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

THE ASCETIC OF PAKPATTAN
It was in this epoch that the cult of the veneration of the saint
became widely popular all over the Delhi Sultanate. Even Timur, who
swept past Punjab like a hurricane, left Ajodhan alone and considered
it necessary to pay obeisance to Shaikh Farid’s tomb. The credit for it
mainly goes to the saint’s grandson, Shaikh ‘Ala’uddin, who for more
than half a century held the post of sajjādanishīn and won the respect
of the Delhi sultans and was referred to in highly complimentary terms
by his famous contemporaries – Amir Khurd, Barani and Ibn Battuta.
The latter, in particular, narrates that Muhammad Tughluq granted a
hundred villages as in‘ām for sustenance to the descendants (including
‘Ala’uddin) of the great shaikhs of the Chishtiyya and Suhrawardiyya
orders. It means that the traditions of non-collaboration with the
authorities did not continue in the fraternity for long.
With the passage of time Shaikh Farid’s life acquires a halo of
incredibly fantastic stories about the miracles supposedly performed
by him. Later works, which, of course, have to be taken as contrived
ones, ascribed to him all sorts of supernatural capabilities – from the
ability to fly to resurrection of the dead (it is interesting why in that
case the saint did not resurrect his own mother and children). It is
exactly in this capacity that Shaikh Farid attracted unexpected
attention of the marginal groups of society, particularly, of thugs,
who considered him to be their patron. In the practice of veneration
of his tomb, rituals also make their appearance, and are connected
with magic and pre-Islamic beliefs.
The most well known of such rituals is that of passage through
Bihishti Darwāza (Gateway to Paradise). This is the name given to
the lateral door leading into the saint’s tomb, which is opened only
at the time of his ‘urs, celebrated on the fifth of Muharram. The width
of the doorway is approximately seventy centimetres but then its
height is not more than ninety centimetres, so one can pass through
the door perhaps only by crawling. The difficulty is exacerbated
by the fact that on the ‘urs days Bihishti Darwāza is stormed by
thousands of pilgrims, mercilessly pressing each other in order to
force one’s way forward. However, the attendants of the dargāh assert
that by the grace of the saint not a single pilgrim has as yet seriously
suffered in this crush. Captain C. M. Wade, who visited Pakpattan
in 1832, observed not without irony: ‘A superlative heaven is allotted
to those who are first to enter the tomb on the day mentioned. The
rush of precedence may, therefore, be better imagined than described’
(Nizami 1955: Appendix E).
The ritual of distribution of consecrated food, a version of Hindu
prasād, also makes its appearance in the cult of Farid Baba. In the
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