The Prophet Muhammad's beard hair at Hazratbal Mosque in Srinagar, Kashmir
Relics, Remains, and Traces in Islam
Ethnographic fieldwork in India, March 2020 | Outcome: 1 peer-reviewed article [forthcoming]
O Prophet of Arabia, to the needy in distressing circumstances one sacred hair is the sustainer. A voice from heaven announced: Kashmir has turned into Medina as the result of one hair of the Prophet.
— Muhammad Azam Didamari, Waqiʿati-I Kashmir (The Story of Kashmir)
Considered to be Kashmir’s holiest Muslim shrine (dargah), Hazratbal serves as a repository for a relic, the Moi-i Muqqadas, a hair from the beard of the Prophet Muhammad encased in a phial of gold and glass. A major center of pilgrimage in Jammu and Kashmir, the dargah on the northern bank of Dal Lake in Srinagar is regarded by Kashmiri Muslims as the Second Medina (Medina Thani).
Public display of the Moi-i Muqqadas takes place only on religious occasions, Milad-un-Nabi (birthday of the Prophet) and Miʿraj-i ʿAlam (the day commemorating the Prophet’s heavenly journey). It is difficult to overstate the fierce veneration that many of India’s 120 million Muslims, and especially the three million living in the Kashmir Valley, feel towards this relic, brought to the Himalayas in 1699 by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. He had confiscated the relic from a wealthy Kashmiri merchant, Khwaja Nuruddin Ishbari, who had acquired it from Sayyid ʿAbdullah of Bijapur who, in turn, had brought it to the Deccan from Medina. Aurangzeb initially planned to send the relic to the shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer but later changed his mind, and instead arranged to have the relic brought to Srinagar together with Ishabri’s body (d. 1699), who had in the meantime passed away. Ishabri’s daughter, Inayat Begum, became the custodian of the relic and established the shrine. After her death, her male descendants continued to serve as custodians of the relic.
The disappearance of the Moi-i Muqqadas from the Hazratbal Shrine on 27 December 1963 unleashed unprecedented fury and grief, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets. The repercussions of the theft of the relic were so extensive that they shook the foundations not just of the Kashmir, but of Bengal and neighboring Pakistan as well. The miraculous recovery of the relic was announced on 4 January 1964, and one month later, in response to popular request, the ‘recovered’ relic was viewed and its genuineness attested by prominent religious and political leaders.
The remodeling of the Hazratbal dargah as a white marble edifice started in 1968. The construction of the domed structure in neo-Mughal-style, completed in 1979, was carried out under the supervision of Muslim Auqaf Trust’s Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah (1905-1982), one of the most prominent Kashmiri political leaders.