4 - Al-Qablal Wujud: Identity and Religious Economy

Summary

This chapter studies the grave of one particular Wali Pitu saint and its sociocultural contexts in the Muslim village of Loloan in west Bali. It mainly addresses the competition for saint status and the dimension of the religious economy in a Muslim pilgrimage site. The first part of this chapter deals with the notion of al-qablal wujud [sic], ‘the awaited saint’, attributed to Ali Bafaqih (1882-1999). In the second part, the challenge of Ali Bafaqih's identity among the Loloan people will be thoroughly investigated. Two important points in this part are the cultural displacement of the Buginese Muslims who established Loloan's closed society and the cultural geography of the Loloan Village. The third part of the chapter depicts the spatial distribution of three sacred graves in Loloan in a comparative perspective and shows how it reflects the symbolic hierarchy of the sites within the village. The final part will examine the religious economy of Ali Bafaqih's grave that hundreds of Muslim pilgrims visit every day.

This chapter argues that identity and religious economy form essential elements in sainthood discourses. Identity could stabilise – or conversely, contest – the notion of sanctity fundamental in the doctrine of sainthood. Saint identity, as the following discussion will show, is embodied in constantly changing spatial and symbolic categories, which are negotiated and contested. This chapter further argues that the principles of economic exchange between the saints and the pilgrims and between the saints and the local communities are part of discourses that also play an important role in shaping the notion of sanctity.

Al-Qablal Wujud, the Awaited Saint

The story of beatification of the al-qablal wujud goes back to early 1993. When looking for the tombs of the Wali Pitu, Toyyib Zaen Arifin and his Al-Jamali disciples paid a visit to Ali Bafaqih, a renowned sayyid-ulama in Loloan. Arifin's disciples who accompanied him told me that a few days before his visit to Ali, Arifin made a ziarah to the tomb of Habib Shaykh Bafaqih, popularly known as Sunan Botoputih (d. 1873), located near the famous grave of Sunan Ampel in Surabaya, and claimed to have a conversation with the saint. During the mystical conversation Arifin had with Sunan Botoputih, he told Arifin to send his regards to Ali, which he eventually delivered personally.