Food And Its Place In Collective Grieving
Text by Rida Bilgrami
Food plays an important symbolic, spiritual and practical role in the expression of grief during Ashura.
Food rituals are an enduring part of the material expression of grief around the world. They underpin the collective act of mourning and lamentation known as azadari, practiced by Shia Muslim communities in South Asia. Ashura, the first ten days of the Islamic month of Muharram, is a unique moment of communal remembrance and grief commemorating the martyrdom of Hussain ibn Ali, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, in the Battle of Karbala that took place in 680 AD. The shared narratives, practices and modes of remembrance associated with Ashura are crucial to the construction of a collective Shia Muslim identity.
These vary across communities of practice in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, and even within South Asia, but commonly follow a similar syntax. In a series of daily public gatherings known as majalis, heaving with mourners attired mostly in black, the story of Karbala is narrated with immense pathos. Majalis culminate with nohas (haunting eulogies narrated in Urdu evoking Karbala‘s martyrs) that are recited alongside the act of maatam (or light pounding of the chest). During the ten days of Ashura, processions with elaborate tazias (replications of shrines) are carried out in various cities across South Asia.
In Pakistan many of these procession routes have remained consistent since the time of Partition. These routes are dotted with sabeel stalls, which are especially set up to provide water and sherbets to participants. Zuljinnah, a snow white horse with ornamented armour, which is a replica of the horse Hussain rode in battle who didn’t abandon him until his death, also makes an allegorical appearance. From the streets of Lucknow to Lahore, the reimagination of the pain of Karbala every year sacralizes the public sphere. Rituals such as maatam and impassioned crying as a form of collective healing and devotion to Hussain render the remembrance of Karbala a corporeal act, instilling an embodied appreciation for the struggle and sacrifice of Hussain’s companions. Given that the body is a site of mourning, its nourishment and sustenance assumes significance during Ashura.
The population of Shia Muslims spread across cities in South Asia, comprises an estimated 32 million people, and represents the second largest grouping of Shia Muslims in the world. However, they constitute a sectarian minority in South Asia. In Pakistan, particularly, they are often the target of bombings and attacks during Muharram. The Battle of Karbala was a defining moment in history, when Shia and Sunni Muslims crystallised into distinct sectarian identities even though the fault lines had been laid earlier in the dispute over who would assume the caliphate after Prophet Muhammad’s death. Hussain, alongside his entire family of 72 members, was killed in Karbala after he refused to pledge allegiance to the oppressive rule of Yazid, who had usurped control of the Muslim caliphate. After Hussain responded to calls by the people living under Yazid’s rule of terror for liberation, he and his family travelled to Karbala, where they were captured by Yazid’s army.. Vastly outnumbered and cut off from food and water supplies, Hussain was mutilated in combat on the 10th of Muharram. The martyrdom of Hussain is widely interpreted by Shia Muslims as well as some factions of Sunni Muslims as not just a conflict about dynastic succession, but also a blueprint for resistance against tyranny. Mirrored in the remembrance of Karbala is a rubric of collective grieving, healing, and community building that finds resonance in other anti-oppression movements in present day.
A roadside sabeel in Lahore. Photograph by Ghazi Taimoor.
Ensuring the steady supply of food and water through the communal distribution of free food and setting up roadside sabeels has become customary practice amongst Shia Muslims during the Ashura period. These acts play a symbolic role in remembering the starvation and thirst experienced by Hussain and his family. When mourners drink the water from a sabeel to slake their thirst, they cry their hearts out imagining that their spiritual ancestors died thirsty. As sociologist Sumbul Farah writes in the anthology, Food, Faith and Gender in South Asia: The Cultural Politics of Women's Food Practices: “The imagination of the battle and the hardships suffered by the family of the Prophet are articulated through the physical torment of hunger and thirst. This association is so strong that Karbala itself has become a metaphor for the deprivation of food and water.”
