Paper short abstract:

This paper is a result of a reflection on a research project undergoing in Peshawar, Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa, Pakistan. We propose here an analysis of the religious involvement and participation in saint's shrines (Sufism) in Peshawar taking in consideration a complex system – tribe, land tenure, politics and religion. This participation might prove to be an importance element to understand the local politics and therefore this analysis will assist us likewise, in the comprehension of the current political situation and religious configuration in the region. Moreover, we will proceed to a reflexion on the socio-political organization of the Pukhtun system – especially, in the role of Saints –, having in consideration not only the complexity of the system but also, how this type of analysis and system might be extended to the outside of the Swat Valley (on which much of the anthropological literature produced focus in).

Paper long abstract:

As Akbar Ahmed referred in a recent interview, Anthropology (and other Social Sciences) might be a powerful tool in the insight into the current situation in the region (Ahmed, 2009). Despite the starting point in this research focus on an analysis of women, one of my original goals tied with an exploration of the current politico-religious situation in the region and mutations occurred. They are some distinctions between the Federal Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Settled Areas of the Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa. We should have in mind that the majority of the literature produced concerns the Tribal Areas - Swat Valley, Chitral, and Dir - rather than the settled areas of the province. This fact brings quite differences given that the system of social organization in large urban centers such as Peshawar, where the multi-ethnic composition and the territorial and ecologic disposition, transforms our field of analysis. However, Peshawar is also an example of a "border world‟ between these two areas, though in the southern outskirts of the city, the Tribal territory begins.

The shrines (dargahs) are used as place for prayers and personal supplications, regarding diseases, infertility and poverty (Barth, 1980 [1959]) and they personify an important site in the Pakistani religious landscape (and in the Afghan landscape as well7).