A Song at the Tomb: Preserving Music in Mazar Festivals

By Hacer Berra Akcan

Every year upon the barren hills of southern Xinjiang, the twangy pluck of a tanbur accompanies a coarse voice that sings out: “Orda Xanning yollari / Döwe döwedur qumlari / Qum töpisidin qalisam / Tewrinedur tughlari.” The lyrics recount the history of the Ordam shrine, one site of the many Uyghur mazar festivals. These festivals have been celebrated in Central Asia by Uyghurs for centuries. For this majority-Muslim population, they play a significant Islamic religious and cultural role in the region.[1]

The Chinese state has historically regarded mazar sites with distrust and suspicion. Amidst larger acts of political and cultural repression against Uyghur Muslims, the Chinese government has converted many mazars from religious sites into tourist attractions. In general, it is assumed that these sites provoke anxiety about the expansion of religious beliefs, extremism, and cultural individuality amidst a secular, hegemonic state. As the government increasingly limits expressions of Uyghur identity, international policymakers must recognize the indispensable value of mazars in preserving Uyghur heritage and take preventative measures to protect these sites.

Mazars and Pilgrimage

The word mazar means “tomb” in the Uyghur language. Mazars can be found throughout Xinjiang, creating a sacred landscape for pilgrimage across the region. Over two hundred mazars have been found in Xinjiang to date, although scholars believe there are still far more.[2] Kings and transmitters of Islam were often buried in these mazars after being martyred while fighting to spread Islam throughout the Arab world. There are many tombs for leaders of Sufi orders (silsilah), but more widely known are the Khoja rulers of Kashgar.[3] Historically, the largest marzar festival is the Ordam festival, held at the tomb of the eleventh-century martyr Ali Arslan Khan of the Qarakhan empire, the region’s first Islamic empire, who died while warring against the neighboring Buddhist kingdom of Khotan.[4]

Mazar festivals and their musical traditions have been instrumental in establishing Uyghur identity. Traveling long distances to make their pilgrimage, peasants make up the majority of those attending mazar rituals. Different cohorts of the population visit these tombs for various reasons, including for their healing powers, or to ask for health of an unborn child.[5] Pilgrimage to and prayer at these sites are believed to cure infertility or diseases and to avert disasters. While the rituals are communal, each person makes the pilgrimage as an act of individual religious faith. The larger tombs are often cared for by sheiks or community leaders who collect funding from laypeople.

The Role of Music and Dance

The Ordam, as well as other mazar shrines, links ritual to music-making. Melody is believed to bring participants into a state of ecstatic union with saints and with God. Music is a constant theme throughout these rites, with “dastanchi singing tales of local heroes or famous lovers; maqamchi playing the tämbur five-stringed long-necked lute and singing the maqam; mäddah telling religious stories accompanying themselves on the rawap shorter plucked lute, and many ashiq, religious mendicants, singing hökmät accompanying themselves on sapaya percussion sticks.”[6] Each song requires communal participation, a form of shared mourning.

Often an elderly imam begins the performance by reciting the Quran. The crowd chants “la illahi ilallah” while making movements of ritual cleansing. Participants are also performers: men play the rawap and sapaya. The rawap player also sings the opening free-rhythm section at the beginning of the piece with other percussionists joining him at the end of each phrase.[7] All play with theatrical movements.

The audience stays quiet as the singers move into the metered section of the piece. When they are finished, the audience emits cries of prayers and blessings to the festival and the tomb. Crowds then move toward the tomb with large colored flags as several naghra sunay bands play. These bands consist of kettle drums and double-reed shawms, thought to have been played to early Islamic kings like Ali Arslan Khan as they marched into battle, and may have been introduced into Xinjiang during the Qarakhan period alongside Islam.[8]

These musical traditions are heavily related to the physical movements and communal arrangements of participants. While men climb up sand dunes towards the tomb in a line, women stop at the first two hills and roll down to cleanse themselves of evil.[9] Each village group carries their own flag, each twenty meters high, led by dap players constantly beating out rhythms. Some men are semi-ecstatic, urging groups on as they dance. The dancers often cry “Allah” as others join them, some kneeling, others cupping their hands or making movements of cleansing. Many are emotional, crying or making speeches or breaking into song. Exclusive to women are monajat songs, which are associated with grief and mourning.

