic appeal to men who magneti-
cally flock around them. Thus dhamāl can at times turn into a sexually explicit
performance and overt expression of female sexuality.71
During a long performance which I observed in the early morning on 5 Octo-
ber 2004 in the southern court of the shrine, female spectators sitting on the
Figure 4. Female devotees dancing dhamāl in Sehwan Sharif, Pakistan (Salman

Zaidi, August 2009)
71
Frembgen, At the Shrine, 51–7, 117–24.
ground formed an inner half circle around the dancing women (about 8–12),
protecting and shielding them from the standing male audience. The danc-
ers moved within an oval, later in a circle. Policemen frequently pushed back
male onlookers threatening them with batons, thus ensuring ‘ordered spatiality’.
Ecstatic behaviour is always ‘conducted’ and controlled in the sense that non-
dancing women (often relatives) or dervishes act as custodians preventing
improper behaviour by men, and possible indecent exposure by the dancers.
In contrast to malangnīs and female dhamālīs, women observing seclusion in
their daily lives and staying at home are called ghar-wālīs. The latter usually
start their dance with soft and stately movements, getting into ḥāl at a slower
pace than experienced dhamālīs. Obviously, there is individual variation in
trance dance according to each dancer’s temperament and state of rapture.
Female devotees sometimes try to remain covered, and if the veil slips from
their head and upper body, a relative will throw it over her if possible. But, as
whirling and gyrating are essential for real ḥāl, a shawl for covering is not prac-
tical and therefore sooner or later shed to the ground. After their dhamāl, how-
ever, women immediately cover themselves with a veil when they leave the
circle of dancers. Thus, morality seems as much contextual as normative.
The fact that the performance of all dancers is spatially oriented towards
the tomb of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar creates a particular magical and aesthetic
power.72
Embodied Ritual Attitudes
In accordance with the variety of its protagonists, that is to say dervishes,

