Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Moojan Momen, An Introduction to 

Shii Islam (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 

1985); Michael M. J. Fischer, Iran, from Religious Dis-

pute to Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 1980).

Ayodhya

A Hindu pilgrimage center in Uttar Pradesh, north 

i

ndia

 on the river Sarayu, Ayodhya is now most 

famous as the home of a site contested by Hindus 

and Muslims as the birthplace of the Hindu god 

Rama or the location of an early 16th-century 

mosqUe

 known as the Babri Masjid. Modern day 

Ayodhya is closely linked with the mythical city 

of the epic Ramayana, the capital of the god-king 

Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu from an earlier 

epoch of Hindu history. Historical and archaeo-

logical evidence indicates that the two cities are 

not the same, but a vast number of the more than 

800 million Hindus in India do not make this 

distinction. It is clear that Ayodhya has been an 

important pilgrimage city for centuries, noted in 

particular as a base for several orders of Hindu 

ascetic  sadhus (holy men) and for its exception-

ally powerful Hanuman temple. The popularity of 

Ayodhya as a pilgrimage destination grew under 

Mughal patronage in the 16th and 17th centuries, 

and until the 19th century the religious conflict 

in the town was limited to struggles between rival 

orders of Hindus. The Babri Masjid was inau-

gurated in 1528 under the sponsorship of Mir 

Baqi, a general in the service of the first Mughal 

emperor, Babur (r. 1526–30). In 1859, the British 

government erected a fence following several inci-

dents, and it was determined that Hindus would 

no longer be allowed to freely enter the mosque 

as had been the custom. Then in 1949, idols of 

Rama appeared in the mosque, and it was claimed 

that a security guard had had a vision of Rama 

himself. From that time until 1992, the shrine was 

closed for all worship except for an annual Hindu 

ceremony to maintain the idols that had been 

installed. Dereliction in the courts and on the part 

of the government allowed the situation to fester 

until in the 1980s the issue was raised by several 

Hindu nationalist organizations, in particular the 

World Hindu Council (VHP) and the political 

party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). On December 

6, 1992, this movement was successful in draw-

ing an enormous crowd of activists who destroyed 

the mosque, triggering Hindu-Muslim riots across 

India in which more than 3,000 were killed. After 

1992, there was little change in the situation as the 

courts failed to rule decisively, and the BJP, which 

came to power in 1998, allowed the instigators of 

the violence to take up cabinet-level positions in 

the government. The question of the temple has 

continued to be a triggering issue for Hindu-Mus-

lim violence, most recently setting off a series of 

riots in the western state of Gujarat in spring 2002 

resulting in more than 2,000 deaths and more than 

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