Sufism and Mysticism

Due to their mystical nature, mazar festivals occupy a space in Uyghur culture separate from traditional Islamic society, thus allowing leniency for certain practices that would normally be considered immoral or prohibited. For example, while mainstream Islam forbids musical performances at funerals or near tombs, Uyghurs observing mazar festivals often rely on Sufi practices to justify these traditions. They believe music enhances their mourning and allows them to connect with God and the spirits of the mazar on a deeper level. For example, the audience practices the Sufi tradition of zikr, in which participants invocate the divine through the repetition of a sacred word or formula. It may be silent or voiced, individual or collective, accompanied by rhythmic swaying movements and special forms of breathing which are meant to circulate energy through the body.[10]

Other social exceptions are allowed during these festivals, too. For example, women are allowed to remove their veils, and people are permitted to gamble. Additionally, a special “golden room” is set aside for hashish smokers and lovers.[11]

Thus, these practices, in addition to the festivals’ connection to Islam—which is sometimes viewed as fundamentalist or fanatical—cause many outside the Uyghur community to view mazar rituals as a threat to the sociopolitical status quo. Historically, mazar festivals were used as a tool for political legitimacy as rulers of Xinjiang allied themselves to these saints to justify their power.[12] Now, however, Chinese authorities regard these rites with suspicion.

The CCP’s Historical Erasure of Uyghur Identities

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has had a controversial history of dealing with Uyghur Islamic identity. In 1950, they abolished Sharia courts and Islamic judges, while sparing mosques and establishing a state Islamic institute in Ürümqi. During the Cultural Revolution, however, Islam was considered part of the “Four Olds,” and religious organizations were shut down, spaces destroyed, and practices shunned.[13] The Ordam festival was first banned around this time in 1958 following a national anti-Rightist campaign, as the CCP began to circumscribe traditional cultural activities across the country—particularly in Xinjiang.[14] Although the Chinese state was more tolerant of Islamic practices after the Cultural Revolution, religious revivalism encouraged by Uyghur community leaders in the mid-1990s posed a threat to government control. As a result, the state implemented a series of campaigns targeting a wide range of religious practices.[15]

Today, taking into context the sweeping secularization of the region, the restrictions on and violations of religious and legal rights of Uyghur citizens, and the creation of internment camps as part of a “people's war on terror,” mazar rituals are increasingly treated with precaution by both the government and the festivals’ participants.[16] Although the Ordam festival was reinstated after the Cultural Revolution, the government has more recently converted mazars into tourist attractions rather than religious sites.[17] Such action lets the CCP override the mystical aspects of the processions that might be considered radical, and instead make them secular landsites open to all.

However, ticket prices to these sites are often kept too high for most locals to afford. Additionally, while written introductions to mazars in Uyghur, Chinese, and English make them more accessible to those outside the region, the CCP also censors the region’s religious and national history by offering only officially approved portrayals of events and people.[18] This allows for the government to publicly demonstrate its support for Uyghur communities while still limiting other aspects of religious practice, including reading the Quran, praying, fasting during Ramadan, and avoiding alcohol or tobacco.

In some ways, the mazar festivals’ musical traditions enable them to be regarded as secular activities. One can play drums and reeds and sing maqam melodies in many secular situations. However, as performances are separated from Islamic ritual, they are linked closer to the Uyghur ethnic identity. For the Chinese government, this could still be considered a social threat, as differentiating the Uyghur nation based on its cultural or musical practices can result in political turbulence. Furthermore, the specific music played in mazar festivals enhances their esoteric and mystical character, which can be considered taboo in mainstream Chinese culture as they can encourage hysterical dancing or singing.