dhamālīs and devotees, dhamāl is multi-functional, referring to diffferent levels
and horizons of motivation, activity and meaning. Insofar as trance dance is a
medium of communication with the divine, its dominant theme is individual
devotion (ʿaqīdat) expressed by a particular gestural performance. But before
investigating this notion of devotionalism in relation to dhamāl, I will fĳirst
apply Grimes’s analytical framework of diffferentiating modes of ritual sensi-
bilities in the light of my ethnographic data.
For dervishes, who are not only the most devoted followers of Lal Shahbaz
Qalandar and his disciple Bodla Bahar, but also those who carry on the antino-
mian tradition of these saints, lāl phērī and dhamāl are ultimate forms of ven-
eration, expressing praise of their beloved saint and longing to spiritually unite
72
See David Parkin, ‘Ritual as Spatial Direction and Bodily Division’, in Understanding Rituals,
ed. Daniel de Coppet (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 17.
with God—the central theme of the Sufĳi tradition time and again expressed in
poetry. As travellers on the spiritual path to God seeking ‘unio mystica’, trance
dance is for them crossing a threshold between this world and the next, and
thus a ritual of transcendence. For Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, this whirling dance
had been a way to unite with God, that is to say a ‘communal’ trance.73 By imi-
tating the Qalandar’s exemplary gyration, the dervish dance bears the charac-
ter of a mythical movement, thus re-enacting the saint’s union with God. In
this way, through mimesis in ritual practice, liturgical power is conveyed to
the dervish dancers.
Habitual dancers, such as those performing at Shah Jamal, are in a sort of
intermediate position between mystics and devotees, some living a dervish
life, for instance as custodians of small shrines or as peripatetic malangs and
faqīrs; others do menial jobs and dedicate their life to dhamāl, thereby becom-
ing experienced dancers. It seems that many of them seek ecstasy and intoxi-
cation for its own sake, that they focus on the rapidity of movements, on frenzy
and the virtuosity of mastering their ecstatic state acquired through constant
practice. Addressing similar contexts, the Islamicist and historian of religion
Rudolf Gelpke mentioned ‘diffferences in the extent of rapture’ (Gradunter-
schiede der Entrückung), diffferentiating between a ‘lower’ preliminary stage
and a ‘higher’ level,74 whereby the former would be identifĳied with devotees
and in part with dhamālīs and the later with dervishes and advanced dhamālīs.
It should be added that many of the dhamālīs habitually drink bhang, the green
‘spiritual liquid’ made of cannabis, or smoke hashish. When I talked in Sehwan
to dancing girls, prostitutes and khusrās (people of the ‘third gender’), who
also receive monetary remuneration for performing dhamāl, they explained
that through trance dance they would purify themselves and seek solace from
the burden of their sins.75 Also, several male dhamālīs in Sehwan, who wish to
remain anonymous, confĳided to me that they would dance out of penance for
grave sins they had committed earlier in their lives (such as criminal deeds and
even murder). The modes of embodied attitudes expressed by dhamālīs are
predominantly aesthetic, theatrical, spectacular, playful and erotic, but at the
same time often also achievement-oriented. For these dancers in particular,
dhamāl forms and constitutes their identity.
For common pilgrims, dhamāl is a customary, stereotyped and ritualized,
but also intensely celebrative form of annually expressing their veneration of
73
Boivin, ‘Note sur la danse’, 161; see also Rouget, Music and Trance, 26, 284.
74
Rudolf Gelpke, Drogen und Seelenerweiterung (Munich: Kindler, 1975), 213–14.
75
Without going into further detail, it should be noted that the main features of the dhamāl
style as performed by khusrās are exalted whirling with their long hair and swaying with their
hips.
the saint, receiving a vision of the great Qalandar, communicating with him
and seeking to be close to him. In addition, many devotees and also a number
of dhamālīs explain that they perform the devotional dance as an offfering in
connection with a wish and vow (mannat) uttered in prayers of supplication.
Ghar-wālīs, for instance, expect fertility as a practical outcome of dhamāl per-
formed during the ʿurs. They also dance when their husband or son had been
imprisoned, as dhamāl is considered magically efffective to free them. Further
desires and motivations for vows are healing, economic prosperity and seek-
ing solutions for other difffĳiculties in life. If a petition has been granted with
the help of the saint, if the devotee receives dreams and visions of the saint, he
or she again expresses his or her gratitude through dancing. One might say a
devotee has struck a ‘deal’ with the respective saint whereby dance becomes
an offfering. Thus, the modes of ritual sensibilities enacted in the dhamāl of
devotees are magic in tandem with ritualization, but deeply impregnated by
the overall festive mood of the pilgrimage.
The nodal point of these embodied attitudes expressed in dhamāl is a loving
kind of devotion to the ‘friend of God’ whose blessedness (barakat) is trans-
ferred to those who venerate him through their trance dance.76 In the words
of a male pilgrim from Lahore: ‘Nobody would dare to enter the sacred city
of Sehwan and do dhamāl without being overwhelmed by love for the Qalan-
dar!’ This shows that devotion is a basic attitude, a kind of prerequisite before
expressing individual desires at the saint’s abode.
Habitual dancers, such as dervishes and dhamālīs, mimetically perform the
dance in reference to the martyr-mystic Hallaj who danced in abandonment in
his chains when he was led to the gallows (this tradition is also reflected in Per-
sian verses attributed to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar). According to Shiite tradition,
dhamāl is said to symbolise the sufffering of Imam Zain ul-Abidin77 and Bibi
Zainab, Shiite saints who survived the tragedy of Karbala after the martyrdom
of Imam Husain. The explanations for the movements of the dhamāl in Sehwan
given by devout Shiites is that the Imam had to walk with heavy iron chains in
small steps tripping with his bare feet on the glowing hot sand of the desert,
his head bowed down by the weight of a heavy heart-shaped stone put around
76
It should be emphasized that dhamāl also functions as a therapeutic ritual particularly for
women (apparently many of them are Baloch). The ritual takes place within a regulated, gender-
segregated performance in the eastern dhamāl court of the shrine. This confĳiguration as religious
trance and therapy cult in the fĳield of spirit possession needs detailed fĳield-research in Sehwan
Sharif as well as at other specialised healing shrines in Sindh. See Boivin, ‘Reflections’, 62; and
idem, ‘Note sur la danse’, 163–4. Unfortunately, limitation of space in this article does not permit
examination of this particular type of trance dance in the context of spirit possession.
77
Boivin, ‘Le samaʿ’, 318.
his neck.78 He raised both his arms to God in a gesture of supplication. His
movements are not only imitated by habitual dancers, but in particular by the
Sayyids of the diffferent dervish lodges of Sehwan during the three main days
of the ʿurs when they dance in a very formalised and disciplined way follow-
ing the scripted expression of ritual visitation of the saint’s tomb. Bibi Zainab,
whose arms were bound to her back, is said to have let her hair down in order
to avoid the gaze of her male tormentors when they snatched her veil from
her head. This distinct style of the Zaynabī dhamāl is therefore a form of ritual
mourning. Both saints, Zain ul-Abidin and Bibi Zainab, are important fĳigures
of Shiite collective memory and serve as role models for male and female devo-
tees. Their movements are mimetically enacted by tripping from right to left
like the Imam (or through carrying chains in the case of Shiite dervishes) and
whirling with open hair like Bibi Zainab. For Shia followers of the Qalandar,
these dance movements are therefore sanctifĳied representing ‘authentic’, ‘true’
dhamāl. The evocation of Shiite saints shows how ‘images of the past are con-
veyed and sustained by (more or less) ritual performances’.79 Thus, for those
Shia who are aware of these specifĳic traditions, dhamāl constantly evokes what
Paul Connerton has aptly called a ‘bodily social memory’ whereby the body is
transformed into a site of memory.80 Drawing both on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion
of ‘habitus’ and Marcel Mauss’s concept of ‘techniques of the body’, Connerton
further explains that body memory is ‘habit-memory’. This analytical category
helps to explain the importance of learning and successfully performing a
spiritual discipline and technique such as dhamāl. For habitual dancers invok-
ing Imam Zain ul-Abidin and Bibi Zainab is in line with their attachment to
Ali and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (who is considered a descendant of the Shiite
Imams). Both, Ali and the great Qalandar, are essential mediators whose pres-
ence is felt through whirling the body in a state of rapture.81
Within the Qalandar tradition, this ecstatic rapture is commonly known as
mastī which is the central emotion of dhamāl ritual. Mastī means the mystic
78
This stone in the shape of a heart had later been inherited by Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and is
preserved to this day as his most precious relic at his tomb.
79
Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 38.
80
Ibid., 71. From the numerous Shiite practitioners of dhamāl whom I asked this question
about the mythological-mimetic background of the dance, I learned that only a minority had a
consistent and coherent knowledge of this ritual tradition.
81
See Abbas, The Female Voice, 26 (also famous folk melodies, such as mast Qalandar, are
addressed both to Ali and the Qalandar). Concerning the concept of mastī, see Jürgen Wasim
Frembgen, ‘Charisma and the Holy Fool: Gul Mastān Bābā, the Enraptured, saint of Udaipur’, in
Sufĳi Traditions and New Departures: Recent Scholarship on Continuity and Change in South Asian
Sufĳism, ed. Soeren Christian Lassen and Hugh van Skyhawk (Islamabad: Taxila Institute of Asian
Civilization, 2008), 156–8.
ardour of love to God, ‘where analytical thinking is switched offf ’ as formu-

