by Uzair Mir
Laylat al-Qadr is one of the most significant Islamic rituals. In this account of its observance in a small Kashmiri village, the author underlines its social and religious significance and how its practice reveals its worldly, material nature.
Laylat al-Qadr, or the Night of Decree, in Islamic belief, is the night the Qur’an was revealed to the prophet Muhammad. Falling in the holy month of Ramadhan, it is attributed to be the night when annual decrees, predestined judgments, for people are sanctioned by Allah and is considered to be better in virtue than a thousand nights of supplication. Due to this tripartite significance of Laylat al-Qadr, it is observed with utmost devotion and holds primacy amongst Islamic rituals. In this post, I will briefly sketch how this ritual is observed in a village in Kashmir—Batagund—drawing on my personal experience, and delineating its social and religious significance and its ‘method’ of practice. The aim is to highlight that its religious and social significance stems from its performing away, so to say, the abstract and contradictory tenet of predestination in Islam and how the method is interesting because it is totally engineered through material input.
Social and religious significance
The symbolism of Shab-e-Qadr, as Laylat al-Qadr is known in Kashmir—shab being Urdu for Arabic layl—is most perceptible in how it marks people’s annual calendar of activities. This annual observance of Shab-e-Qadr is pivotal to its ritualistic reception and is only one of the many ways in which the temporal dimensions of the ritual become manifest. The significance of Shab-e-Qadr obtains most in its anticipation. In the Batagund village of Kashmir, the imam (one who leads prayers and other rituals) stresses the coming occasion of Shab-e-Qadr right from the start of Ramadhan, the emphasis increasing exponentially once the ritual is right around the corner. This anticipation is not merely an expression of how significant events are anticipated and talked about by everyone. It is also intimately connected to how Shab-e-Qadr hones in on the tension resulting from the atemporal yet diachronic nature of God’s decree, giving people an empowered occasion to mark it. This anticipation of Shab-e-Qadr stems as much from the timing of the event towards the end of the month of Ramadhan as from its occasioning and symbolizing a more controlled, agentic reception of the rather elusive, transcendent, and eternal divine decree. “The malāik (angels) descend and are tasked to write your destinies for the next year. Pray that they may be persuaded to write in your favor,” admonishes the imam at the start of the night.
The religious-theological significance of Qadr stems from its punctuating, if not resolving, the paradox resulting from the divine legislation of personal free wills, that every believer faces at some point. This debate, largely between free will and determinism, is age-old and universal and so tricky that believers are cautioned against mulling over it much lest they transgress. So, while the ulema wrestle with this hairy problem, the lay Muslim ventures forth to take the chance offered to reclaim agency. If not a singular will, the charge of many would force a reconciliation with what has been decreed. Qadr thus becomes a quintessential representation of intersubjective religious praxis. Its simple pragmatism imparts sense to the more abstract and contradictory terms of the dogma. The agent remains alive even when belief essentially negates agency. After all, the date of the most significant night in Islam is decided by the consensus (read choice) of people since Qadr doctrinally can fall on any of the last five odd nights of Ramadhan.
The openness and closedness of divine decree (Qadr) are rendered functional in the microcosm of the mosque and the stipulated timings during which Shab-e-Qadrunfolds. The Isha’a prayer (the fifth and last daily prayer), starts the shab, the night of supplication, in earnest and ends it as well. The part of supplicatory mediation is left open in the middle. The decision to fix the timings of Isha’a, hence, is made collectively and is often full of contestation amongst the mosque attendees. The event of Qadr brings together the religious heads of the village and brief deliberations are carried out to decide the timing of the Isha’a prayer and thereby the shab. Depending on the eventual decision and who was involved in it, people mark their influence within the very circumscribed political space of mosque management.
Shab-e-Qadr, in addition to its internal temporal, symbolic dimensions, serves as a temporal marker for external social activity. Shab-e-Qadr is when a lot of people—out-station workers, students, etc.—come home. It is a boud doh (a day of, usually, religious significance) and one needs to be home to take part in it. I remember my parents, when they were self-quarantined during the COVID outbreak of 2021, deciding to end it on the auspicious day preceding Shab-e-Qadr. Its occasion towards the end of Ramadhan also signifies a culmination of a month of rigorous fasting and supplication. It serves as a preliminary to the coming of Eid, as people ready to make culinary preparations that involve elaborate, mostly meat-based, dishes. This temporal marking renders Shab-e-Qadr celebratory rather than being solely a solemn ritualistic exercise.
