Muslims’ relationship with Ali is unique in the devotional history of world religions.

Ali ibn Abi Talib — the first Imam in the Twelver (Isna Ashari) Shiite reckoning, the Holy Prophet’s (upon whom be peace) cousin and son-in-law — is revered in a way that not only plugs sectarian fissures but also makes the drench of religiosity evaporate almost completely. Sunni or Shiite, Sufi or Qalandar, liberal or devout, standing on the right of the ideological aisle or on the left — they have all sang songs for the Imam.

Indeed, people often forget that Allama Iqbal, who was by no means of the Shiite persuasion, constructed his entire edifice of the philosophy of the self (khudi) on — among other things — the bedrock of the names/titles of Ali. In his Persian Asraar-i-Khudi [Secrets of the Self] Iqbal drew the three fundamental principles of ‘ilm [cognitive knowledge], ‘ishq [dynamic love] and ‘amal [action] from these resonant appellations. Note here the delightful orthographic-visual device employed by the poet — all three words denoting his tripartite doctrine begin with the same letter ‘ayn, as does the word ‘Ali.

One recalls that the philosophy of khudi is central to Iqbal’s signature doctrine of personality, and this means that devotion to Ali has played a decisive role in Allama’s metaphysical thought. This is particularly interesting for the very reason that it appears rather improbable that an Alid inspiration would function as a formative influence on Iqbal.

But even more interesting — in fact, dramatically ironic — is the case of Mirza Ghalib. Ghalib is known for his insistent, consistent and vehement dismissal of organised religion. He can be both daringly playful and doctrinally sober about it. Thus, during his (fictional) pilgrimage to Mecca he reports —

“At night I drank wine by the sacred well of Zamzam —
And when the morning light appeared from the horizon,
I washed away wine stains from my ihram”

See how daringly frivolous Ghalib happens to be here: committing a sin during the formal performance of an eminent religious duty in the very “House of God.” Indeed, if we do not seek any deeper occult meanings of this verse, as we might, in plain view it shows a mischievous trivialising of Islamic religious practices.

And in his many philosophical moments, Ghalib sabotages the very idea of a meaningful, regulated world brought into being by a Creator — “The world is for me a plaything of children/ A mere spectacle it is that I see day and night”; and then again, at times he appears to be a diehard nihilist: “Do not get beguiled by the illusion of be-ing/ The entire cosmos is but a link in the net of imagination.” This concrete world for him is nothing but an “absence of absence” (ghayb-i-ghayb).

Indeed, a devious blanket rejection of organised religion is to be found, ironically, in a poem Ghalib wrote in a highly creative devotion to Ali:

“A wave of the hangover of the same intoxication it is:
What of Islam and what of infidelity
A crookedness of the same drawn line it is:
What of illusion and what of certainty”

Plentiful as they are, these instances can be multiplied quite easily, such as the ruthless obliteration of the distinction between a Hindu temple and the precincts of the Kaa‘ba — “if a Hindu dies in his idol house, bury him in the Kaa‘ba.”

But despite Ghalib’s frequent rejection of all manifestations of religiosity, it would seem an embarrassing contradiction that — and there seems to be a scholarly consensus here — by far the best poems in his Urdu diwan are the qaseedas [panegyrics] he wrote in praise of Ali (called manqabat-i-Haidari). As a matter of fact, his early diwan, known as the Nuskha-i-Hamidiyya [the Hamidi Recension], completed by a scribe in 1821, some 50 years before Ghalib’s death, does not have the order of the poems that we find in standard editions: it opens not with ghazals but with devotional manqabats.

Here, Ghalib soars to the pinnacle of his poetic craft — what of idiom, rhythmic dynamics, imagery, metaphor, metaphysical flights; what of tremors of sonorous diction and overflowing richness of passion — indeed, there is hardly anything in the entire diwan to compare this supreme piece of creation. And here — let us note — this “secular” poet speaks unapologetically as a practising twelver Shiite.

I spoke above of Iqbal’s invocation of the names/titles of Ali, but here Ghalib may have a priority —

“O, the honour of the life of Muhammad [upon whom be peace]!
O Ali! O Murtaza! O father of Hasan! O Bu Turab!
One glance at me!”

In this enterprise we find a telltale irony — namely, that in the flow of this very manqabat Ghalib dismisses structured/formal religion, and he does so in a manner that is disparaging: “Concern with the material world or with religion [dunya/diñ] are dregs in the same wine cup of heedlessness [ghaflat].” And yet, this is neither a contradiction nor an anomaly. The reason is profoundly complex but not far to seek. As I have pointed out earlier in the ‘The cosmology of Karbala’ (Books & Authors, Aug 6, 2025), the Muslim devotional tradition has raised Ali (and, by extension, his family, the Ahl-i-Bayt) from the domain of history into the domain of metaphysics.

Thus, Ali is a cosmic force, not bounded in a geographical region or parochially restricted to a particular sect or even to a specific religion; no, he is a universal emanation, transcending the edges of space and time — or as Iqbal eloquently said, he is not “trapped in ‘near and far’ and ‘sooner and later’.”

The columnist teaches at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) Karachi. All translations are by him

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 12th, 2026