lated by a young, well-educated performer from Lahore.82 It is a devotional,
blissfully experienced divine love (ʿishq) and absorption in spirituality which is
expressed by all Punjabi and Sindhi Sufĳi saints in their poetry. To cultivate this
ʿishq is the veritable core of the whirling dance. Thus a female dancer, inter-
viewed by the anthropologist Omar F. Kasmani in Sehwan, explained that she
performed dhamāl not only following the order of her spiritual guide Lal Shah-
baz Qalandar, but even for the Prophet Muhammad. When asked how she
would do this, she responded: ‘That too happens in his ʿishq, all of this is about
ʿishq. It all depends on ʿishq. One who has more ʿishq will do more dhamāl’.83
Concerning the rapture of mastī, the same female dhamālī described: ‘I’m mov-
ing in my mastī. From one end there is mastī, from the other I’m doing dhamāl,
so I don’t know how I appear then, good, bad or whatever. I do not know. But
it is fact that everybody tells me that “your dhamāl is very pretty”. My husband
himself tells me “your dhamāl is very beautiful”.84
Part of the formal aesthetic elements of dhamāl are specifĳic gestures of
devotion, such as touching the ground with the right hand, turning towards
the saint’s tomb with both hands raised, touching and kissing the drum, raising
one’s hands above in an imploring way, folding them and spreading them as
if praying duʿā. Ecstatically spinning the head turns into an embodied prayer
offfered by the ‘lover’ (ʿāshiq) to his ‘beloved’ (maʿshūq). A striking example of
this is Baba Ilm ud-Din’s dhamāl performance at the small shrine of his fore-
father Ditta Sain (d. 1991) in Lahore (Miani graveyard) when he stands whirl-
ing fĳirst at the foot of the tomb, then continues supporting himself with both
hands on the cenotaph and fĳinally sweeps it with his long hair, thereby almost
lying on the tomb. Baba Firuz Sain from Lahore, the renowned dervish-cum-
dhamālī, referred in one of our conversations (19 March 2010) to this kind of
ritual performances when he aptly called dhamāl the ‘prayer of the dervish’
(darwēsh kī namāz). Of course, this also holds true for dhamālīs as well as for
common devotees. Personal ardent devotion is articulated by similar gestures
at tombs in the main courtyard in Sehwan. Devotees emphasize that the heart
should have a relation to God; only then dhamāl could be considered a form of
ʿibādat (worship of God) and only then could they be emotionally absorbed in
Lal Shahbaz Qalandar.
82
Conversation with Usman Raja in Sehwan on 13 August 2009.
83
Omar F. Kasmani, ‘De-centering Devotion: The Complex Subject of Sehwan Sharif ’
(M.A. thesis, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations, Aga Khan University, London, 2009),
114, 116.
84
Ibid., 138.
The latter’s shrine in Sehwan in particular is an example of the diversity of