Given the corporeal nature of grief, the desire to nourish not only in substance but also in significance underlies food rituals related to collective mourning and grieving. Mayukh Sen, in his article on comfort foods, drawing on Lisa Rogak’s book Death Warmed Over: Funeral Food, Rituals, and Customs from Around the World, observes: “What Rogak’s 2004 book makes clear is that mourning is a communal affair; whoever’s in charge of cooking for the mourners must prepare enough to feed at least a dozen people.” While Sen’s reference point is the immediacy of the loss and grief experienced by those attending a funeral of a loved one, there are parallels in the act of azadari as a manifestation of the communal and often ceremonial nature of mourning. Sen further notes, “As with other food traditions, what certain groups—bound by ethnicity or religion or regional affiliation—eat at funerals is not static. The customs are malleable, so long as they fulfil a basic purpose: making sure everyone is nourished, before the room clears and each individual is left to live with his or her grief in private.” His words echo in the practice of preparing and serving food during Ashura in the South Asian subcontinent, where the customs not only nourish and comfort mourners but they also shift due to the variation in practices across the myriad denominations within the Shia sect, as well as the intersection of class and ethnicity.
The gift of food to honour the sacrifice of Hussain and his family is a mainstay ritual of Ashura. The institution of majlis has a purpose beyond remembrance and eulogizing. Until security threats against Shia Muslims in Pakistan worsened, it was common for many homes organising majalis across Pakistan to keep their doors open to anyone who wished to attend and regardless of their socio-economic status, they would be offered a free meal. Towards the culmination of a majlis, tabarruk, an Arabic word which translates to a token of blessing, is given to the mourners. Distributing food to the mourners is considered to be a source of blessing for both the giver and the receiver. Tabarruk is typically a hand-held food item that is suitable for feeding a large number of people at scale and also keeping them nourished on the go, especially as mourning is emotionally draining and physically taxing with mourners walking in processions in large crowds, often in blistering heat.
In conversation with several Shia Muslims whom I spoke to for this piece, who represent different denominations — and therefore sub-cultures — within the faith, I observed that meals consumed during Ashura and the foods offered as tabarruk reflect not only where people come from geographically but also their faith and the stories they grew up hearing. The actual substance of what dish is served is perhaps less important than the function it performs and the manner in which it is consumed. The effort expended in the processes of making and sharing food generates spiritual merit, creates social capital within the community of mourners and deepens solidarity towards a shared grief.
Rana Safvi, a historian and author based in Delhi tells me that the observance of Muharram, including what food is eaten during the month, is culturally defined and not based on any religious tradition. “Muharram is part of a Shia cultural ethos and is not centred on strict religious observance like Ramadan. What mourners eat during Muharram is also highly regional in India, given Shia communities are spread out from Ladakh to Hyderabad.” This view is echoed by Ghazi Taimoor, an education policy specialist who documents and shares Muharram rituals in Lahore, Pakistan on social media. “In Lahore you can really observe how different ethno-linguistic communities such as Punjabi, Urdu-speaking (the term used in Pakistan for communities that migrated from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh to Pakistan during Partition) and Kashmiris express their collective identity through food in Muharram,” he notes. For instance, in Mohalla Kashmirian, which is one of the largest Shia neighbourhoods in the city, tabarruk usually includes daal chawal (rice and lentils) while on Taimoor’s paternal side of the family, which originally hails from the state of Uttar Pradesh, a typical tabarruk is aloo naan (naan filled with spiced potatoes) and semolina halwa. Taimoor also emphasizes that some food traditions associated with Muharram have been ongoing for generations. He recalls a majlis on the 8th day of Muharram in an Imambargah (a place of congregation for Shias) in Lahore that serves palak gosht (spinach and mutton cooked with spices) and chicken biryani. “This majlis has been taking place for hundreds of years and the same dishes are offered year on year. We always sit on the floor and eat with our hands, sharing food from the same platter. This is how we share our grief and also connect with our ancestors who were sitting in our place a few decades ago performing the same ritual.”
