A Language Like No Other
Walk into a Bohra home. Listen to the prayers offered before a meal. Hear the poetry recited at a milad. Read the scrolls of the marsiya sung at an Ashara majalis. All of these flow in a language that is not Arabic, not Gujarati, not Urdu — and yet is somehow all three and more.
Lisan ud-Dawat (لِسَانُ الدَّعوَة — lisān al-da’wa — the Tongue of the Call) is the distinctive language of the Dawoodi Bohra community. It was forged over seven centuries from the encounter between:
- The Arabic of the Quran, of Fatimid scholarship, of the dawat’s theological texts
- The Gujarati of the Indian subcontinent, where the dawat took root from the 6th/7th century AH onward
- Persian and Urdu influences that entered through trade, scholarship, and cultural exchange
The result is a language that is written in Arabic script (like Urdu and Farsi) but whose spoken form follows Gujarati grammatical structure, infused with an enormous Arabic and Persian vocabulary. It is, in every meaningful sense, a language created by and for the transmission of the Islamic and Ismaili faith in the Indian context.
Origins: From Yemen to Gujarat
The dawat reached India in the late 6th century AH / 11th century CE — carried by Dais from Yemen who were spreading the Ismaili message across the Indian Ocean world. The first Dais in India operated primarily in Cambay (Khambhat) and Patan in what is now Gujarat, in a community of Muslim merchants and traders.
The early community was likely Arabic-speaking or bilingual. But over generations, as the community became deeply rooted in Gujarat, the language shifted. The Dais needed to communicate with Gujarati-speaking converts, to conduct marriage contracts and legal proceedings in Gujarati, and to preach in a language their congregation could follow.
The solution was elegant: the dawat adopted Gujarati as the vehicle but retained Arabic as the sacred language embedded within it. Religious terms, Quranic phrases, names of Allah and the Prophet and the Imams, theological vocabulary — all remained in Arabic. But the sentence structure, the everyday vocabulary, the pronouns and prepositions and verb forms — these became Gujarati.
Over time, this hybridized speech developed its own literary form, its own poetic conventions, its own devotional genres. By the 9th–10th century AH / 15th–16th century CE, the Dais were composing full-length qasidas (odes), marsiya (laments), and theological treatises in what had by then crystallized as Lisan ud-Dawat.
Its Script
Lisan ud-Dawat is written in Arabic script — not the standard Arabic script used for Arabic itself, but a modified form that includes additional characters needed to represent Gujarati sounds that don’t exist in Arabic. These adaptations (diacritical additions and new letter forms) were developed specifically for this language.
The use of Arabic script serves multiple purposes:
- It connects the language visually and symbolically to the Quran and to Arabic
- It maintains a distinction between the Bohra community’s literary language and the Devanagari-script Gujarati of the surrounding Hindu community
- It encodes the language in a form that requires religious literacy to read — the dawat’s learning circles were the primary institutions that taught this script
Today, Lisan ud-Dawat script is taught at Aljamea-tus-Saifiyah (the Bohra Arabic Academy) and through community education programs. Children who attend Bohra madrasas typically learn the script alongside Arabic.
Its Use: Poetry, Marsiya, and Devotion
The most beloved uses of Lisan ud-Dawat in the Bohra community are:
Marsiya: The elegiac poems lamenting the events of Karbala are composed in Lisan ud-Dawat and sung at Ashara Mubaraka majalis. The form comes from the Arabic marthiyya (elegy), but the content is rendered in Lisan ud-Dawat so that the congregation — many of whom have limited Arabic — can follow the narrative of Imam Husain’s (AS) sacrifice directly. The marsiya is sung by trained reciters (marsiyakhwan), often in a call-and-response pattern with the congregation.
Qasidas of the Dais: The Dais al-Mutlaqeen composed extensively in Lisan ud-Dawat. Syedna Taher Saifuddin (RA) — the 51st Dai — composed thousands of verses in Lisan ud-Dawat alongside his Arabic and Urdu poetry. His qasidas praising the Prophet, the Imams, and the Dais are among the most beloved devotional texts in the community. They are recited at milad celebrations, majalis, and personal devotion.