religious denominations, ethnicities, gender and social statuses. There dhamāl
belongs to the shared devotional practices typical for shrines in Sindh where
Hindus and even Christians join Muslim pilgrims. As far as their performance
style is concerned, the only ritual gesture typical for Hindus is the gesture of
worship with folded hands (aṅjali-mudrā) at the beginning of the dance; Chris-
tians, on the other hand, spread their arms in mimesis of Jesus at the cross.85
Dimensions of Experience and Agency
Trance dance creates a space to express emotions through the idiom of rapture
and devotion to a Sufĳi saint. In the discourse on rituals the question has been
formulated if this is a spontaneous, individual emotion, an articulation of feel-
ings in a raw state, or something that Stanley Tambiah has called an ‘attitude
of feelings’.86 He thinks of the expression of an emotional-cultural pattern, of
the performance of conventional gestures of behaviour which refer to feel-
ings. Scholars investigating theatrical performances have critically questioned
whether ritual performers are not simply fulfĳilling the expectations of partici-
pants and spectators through a playful ‘doing-as-if ’.87 Part of this perspective is
the important aspect of mimesis, in our context the re-enactment of the body
movements of saints through dhamāl, referred to in the previous section. Nev-
ertheless, at the sacred places discussed here devotional dance appears not as
something pretended, deceptive or inauthentic; it is rather that aesthetic theat-
rical performativity with mythic connotations marks the scripted expressions88
of the dervishes (as well as of the Sayyids of Sehwan), spectacular performativ-
ity with ludic elements marks the trance of the dhamālīs and ritualized perfor-
mativity with celebrative and sensuous elements marks the dance of common
devotees. Thus, as a lived experience, dhamāl is both idiosyncratic in the sense
85
Especially during the ‘Easter-dhamāl ’ at the ʿurs of the Muslim saint Waris Shah in Jandiala
Sher Khan, close to Shaikhupura in the Punjab.
86
In Ulrike Krasberg, Die Ekstasetänzerinnen von Sidi Mustafa (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 2002),
24, 101, 153.
87
Klaus Peter Köpping, ‘Inszenierung und Transgression in Ritual und Theater. Grenzprob-
leme der performativen Ethnologie’, in Ethnologie und Inszenierung. Ansätze zur Theaterethnol-
ogie, ed. Bettina E. Schmidt and Mark Münzel (Marburg: Curupira, 1998), 47–8; see also Erika
Fischer-Lichte, ‘Diskurse des Theatralen’, in Diskurse des Theatralen, ed. Erika Fischer-Lichte,
Christian Horn, Sandra Umathum and Matthias Warstat (Tübingen and Basel: A. Francke, 2005),
11–32.
88
Grimes used the term ‘liturgy’ for such a symbolic action containing motifs that are ceremo-
nious, magical and decorous (‘Beginnings’, 51–3).
of the German Erlebnis, which has the connotation of something particular