Method
The method of observance of Shab-e-Qadr is revelatory in its own ways, about how spiritual practices remain deeply embedded in worldly materiality and their locales. There is a peculiar method through which this ritual is enacted, especially in the village of Batagund where I grew up participating in it. The peculiarity of this ‘method’ stems from how a magnanimous input of materials manufactures an aura for the enactment of the ritual. It is not easy for a congregation of a few hundred people to remain attentive and solemn for a whole night when they have fasted during the day before and eaten a few meals in a stretch of a few hours in the evening. The imam of Batagund’s central mosque (the Jāmia Masjid), to which people from all the village throng, has his task cut out for him. Shab-e-Qadr is first and foremost about fighting the urge to sleep and being present. This is where the most material aspects of the ritual, in their symbolism and materiality, are manifest. The imam, from his experience, orchestrates the audio-visual atmosphere to harvest and channel people’s energy. Often, he pleads before the congregation: “Only by being fully beydār (awake), can we beydār (awaken) our hearts. It is a matter of giving up just one night’s sleep.” The imam of Jāmia speaks loudly, a microphone is used, and intermittently someone will recite a naat (Prophet’s eulogy) or a hamd (God’s exaltation) to break the monotony of the more physical namāz (prayers involving cycles of standing, bowing, and prostrating).
Even the visual atmosphere is maneuvered to supplement the auditory management of attention creating an affective mood that pervades the whole mosque compound. This is most obvious when towards end of the night, the imam stands up for a session of istighfār (supplications of forgiveness) and people get up to turn the lights off, to make the session more private. Once the lights are turned off, the whole mosque resonates with loud cries, moans, and supplications. The people respond to the imam’s duas with resounding āmeens (amen). Occasionally, it induces a trance in some. Once the lights are turned back on, people collect themselves, wipe off tears, and ready themselves to perform witr, the final three rak’ah, iterations, of Isha’a.
The audio-visual facilitation of the ritual is complemented by food and how it relaxes the solemnity of the occasion. Food holds a special place in Ramadhan overall and the same manifests during Shab-e-Qadr. Food is one of the most significant forms of rizq (provision) in Islam and in Ramadhan it is considered to be filled with additional barakah (blessing force). People bring food to serve the entire mosque. Most commonly halwa (a flour-based sweet dish), firin (a milk-and-flour-based dish), and babri treish (a drink made from milk, water, and basil seeds) are served in small packages and glasses. Several packages of this food are served and people take the leftovers home, averse to throwing away what is instilled with barakah. Often those who are sick would send food to receive barakah. It re-energizes people after a few hours of calorie-burning praying, sitting, and continuous oral supplication. It also punctuates the solemnity of the occasion by allowing people, especially kids and the youth, to leave the praying compound of the mosque and hang around in the hammām (a place with heated floors, peculiar to Kashmir). People joke about how tired they are and who fell asleep during the prayers, engage in banter, smoke cigarettes, and talk just about anything not too profane.
This local observance of Shab-e-Qadr highlights not just its symbolism but how its practice draws on a unique symbolic-material resource of other elements, such as light, audio, food, etc. Religious symbols create varied moods and motivations in believers, but such moods and motivations need material sustenance which is starkly noticeable in how Shab-e-Qadr is observed in the Batagund village of Kashmir. Correspondingly, belief needs enactment for its effective reception and more often this enactment through different performative registers, mainly rituals, remains at best a translation, making legible something that is abstract, multilayered, and complex. Shab-e-Qadr translates the abstract but fundamental tenet of Islam, viz. the mediation of divine decree through the volition of the worshipper. The doctrine of qadar, divine preordainment, is of course much more complicated as are the issue of free will in Islam (and theology in general) and the ritual of Laytal al-Qadr. Attending to this complexity needs more space and expertise—to which I lay no claim—but it is hoped that the brief account sketched above contributed towards at least a cursory understanding of the ritual, its attendant beliefs, its social significance, and its observance at the local level of a village in Kashmir.
Uzair Mir is a PhD student in the Anthropology Department at UT Austin.
