“A Blessing on Our People”: B ibi P ak D aman, Sacred Geography, and the Construction of the Nationalized Sacred

This article focuses on the hagiographies and debates related to B ibi P ak D aman, a small shrine in L ahore's Old City. Said to house the graves of six women from the P rophet M uhammad's household and subject to a range of theories regarding its origins, B ibi P ak D aman is critical space in validating P akistan's religious character and centrality in broader map of I slam. The most widely disseminated claim maintains that the main mausoleum in B ibi P ak D aman is that of B ibi Ruqayyah bint A li, daughter of ῾Ali ibn Abu Talib, the fourth of the “Rightly Guided” Caliphs and the first S hiite Imam. The implications of this presence allow devotees to link B ibi P ak D aman to seminal events in the formation of Islamic and S hiite history in particular, affirming that the lands that would become P akistan were vital at I slam's inception, rather than a much later, peripheral recipient of Muhammad's message. Yet like no other site in P akistan, B ibi P ak D aman exemplifies the tensions that exist between state sanctioned religious rhetoric and local and folk traditions, with the unease with the government's role as religious arbitrator, between nationalism and communal rivalry, and within a minority S hiite community often struggling to legitimate its beliefs in a nation with a rapidly‐narrowing space for public religious plurality.