and exceptional, as well as typical, customary, habitual and pattern-like.89
The experience of the divine through the body as Leib constitutes a cultural
pattern especially in Sindh and the Punjab. Considering how essential meta-
phors of love are within the mystically-inspired folk religiosity of these regions,
this seems in particular true for the ‘poetics of movement’ typical of female
dhamāl dancers, which displays not only passion and frenzy, but also sensu-
ousness and eroticism. Basically Sufĳism can be characterized as a ‘religion of
love’ where the mystic in ecstasy seeks true love of God which requires break-
ing up and dissolving his or her own ego. Mastī is not only a state of spiri-
tual excellence, but also of rapture, joy and intoxication, a consciousness of
paradoxically ‘being outside oneself ’, but ‘being with the body’;90 therefore it
has erotic connotations which might also explain the sexual undertones in the
movements of dancers. The latter explain that the form of love (ʿishq) which
manifests in dhamāl is energetic and ‘hot’ (garm), its seat is supposed to be
the heart. This power of love leads to an intoxicating perception and experi-
ence of the Qalandar’s presence through the ‘flow’ of mastī. The element of
divine love and experience of God turns ecstatic dance into a veritable spiri-
tual discipline.91 In my conversations with dervishes, dhamālīs and devotees it
was unanimously emphasized that both ʿishq and mastī are the veritable cor-
nerstones of their dance irrespective of the performance styles characterizing
their respective ritual modes. These semiotic terms mark an experience shared
by the individual dancers belonging to diffferent groups of performers.
In the course of my fĳield research in Sehwan Sharif and Lahore I requested
dhamāl dancers to describe their concrete bodily experience. A middle-aged
male devotee from Lahore, who frequently goes into trance, spontaneously
referred to his state of ḥāl as ‘sinking’ (ḋubnā); another trance-experienced
music lover, who spent lengthy periods in Europe, corroborated this view in
drawing a comparison to a swimmer who gently rocks himself on the waves
lying on a surf board, thereby seeing paradisiacal things in the water. Further-
more Abdul Ghafar, a devotee in his thirties who daily performed dhamāl
during his pilgrimage to Sehwan, described his feelings during the dance as if
89
See Michael Jackson, Paths Toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry
(Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), 13.
90
Göran Ogén, ‘Religious Ecstasy in Classical Sufĳism’, in Religious Ecstasy; Based on Papers
Read at the Symposium on Religious Ecstasy Held at Åbo, Finland, on the 16th–28th of August 1981,
ed. Nils G. Holm (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1982), 226–40 (227–9, 232, 236); and Scott Kugle,
Sufĳis and Saints’ Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality, and Sacred Power (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2007), 24.
91
Selsing, ‘Without Experience’, 10.
‘drowning in the ocean of love’. He specifĳied: ‘When I do dhamāl, I feel that my