My maternal grandparents who migrated to Karachi from Lucknow, India during Partition in 1947 had a tradition of hosting a majlis in their home for each of the first ten days of Muharram – a practice that continued over several decades. A common tabarruk distributed at their majlis was sheermal with shami kabab – a nod to their Lucknow heritage. The shami kebab is a flattened mincemeat patty with a very soft texture due to the presence of chana dal. It is believed to have been invented for the Nawab of Awadh because the toothless nawab found it difficult to chew meat. Sheermal is a celebrated bread in Lucknow made with saffron, milk, kewra (or screwpine essence), and plain flour. It continues to be eaten during Ashura in the city. As Taiyaba Ali notes in an article about the 190-year-old sheermal proprietor Ali Hussain Sheermal in Lucknow, “Even today, sheermal continues to be the most popular item to distribute as majalis tabarruk in Lucknow’s Muharram Azadari. During this particular time, demand for sheermal often doubles and triples in volume.”
Safvi notes that among Shia Muslims in India, it is customary for people to return to their villages during the first ten days of Muharram and tabarruk is meant to sustain people who are coming from far away. She shares that in villages and towns in Uttar Pradesh where she grew up, tabarruk typically included sweets such as kheel batasha (crystallised sugar confections) and ocassionally pedas or sweetmeats made of reduced milk. For Abbas Asaria, a London-based food chef and documentary-maker who belongs to the Khoja community, tabarruk at a majlis in London would typically feature kabab rolls (minced lamb kababs wrapped in a roti or naan) or laddoos. Asaria’s family traces its origins to Kutch in Gujarat in western India and migrated to East Africa in the late 1800s before moving to the U.K. in the 1960s. However, he notes that food typically eaten during Ashura tended to not have any East African inflections and was more a nod to their subcontinental origins.
A slow-cooked stew made of beef, lentils, cracked wheat and spices, haleem is a labour of love. It also has ritual significance during Muharram for Pakistan’s Shia community.
On the 10th of Muharram, the day Hussain was slain, Shia Muslims observe faqa or a voluntary partial fast. At my grandparents’ home, all the extended family members would gather after Asr prayers and the fast would be opened by doodh ka sherbet (sweetened milk with blanched almonds and pistachios), saag (spinach lightly cooked with spices), and haleem that had been laboriously prepared by a great-aunt in her home and sent over. Haleem is a slow-cooked stew with beef, lentils, spices, and cracked wheat that is pounded with a large wooden spoon to achieve a porridge-like consistency. It is usually garnished with crispy fried onions, finely chopped green chillies, and julienned ginger. Preparing haleem is a labour of love and is often best left to the experts such as food establishments that specialise in making the dish on an industrial scale. Saba Imtiaz notes in her article, Chicken Soup for the Shiite Soul, that at establishments like Mazedaar Haleem and Karachi Haleem on Karachi’s iconic Burns Road during Muharram, cauldrons of haleem are fired up at 4 am to slow cook and simmer for 4-5 hours. During the month, it is common for some of these restaurants to sell around five to ten cauldrons a day, each of them containing 50 kilograms of haleem, enough to serve a hundred people.
Despite the ritual significance of haleem to the observance of Muharram amongst Pakistan’s Shia community, there are countless oral traditions regarding why the dish came to be associated with Muharram in the first place. But it’s clearly tradition more than anything else. Some historical accounts suggest that a surviving member of Hussain’s family ordered the dish to be cooked after the tragedy of Karbala, from the meagre supplies of grains and carcass they had remaining. Others opine that haleem traces its origins back to a variation known as hareesa mentioned in Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Recipes), the earliest known Arabic cookbook written in 10th century Syria by Abu Muhammed Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq. In the book, he describes it as a stew made of wheat beaten into a paste and cooked with meat and spices. Hareesa first arrived in colonial India from Yemen. The ruler of Hyderabad, a princely state in southern India with a large Shia population, is believed to have recruited soldiers from Yemen as part of his personal army to protect him from threats from neighbouring states. They brought this dish to Hyderabad in both its sweet and savoury form and it morphed over time into the delicacy of haleem as we now know it.
