ABSTRACT
How do figures of holiness originate? What perpetuates them? This article is premised on the idea that in South Asia, like everywhere else, it is the discourses and the rituals that bring them to life. Discourses and rituals are the two tools of the saints’ making. The studies on saints favour oral legend second to discourses, to the detriment of rituals, of festival cycles. 1 The life of the saint, his or her biography, is always the foundation in the elaboration of the saint's construction or definition. This article proposes another point of view by also taking ritual into account for the understanding of devotional Islam, for at least two reasons.