murshid Bodla Bahar places his right hand on my shoulder, sometimes he then
even embraces me. And the great Lal Shahbaz Qalandar is all the time stand-
ing right behind Bodla Bahar’.92 Finally, Sayyid Asif Ali Zaidi, who I mentioned
above, related his personal experiences: ‘When I do dhamāl, I feel the presence
of the Qalandar as a fragrance, as warmth. You know, it is as if you feel the
breath of a person in a pitch-dark room very close to you. And then while danc-
ing you are “charged” by the saint’s energy, he takes over your body’.93
Within all three embodied ritual attitudes, be they mythic-liturgical, theat-
rical-spectacular or customary-ritualized in Grimes’s terminology, boundaries
of the individual body are transcended, dancers experience a ‘flow’ of sensa-
tions and veils between man and the divine temporarily removed. A symbolic
gesture associated with this experience in the domain of the unspeakable and
subjective is dancing on one leg and raising the index fĳinger pointed upwards
like the letter alif towards God, the One, thus indicating unity (tawḥīd), the
ultimate goal of the mystic. Often dancers make this fĳinger gesture as a habit-
ual attitude using their right hand or both hands.
In Muslim societies where the body (especially the female one) is controlled,
regimented and disciplined, a particular expressive, eccentric and frenetic
dance such as dhamāl represents an alternative emphasizing joie de vivre and
exuberance. Following the approach of Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret
M. Lock,94 dhamāl allows the protagonists to experience the ‘individual body’,
the material body in its subjectivity, and its presentation in a public arena. In
the dhamāl courts at the Qalandar shrine in Sehwan female dancers have an
entrance as ‘imposing fĳigures’, like a ‘work of art’ visible by men in the public.95
Moreover, genders are frequently not strictly segregated during the perfor-
mance. This questioning and challenging of social norms which were imposed
not only by scriptural Islam (particularly reinforced in Pakistan since 1977 by
the policies of Zia ul-Haq), but also by rigid local codes of moral behaviour,
could be read as casting a critical look at social conflicts, as ‘flirting with an
alternative’, as evading male control. Female devotees, and in smaller numbers
also men, fĳind catharsis in a ritual which allows them to express their emo-
tional needs. Having observed dhamāl in Sehwan on many occasions for many
hours, it seems to me that the dance could also in many cases be interpreted
92
Interview, 28 March 2010.
93
Interview, 30 July 2010 in Sehwan.
94
Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret M. Lock, ‘The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to
Future Work in Medical Anthropology’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1.1 (1986): 6–41.
95
See Boivin, ‘Le pèlerinage’, 337.
as a vehicle to express suppressed sexuality. Moreover, I think that the social

sufffering experienced by the majority of poor and underprivileged devotees
in their daily lives is reflected in the style of embodiment typical for dhamāl.
However, such questions need to be addressed in more detail in the future.
To understand the experiences of Pakistani dervishes, dhamālīs and devo-
tees during dhamāl, it is enlightening to take a look at comparative phenomena
in North Africa. Thus, Ulrike Krasberg has convincingly argued in her study on
Moroccan trance dance and possession that within a collective ritual through
deep devotion and unconditional love the individual is able to fully concen-
trate on his or her own self—similarly to a dedicated actor who performs
on stage.96
Experiences are structured and framed through performance: dhamāl has
extraordinary dynamics and dramatic sequences which unfold through the
action of ‘aesthetic agents’ in the presence of spectators.97 Particularly the
steady sound of ornamental rhythmic drum patterns creates a solid structure
for this performing art. In addition, there are companions who supervise and
assist the dancers if need be. This ritual framework for trance dance can be very
open, for instance, during the ʿurs in Sehwan, or less open—more in the sense
of an orchestrated improvisation where performers follow a kind of ‘unwritten
script’98—for instance, at Shah Jamal and during the daily trance ritual in the
dhamāl court of the central shrine in Sehwan. In any case dhamāl is not regi-
mented in the sense of a musical score, but has various modes of expression
as exemplifĳied in the descriptions of the ritual, including moments of play-
fulness. Trance dance is transformative for dervishes, dhamālīs and devotees
not only in the sense of ‘communitas’ uniting the dancers and the captivated
audience, but also through taking in barakat and, for those affflicted by demons
and ghosts, through purifying, healing and thus empowering them.99 Barakat
is also received by the spectators who share the presence of the divine with
performers and are emotionally pulled into dhamāl. The wild intensity and
power of the dance and of the sound of drums is experienced as a ‘mysterium
fascinosum’ and simultaneously as an entertaining spectacle.
In the frenzy of dhamāl the body is all-powerful, breaking its limitations
through movements of extraordinary form and rapidity which allow enor-
96
See Krasberg, Die Ekstasetänzerinnen, 78, 95.
97
See Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 66;
and Krasberg, Die Ekstasetänzerinnen, 22, 133.
98
Köpping, Inszenierung und Transgression, 47.
99
See Klaus Peter Köpping and Ursula Rao, Im Rausch des Rituals. Gestaltung und Transforma-
tionen der Wirklichkeit in körperlicher Performanz (Münster: Lit, 2000), 7–8.
Figure 5. A dhamālī dancing in ecstasy at a private gathering in Sehwan Sharif,

