ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the Shiʿi sacred landscape of South Asia is typologically mapped through case studies of sacred footprint shrines (qadam-sharīf) dedicated to the first Imam, ʿAli, at Koh-e Moula ʿAli in Hyderabad and Dargah Shah-e Mardan in New Delhi, India. South Asia was explicitly territorialized as a sacred Shiʿi land through the miraculous manifestation of the foot- and handprints (qadam- and panjah-sharīf) of ʿAli and the Prophet Muhammad (qadam-rasūl), which I call “ʿAlid footprints.” Places where ʿAlid footprints manifest or are memorialized in shrine spaces exude baraka and the relics and the visual and votive practices associated with them establish intense emotional yet asymmetrical relationships between devotees and these saintly figures.
