Title: Chapter 1 Community: Introduction to the Alawi Bohras
Abstract: cAttered Across gujArAt Are polished-mArBle tombs decorated with colourful lights, situated in the middle of bustling cities such as Khambhat, Jamnagar, Ujjain and Surat.These green, peaceful and spotlessly clean oases are known to the Bohras as qabaristān (graveyards).The qabaristan are the final resting places of the physical remains of the communities' legendary missionaries and founding fathers, the Dais.These sacred sites of ziyara are frequented by Bohras young and old, male and female, rich and poor.The qabaristan, along with the burial tombs they enshrine and their rituals of commemoration and mourning, are as much spaces of togetherness as they are of contestation.On the other side of the western Indian Ocean, in the mountainous regions of Haraz in western Yemen, another sacred land is claimed by the Bohras through a network of white burial tombs, some of them dating back as far as the sixth/twelfth century, belonging to the Dais of Yemen, also known as Asḥāb al-Yamīn. 1 The Bohras may trace themselves and their books to Fatimid Cairo spiritually, but it is in Yemen that the Bohra clerical genealogy of Dais and Tayyibi Isma'ili teachings crystallised.It was also from Yemen that Fatimid missionaries and later Tayyibi Yemeni Dais set foot on the Indian subcontinent, known as the Jazīrat al-Hind.Within the larger context of the western Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, and the movement of things and people in it, the Bohras historically connected the geographies of Haraz and Gujarat through networks of trade, conversion, books and pilgrimage.Throughout history, the burial tombs of former Dais found in Yemeni villages such as al-Ḥuṭayb, Zabīd and Jibla were frequented by Bohras until the recent war in Yemen (Figure 1.1).As I was once told by one of my Yemeni students, the 'flooding' of these burial tombs by mysterious crowds of Gujarati rida-and topi-wearing pilgrims was 'quite a phenomenon' for the locals of these villages. 2A small number of Dawoodi Bohras resided in Aden and Haraz permanently, and several Yemeni tombs