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

7
THE WARRIOR SAINTS
When Hindus and Sikhs venerate the tombs of Muslim mystics and
spiritual preceptors reputed to be saints, or even the places where
two lovers whose love and death have become popular legend are
buried, this is more or less understandable. Mysticism as an intuitive
spiritual perception of God belongs to the field of natural and
universal religion, but not at all to the field of revealed religion which
is why at the mystic level there is no substantial difference between
the various faiths. It is outside mystic experience where major differences
are to be found. In the preceding chapters it has been seen that
when a medieval mystic declared that there was no difference between
Ka‘ba and mandir (Hindu temple), between Rām and Rah˝mān, this
statement makes sense only in the sphere of mystic experience, where
every phenomenal dualism is done away with, since outside this
sphere everyone continues to adhere to the traditions and rites of his
own faith.
From this point of view every mystic in medieval India, whether it
were Baba Farid, Kabir or Guru Nanak, could partly be considered
a mu’ah˝h˝id (Unitarian), 1 under which category came the people
devoted to the idea of one God. As conceived by popular religion, not
versed in dogmatics, differences between awliyā on the one hand and
Sants, Naths and Bhaktas on the other were not really of particular
importance.
The pilgrimage of Hindus to the graves of ghāzīs, i.e. warriors of
Islam who propagated the Prophet’s religion with fire and sword is,
however, much more difficult to explain. The earliest and most
widely-known sanctuary of this type is the dargāh of the miracle
worker warrior Sipāh Sālār 2 Mas‘ud Ghazi in Bahraich, near Ayodhya
(in what is now Uttar Pradesh). The tradition of pilgrimage to
the tomb had its origin apparently in the twelfth century during the
rule of the Ghorids. The architectural complex of the tomb was
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