Muslim Saints of South Asia: The eleventh to ... - blog blog blog

THE ASCETIC OF PAKPATTAN
in good time, thus escaping death. When the saint then fell seriously
ill, it turned out that it was the ill-effect of witchcraft brought on him
by the local sorcerer. Fortunately Nizamuddin Awliya and one of
Shaikh Farid’s sons succeeded in finding and rendering harmless the
magic figurine made of dough, which the sorcerer had entangled in
horse-hair and pierced with needles, in order that the victim should
suffocate and suffer with acute pain.
Yet, in this inhospitable place, the saint found the long wished-for
peace of mind and happiness which he had asked for in the following
verse:
Az h.az˝rat-i tu seh chīz mikhāham
Waqt-i khūsh-o āb-i dīda-o rāh˝at-i dil
My Master, three things I seek from You:
Happy times, tears and peace of mind.
(Hamid Qalandar 1959: 224)
The tears which the saint sought from God happened to be the
most important element of the Chishti concept of tender emotional
compassion. An ascetic-hermit, who renounces the world and is
indifferent to people’s passions, as has been mentioned already, was
not the ideal of the Chishtis. It was incumbent upon a member of this
fraternity to have a supersensitive heart, always full of sorrow for
the imperfections of the world as a whole, and for the fate of an
individual. This sorrow was not destructive, on the contrary it was
gentle and sweet, since among the unfortunate it did not evoke protest
or fury, but pacification and submission to God’s will. A special role
in the relations between the consoler and the distressed was assigned
to shared tears with their well-known psychotherapeutic effect of
solidarity and relief. The Chishtis’ approach to the needs of the
faithful was strictly individual, Shaikh Farid always reasoned to
the crowd of people coming to him for help with the words: ‘To come
one by one is better than inviting the curse of the evil eye (when you
come as a group)’ (Amir Hasan 1992: 160).
In Ajodhan, the type of cloister which became typical of the
subsequent development of the Chishtiyya fraternity took shape. It
was different from the khānqāhs of other Sufi orders with their more
developed infrastructure. Shaikh Farid built near the town mosque
a small house of raw bricks (kachcha), consisting of one spacious
room, jamā‘at khāna, where murīds and visitors used to study, offer
prayers and sleep. Only he occupied a separate hűjra; here stood his
wooden cot (chārpā’ī) with string net and beside it lay a prayer rug.
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