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

THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI
dervishes, it is like this, that you are straight with those who are
straight with you, and with the crooked, you are also straight!’ (Amir
Hasan 1992: 181).
Shaikh Nizamuddin linked the inclination for violence and revenge
with man’s bestial self (nafs), and peaceful disposition and tolerance
with his spiritual heart (qalb). If people or nations who happen to
be under the influence of nafs run into each other, endless strife is
inevitable. However, if the corroding action of nafs is met with the
neutralizing counteraction of qalb, then enmity dies out, like acid
neutralized by alkali. According to Nizamuddin forgiveness is spiritual
sublimation, expulsion of all dark passions and unregulated
emotions. ‘If there be trouble between two persons, one of them
should seize the initiative and cleanse himself of ill thoughts toward
the other. When his inner self is emptied of enmity, inevitably that
trouble between him and the other will lessen’ (Amir Hasan 1992:
191).
Like his predecessors in the fraternity, Nizamuddin‘s relations
with the high and mighty of this world were strained, but they were
spoiled once and for all after the accession of Ghiyathuddin Tughluq
(1320–5) to the throne. The problem was that the preceding Sultan,
Nasiruddin Khusrow (the same Khusrow Khan Barwar, a low-caste
Hindu converted to Islam, who had usurped the throne as a result of
a coup, and who ruled for less than a year), had sent 500 thousand
tankā to the Shaikh as futūh˝, which were accepted by him and
distributed to the last coin for charitable purposes. The new Sultan,
however, declared all the financial operations of the usurper to be
illegal and demanded of the Shaikh a return of the money into the
treasury.
The saint replied to this with a firm refusal, declaring that in a
Muslim state treasury belonged to the faithful: money was taken
from them and was returned to them. Unable to bring influence to
bear upon the Shaikh by force, the Sultan manipulated displeasure
of a section of the ‘ulamā against him, who on pretext of the age-old
problem of permissibility of samā‘, convened a religious assembly
maz. har and tried to turn it into a court for trial of the Shaikh.
In the maz. har Nizamuddin quoted a h˝adīth in his defence,
however, the qād˝ī , Ruknuddin Walwalji who was hostile to him,
interrupted him declaring that the Shaikh was not a mujtahid, i.e. a
theologian having the right to decide questions of faith independently
and so could not cite h˝adīths as an argument. Although the maz. har
came to an end with the failure of the party hostile to the Shaikh, the
latter nonetheless felt deeply offended, mainly, by the disrespectful
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