Safvi notes that in UP it is more common to consume khichra, a variation of haleem. Khichra is cooked with seven grains and meat and has a grainier texture than haleem. The origins of khichra are also mostly based on stories based down through generations. “When the only surviving male member of Hussain’s family, his son Zainul Abedin, returned to Madina from Karbala, people came over to pay their condolences to him. Many of them were travelling from far and needed to be fed. People started bringing different grains and cereals to make a one pot dish, which resembled khichra,” she says. Safvi also shares that in her household, khichra is not specifically consumed on the 10th of Muharram. Instead, she prefers to open her fast with rice and black lentils that are not tempered to honour the sombreness of the occasion and respecting that those in Karbala died hungry.
Saag ghosht and chicken biryani being eaten communally in Lahore. Photograph by Ghazni Taimoor
Meat in any form is typically not consumed to open the fast. Maria Shamsi, a Bombay resident who belongs to the Dawoodi Bohra community, shares that in her household, the fast is opened by roti and a bhaaji made with amaranth leaves with a little bit of chilli and onions, which provides instant energy. Asaria tells me that the meal at his home on 10th Muharram also tends to be very simple consisting of chickpeas, lentils and vegetable rice. However, khichro (what the Khoja community calls khichra in Gujarati) is served in the days following Ashura. As noted by Hasnain Walji, a Khoja scholar, khichdo was a communal meal as part of jamaats in Kutch and Kathiawad, where it was cooked in the khoja dheg. The economically privileged brought the meat and the poor brought the grain, thereby ensuring everyone contributed to the meal regardless of socio-economic status.
Another practice during Ashura that enables Shia Muslims to articulate their faith through the idiom of food is consecrating dishes to invoke God’s blessings on the martyred family members of Hussain. At the end of the majlis, as the chorus of lamentations fades away, mourners congregate around a table of foods on which niyaz or nazar is offered. These votive foods in my family ranged from dum ka qeema (smoked minced mutton cooked with spices) and chicken qorma to semolina halwa. Prayers were offered towards these dishes, imbuing them with meaning to carry blessings. Votive dishes are considered propitious because they are believed to induce the presence of martyred members of Hussain’s family who were benevolent figures. These prayers request a martyred figure to intercede on the believer’s behalf to fulfill his/her wish, itself thought to be secured through the gift of votive food. The respect of the food consecrated by the niyaz is expressed through the way in which it is consumed. People ensure their head is covered, women should not be menstruating and it’s important to be mindful not to spill or drop any food lest it show disrespect.
Vignettes from the Karbala tragedy dotted my consciousness from an early age, both in the form of oral traditions passed on from elders as well as experiencing the rituals of remembrance when I was growing up in Karachi. There is history and then there is the memory of history. The food rituals observed by my family during Ashura embodied that memorialisation of history and was part of the experience of sense-making my identity as a Shia Muslim – an identity I was not keen on espousing publicly in majority Sunni spaces such as school, and amongst friends due to fear of ostracization. Several dishes such as semolina halwa and even haleem are also eaten on joyous occasions and not exclusively in Muharram. These are also not dishes eaten only in Shia households, but I believe that eating communally and sharing social and ritual space imbued them with a certain cultural valency and a reminder to reconnect with the roots of my faith. In the words of Candi K. Cann, who remarks in her introduction to Dying to Eat: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Food, Death, and the Afterlife, “Death has a tale to tell, and we should sit and share a meal as we listen to its story.”
During Ashura, kitchens and stoves, community centers and imambargahs spill over with kinships, friendships, and solidarity across identity markers – a timely reminder that the production and consumption of food not only provides sustenance and nourishment but also shared ritual space in collective grieving.
