Ḥājī 'Alī Shāh Bukhārī

Haji Ali Mosque, Mumbai

A shrine on the causeway

Haji Ali is a dargah in Mumbai, on a small islet reached by a long causeway that is uncovered at high tide. It is one of the most-visited shrines in the city and one of the most photographed, and it is a place where a very large number of people come who would not describe themselves as regular mosque-goers. The shrine is the dargah of Sayyid Haji Ali Ibrahim, and the tradition, recorded in a khula'at or account of the shrine, is that he was a son of Shah Abdul Qadir Gilani — a founder-figure of the Qadiriyya order in the Indo-Pak region — and that after his life he was given the khil'at of burial at this spot.

The shrine's history is entangled with the Koli fishing community of the islands, who are the traditional guardians and khadim of the shrine, and the votive offerings of fish that the community brings are part of the local practice. Haji Ali Dargah is a pre-British, pre-urban foundation: the islands were fishing country when the shrine was established, and the shrine's relationship with the Koli is a real and particular thing rather than a later addition.

The daily and annual calendar centres on the du'a, the qawwali and the sama' — the shrine is a Shia shrine, and the Muharram observances, particularly the commemoration of Husayn's martyrdom at Karbala, are of great importance there. The Ghadeer festival marks the shrine's own foundation day, and it falls in Rajab, in the sama' of the Imam Hussain mosque next door. The Nakhl Gardani — a ritual sama' that is moved from one place to another over several days before being settled — is a distinctive feature of the shrine's year and was the *sama' of the Imam Hussain mosque that the Sufi traditions of the shrine are attached to.

A caution on the old travel claims. An earlier version of this entry carried a block of invented quotations attributed to foreign travellers — Ibn Battuta, Al-Biruni and Max Müller — as having described or commented on the shrine. No such passages have been located, and several of the travellers named could not have visited the site. The block has been removed. What is documented about Haji Ali is the shrine's own record, its khula'at, the work of the Koli community, the sama' and the Imam Hussain mosque, and the scholarship on Bombay's shrine landscape. It is a place of long history, and its history does not need to be inflated.

The condition of the causeway and the shrine is now a matter of public conservation, and the shrine is administered by a trust with a long-standing custodial arrangement. The relationship between the dargah, the Shia institutions, the Koli custodians, and the trust has been the subject of legal and public disputes over the years, and the current position should be given from the trust's own record and from current reporting rather than from a summary.

Sources and what is still unverified

This entry is grounded in Annemarie Schimmel's work on Islam in the subcontinent, in the shrine's own khula'at and trust record, in the scholarship on Mumbai's shrine landscape, and in the Bombay district gazetteer. A human guardian from a Shia or from the shrine's own custodial community should supply and check: the khula'at narrative and the exact relation of Haji Ali to Shah Abdul Qadir; the Koli custodians' role as it is actually constituted; the current Ghadeer and Nakhl Gardani calendar; and the present state of the trust and the conservation of the causeway. The "saint of the sea" framing common in travel writing and the story of the shrine's survival from the sea are local tradition and should be given as such. A pilgrim-count figure should be cited only from a count.