Pakistan ( J.W. Frembgen, July 2010)
mous individual spontaneity.100 According to indigenous interpretation this

individual empowerment is God-given. The body is active and the medium to
experience ecstatic rapture, to delve into the divine light and to be touched by
God. This sacred experience is in fact embodied, that is to say there is no dual-
ity between mind and body. The embodied devotion to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar
100
See ibid., 21–2.
is of an intensity said to transcend mundane love because it is much purer

and subtle. More than that, devotional practice becomes mimesis when der-
vishes and dhamālīs imitate the dancing Qalandar saint within their respective
ritual modes of expression. For poor and downtrodden followers of the saint,
dhamāl also functions as an outlet for the insults and humiliations they sufffer
in daily life. Trance dance is thus a transformative practice for them, strength-
ening their self-esteem and helping to gain prestige when re-integrated in their
respective social environment after the liminal phase of the ritual.
Conclusion
The devotion to Sufĳi saints in Pakistan belongs to a pluralistic indigenous sys-

tem of values shared by the common people as well as the elite. Its concrete
embodiment in the spectacular and vibrant ritual action of dhamāl, however,
is contested by Muslim theologians and followers of scriptural, legalistic Islam
who frown upon and reject dance (raqṣ) condemning it as an ‘un-Islamic
practice’.101 Nevertheless, as an expression of local ecstatic ‘danced religion’ in
the public sphere it belongs to the multiple worlds of the shrines of Sufĳi saints
and is thus characteristic of the concrete devotional practice of rural people
and the urban poor, especially in Sindh and the Punjab. In these lowland prov-
inces ecstatic dance guided by the hypnotic repetitive sound of drums is theat-
rically and aesthetically performed with extraordinary emotion and intensity
at several shrines in audience-oriented situations creating spontaneous ‘com-
munitas’.
Drawing on Grimes’s concept of distinguishing various modes of embodied
ritual attitudes, we fĳind that scripted expressions and choreographed perfor-
mance dominates among dervishes, celebration with its aesthetic, dramatic
and ludic dimensions among dhamālīs (not excluding means-end oriented
aspects) and ritualization, magic and enjoyment among common devotees
(also in the special case of possession trance) which at times opens up space
for the erotic and playful. These modes of ritual sensibilities co-exist and inter-
penetrate each other, whereby celebration tending towards pure expressivity
remains the overall impulse of the ritual. Thus, for all performers, dhamāl is a
celebrative form of interaction with the beloved saint expressing a temporal
coexistence between this world and the divine. For Shias in particular, it is
101
This important question could not be taken up here, but is addressed in an ethnographic
narrative on Sufĳi music and classical music in Pakistan, see Frembgen, Nocturnal Music, 40–5.
in addition mythologized as a mnemo-technique connecting them with other