Recommendations

Despite mazar festivals’ significance to Uyghur cultural expression, they have been overlooked by international media and supranational organizations. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) does not identify any mazar in China as a World Heritage site, only recognizing those in Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan.

Given the CCP’s transgressions of human rights and its effort to assimilate Uyghur culture and religion into a secular, ethnically Han Chinese nation, international lawmakers must swiftly take action to protect mazar festivals as a piece of Uyghur identity. Mazar festivals are deeply rooted in the geography in which they take place. While music and dance are mobile arts, it would be impossible to transport mazars to any new location. Their natural environment must be protected and their purpose preserved. International organizations can ensure the preservation of mazar sites by providing funding and accessibility, acknowledging their significance, and supporting their purpose for Uyghur groups.

Finally, bringing the conversation of mazars to an international scale will enable Uyghurs themselves to shape their historical and contemporary narratives. Only in this way will Uyghur communities be able to preserve traditional honors of their saints and pass on musical and religious customs to later generations.

About the Author

Hacer Berra Akcan is a recent graduate of Columbia University and Sciences Po Paris, where she studied political science and classics. She is a research assistant at Columbia’s Department of English and Comparative Literature and a staff writer and editor for the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review. She plans on attending Harvard Law School this fall, where she will focus her studies on international and religious law.

 Endnotes

1. Gunnar Jarring, Return to Kashgar: Central Asian memoirs in the present (Durham: Duke University Press, 1986).

2. Reyila Dawuti, Weiwuerzu matha wenhua yanjiu (Ürümchi: Xinjiang daxue chubanshe, 2001).

3. Rachel Harris and Rahila Dawut, “Mazar Festivals of the Uyghurs: music, Islam and the Chinese state,” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 11 (2002): 101-118.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Regula and Burckhardt-Qureshi, Sufi Music of India and Pakistan: sound, context and meaning in qawwali (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

7.  Nathan Light, “Slippery paths: the performance and canonization of Turkic literature and Uyghur muqam song in Islam and modernity” (Bloomington: Indiana University PhD. Diss., 1998).

8. Gunnar Jarring, “The ordam-padishah-system of eastern Turkestan shrines,” Hyllningsskrift tillägnad Sven Hedin på hans 70-årsdag den 19 febr (Stockholm: Generalstabens litografiska anstalt, 1935).

9. Harris and Dawut, “Mazar Festivals of the Uyghurs: music, Islam and the Chinese state.”

10. Thierry Zarcone, "Quand le saint legitime le politique: le mausoleée de Afaq Khwaja à Kashgar," Central Asian Survey 18.2 (1999): 225-42.

11. Gunnar Jarring, Return to Kashgar: Central Asian memoirs in the present.

12. Jay Dautcher, "Down a Narrow Road," Identity and Masculinity in a Uyghur Community in Xinjiang, China (Boston: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009).

13. Theodore Levin, The Hundred Thousand Fools of God: musical travels in Central Asia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996).

14. “On Ikki Muqam Tätqiqat Ilmiy Jämiyiti.” Uyghur on ikki muqam häqqidä (Ürümchi: Shinjang khälq näshriyati, 1992).

15. Sergei Poliakov, Everyday Islam: religion and tradition in rural Central Asia, Translated by Anthony Olcott (New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1992).

16. Amy Anderson and Darren Byler. “‘Eating Hanness’: Uyghur Musical Tradition in a Time of Re-education,” China Perspectives 2019 (2019): 17-26.

17. Sean Roberts, "Negotiating locality, Islam, and national culture in a changing borderlands: the revival of the Mäshräp ritual among young Uighur men in the Ili valley," Central Asian Survey 17.4 (1998): 672-700.

18. Harris and Dawut, “Mazar Festivals of the Uyghurs: music, Islam and the Chinese state.”

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