Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Marshal Hodgson, The Venture of 

Islam. Vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 

1974); Charles Melville, ed., Safavid Persia (London: 

I.B. Taurus, 1996); Roger Savory, Iran under the Safavids

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

sahaba

  See c

ompanions

 

of

 

the

 p

rophet

.

sahur

  See r

amadan

.

saint

The Arabic word usually translated as saint, 

wali

, refers primarily to the quranic verse 10:62: 

“Indeed, on the friends of God (awliya Allah) 

there is no fear, neither shall they grieve.” Two 

words derived from wal

ī are generally taken to 

refer to sainthood, wilaya and 

walaya

. Medieval 

Muslim scholars, as well as contemporary observ-

ers of Islam, have debated which of these two 

terms is the most appropriate, for they can be 

understood to have different meanings: wilaya

connotes power, while walaya generally indicates 

closeness. While Muslim scholars have differed as 

K  598  

Saddam Hussein

---

to whether the saints are known by their closeness 

to God or their power, the saints in fact should be 

understood to be very special people who com-

bine these two attributes. “Saint,” then, connotes 

both friend and protector. One who is a saint is 

close to God. God protects the saint and gives the 

saint power (

baraka

). Just as God is the patron of 

the saint, dispensing power to him or her, so, too, 

the saint has power and acts as a patron.

There is no generally recognized churchlike 

structure in Islam to recognize or canonize saints, 

which means that the saints emerge relatively 

organically from their environments. This does 

not mean, however, that one becomes a saint 

spontaneously, or without effort. On the contrary, 

it is clear that individuals have often striven to be 

considered saints, and it is also clear that saints are 

made, or at least come to be widely recognized, by 

the actions and efforts of their followers.

The great scholar of s

UFism

, Abu al-Qasim 

al-Qushayri (d. 1072), defined the saint as “first, 

someone whose affairs are taken over by God, and, 

second, as someone whose worship of God is con-

stant without any defect of rebellion” (Hoffman, 

109). People may become saints after long years of 

discipline and 

asceticism

, or they may reach that 

state in an immediate, overwhelming experience 

of the divine that takes over the person’s intellect. 

At the level of the average believer, however, the 

defining characteristic of saints is the ability to 

work miracles, known as karamat, through their 

blessing power (baraka). This power to work 

miracles is a sine qua non for saints, much as it is 

in Christianity.

The saints are thus special people, often hidden 

or obscured from the attention of others during 

their lives, who have a special closeness to God that 

allows them to act as intercessors on behalf of the 

believers, providing them access to the power and 

grace of God. Most often the deceased saint has a 

shrine to which people make visitation (

ziyara

), 

and to which people come annually for a local or 

regional saint festival (

mawlid

). This shrine, known 

variously as a 

maqam

, qubba, darih, or dargah,

contains the body and relics of the saint. It is also 

believed to contain the saint’s baraka.

The reality of saints, and especially their venera-

tion, has been under strenuous attack in the Islamic 

world for over a century. r

eneWal

 

and

 

reForm

movements

  of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries 

have objected to the practices associated with saint 

veneration. The Wahhabis, who emerged in the 

Arabian Peninsula in the 18th century, destroyed 

all the saints shrines they found, a practice that is 

continued by the modern Saudi state through some 

of its charitable arms. For them, saint veneration 

risked compromising the Islamic belief in the one-

ness of God, thus constituting 

idolatry

, or 

shirk

: the 

greatest sin of Islam. In the 19th and 20th centuries, 

many Muslim reformers came to see saint veneration 

as archaic superstition that had to be eliminated if 

Popular religious poster showing an assembly of lead-

ing Chishti saints, shown with their shrines in India