Shiite saints. This notion of mystical unity expressed through ecstatic rapture
(mastī) and love (ʿishq) is the central theme of Sufĳi poetry and Sufĳi Islam con-
stituting an essential religious value among Punjabi and Sindhi participants
in dhamāl events. The performing body is the medium of this transformation
which happens in dialogue with the bodies of other dancers and the audience.
The efffĳicacy of dhamāl becomes especially apparent in its function as a ‘need-
fulfĳilment-ritual’ (fulfĳilment of vows) and healing rite in the context of spirit
possession.
This passionate devotional dance is experienced and performed by most
practitioners since youth. As such it is a ritual practice learned through cre-
ative processes of direct observation and mimesis. This full-bodied, active
experience of mystical devotion thus belongs to the ‘body hexis’ and ‘social
habitus’ of the dancers, to their ‘permanent disposition’ as coined by Bourdieu,
which integrates former experiences like a matrix of action and perception in
the body as subject.102 Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept that the body serves as
a store for the most important values of a culture, that the Leib as a symbolic
form is, in fact, one of the basic dimensions of cultural practice, dhamāl also
has an intrinsic social value in the Dumontian sense which is inscribed into the
body.103 As with rituals in general, it fulfĳils basic emotional needs, but specifĳi-
cally for the poor and downtrodden it also represents an outlet for frustrations
of any kind. Furthermore, this trance dance is an expression and reafffĳirmation
of practically lived religious and cultural identity which hence allows the expe-
rience of alterity. This holds not only true for malangs and dhamālīs, whose life
as ‘outwordly individuals’ and liminal fĳigures centres on the ecstatic venera-
tion of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and who have become the very experts of the
dance, but for any devotee. Nevertheless, as exemplifĳied by the analysis of two
contextualised shrine-events, the key performers’ patterns of body use show
distinctive aesthetic qualities, individual originality, artistic creativity and
level of mastery in contrast to those of common pilgrims.
102
Pierre Bourdieu, Entwurf einer Theorie der Praxis (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1976), 165, 169.
103
Louis Dumont, ‘On Value, Modern and Nonmodern’, in Essays on Individualism: Modern
Ideology in Anthropological Perspective (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press,
1986), 234–68 (p. 240). See also Kugle, Sufĳis and Saints’ Bodies, 13.

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Journal of Sufĳi Studies 1 (2012) 77–113 brill.

Dhamāl and the Performing Body: Trance Dance

Jürgen Wasim Frembgen

At a number of shrines in the lowlands of Pakistan, devotees of Sufĳi saints regu-

as an ‘integrating modus operandi’, particularly within the Chishti Sufĳi order

The Historical Context of dhamāl

individualism which also becomes apparent in peculiar costume and insig-

I am burning with the Beloved’s love, every moment.

This God-given secret appears to refer to existential, esoteric knowledge which

The Socio-Religious Context of dhamāl

There is a considerable range of variation in the ritual performance of dhamāl

shrine is situated in the quarter of Ichhra in Lahore. Dhamāl takes place in

the ‘intermediate rule of intoxication, exuberance and flow’ in festivals where

Performance and Aesthetics of dhamāl

Basically dhamāl can be described as a ritual dance which expresses a ‘com-

on large copper kettledrums (nagharō, naqqarah, nawbat).38 Thus dhamāl is

ʿAlī, ʿAlī, ʿAlī, ḥaqq

Allāh-hū, ḥaqq wujūd

performing art, as a ‘fĳield of aesthetics’, on the borderline between religion

(1) The dance of dervishes (malang/malangnī, faqīr/faqīrānī), that is to say

I want to emphasize that these distinctions between dervishes, dhamālīs and

The peculiar whirling dance regularly performed in Sehwan Sharif is charac-

Figure 3. Devotional dhamāl dance at the shrine of Bodla Bahar in Sehwan

At both settings, in Sehwan as well as at Shah Jamal in Lahore, experienced

Figure 4. Female devotees dancing dhamāl in Sehwan Sharif, Pakistan (Salman

Embodied Ritual Attitudes

In accordance with the variety of its protagonists, that is to say dervishes,

ardour of love to God, ‘where analytical thinking is switched offf ’ as formu-

The latter’s shrine in Sehwan in particular is an example of the diversity of

Dimensions of Experience and Agency

of the German Erlebnis, which has the connotation of something particular

‘drowning in the ocean of love’. He specifĳied: ‘When I do dhamāl, I feel that my

as a vehicle to express suppressed sexuality. Moreover, I think that the social

Figure 5. A dhamālī dancing in ecstasy at a private gathering in Sehwan Sharif,

mous individual spontaneity.100 According to indigenous interpretation this

is of an intensity said to transcend mundane love because it is much purer

The devotion to Sufĳi saints in Pakistan belongs to a pluralistic indigenous sys-

in addition mythologized as a mnemo-technique connecting them with other

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