Waaz: The Friday sermon (waaz) delivered by the Dai and by aamil sahebs uses Lisan ud-Dawat. The sermon moves fluidly between Lisan ud-Dawat explanation, Arabic quotations from the Quran and hadith, and sometimes brief Urdu or English for clarity. The Lisan ud-Dawat component carries the doctrinal and narrative content; the Arabic carries the authority of scripture.
Legal documents and wajebat: Marriage contracts (aqd), inheritance documents, and other formal legal instruments have historically been written in Lisan ud-Dawat. The misaq (covenant ceremony) involves verbal pledges in Lisan ud-Dawat.
Mansak al-Hajj: The Bohra Hajj ritual guide (the Mansak) that instructs pilgrims on the rites of Hajj has sections in Lisan ud-Dawat alongside Arabic niyyat texts.
The Arabic Core
A Lisan ud-Dawat text will be immediately recognizable to an Arabic speaker because of how densely Arabic vocabulary is embedded in it. The essential vocabulary of Islamic practice, theology, and devotion appears in its Arabic form:
- Iman, Islam, Quran, hadith, salah, wudhu, sawm, zakat, hajj — all appear in their Arabic forms
- Walayat, wilayah, misaq, nass, dai, imam, batin, zahir, ta’wil — Ismaili theological terms appear in Arabic
- Salam, barakah, rahma, dua, faraj, shafa’a — devotional vocabulary is Arabic
- Names of Allah: Allah, al-Rahman, al-Rahim, al-Ghaffar, etc.
- Salawat upon the Prophet: صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيهِ وَآلِهِ وَسَلَّم appears in full Arabic even in Lisan ud-Dawat text
A non-Arabic speaker who does not know Gujarati can still follow a surprising amount of Lisan ud-Dawat text by knowing Arabic — the religious vocabulary is nearly all Arabic.
Lisan ud-Dawat and Community Identity
Language is identity. The use of Lisan ud-Dawat in the Bohra community is not merely a practical choice for communication — it is a declaration of identity, a mark of belonging, and a link across centuries.
When a Bohra mumin hears Lisan ud-Dawat in a waaz, or reads marsiya in this language, or recites a niyyat in it, they are participating in a tradition that connects them to:
- The Dais who brought the dawat to India in the 11th century
- The Bohra communities of medieval Cambay and Patan
- The great scholars of Aljamea-tus-Saifiyah who composed in this language for seven centuries
- Syedna Taher Saifuddin (RA) and Syedna Burhanuddin (RA), whose voices in Lisan ud-Dawat are preserved in recordings
This is what language can do that no other medium can: it creates a continuous thread of community identity across time and space.
Current Use and Transmission
Today, Lisan ud-Dawat faces challenges common to heritage languages in diaspora communities:
- Younger Bohras in North America, UK, and Australia may have limited proficiency in Lisan ud-Dawat if they grew up outside the community’s traditional educational institutions
- The everyday spoken language of most diaspora Bohras is English (or Urdu, or Gujarati without the religious-script overlay)
- Community madrasas and programs like the FMB (Fatemi Madrasa Board) work to maintain proficiency in the script and in recitation
However, Lisan ud-Dawat retains its importance in the liturgical and devotional life of the community:
- The waaz continues to use it
- Marsiya continue to be composed and sung in it
- Aljamea-tus-Saifiyah students learn it as part of their formal curriculum
- The Dai himself uses it when addressing the community
Lisan ud-Dawat is the tongue of the dawat — and as long as the dawat continues, so will this language.
A Sample — From a Classic Marsiya
A fragment of a Lisan ud-Dawat marsiya lamenting Karbala (standard form; author unspecified here as a representative example):
Ya Husain, ya Husain, teri yaad aave che / Karbala no dard dil ma samaave che (O Husain, O Husain, your memory comes to us / The pain of Karbala fills the heart)
The structure shows the hybrid nature: Arabic names (Husain, Karbala), Gujarati verb forms (aave, samaave — come, fill), Persian inflection (teri — your, from tera).
See also: The Dai al-Mutlaq institution, Fatimid Caliphate, Imam al-Tayyib (AS), Aljamea-tus-Saifiyah