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

THE WARRIOR SAINTS
Having finally settled down in Bengal, Shah Jalal did not leave it
till his very death, but people’s faith in his wonder-working powers
was so great that the tradition, retold by Ibn Battuta, was maintained
that every day he performed namāz in Mecca and then in the
twinkling of an eye returned to Sylhet. For that matter, this ‘miracle’
is a commonplace of the entire Indian hagiography: even Amir Khurd,
who usually endeavours to avoid stories about karāmāt, writes that
every morning a flying camel used to carry away Nizamuddin Awliya
to Ka‘ba and bring him back by the first breakfast (Amir Khurd 1978:
152). The cult of Shah Jalal’s veneration in no way reflects his military
feats and his status as a ghāzī: in contrast to Bahraich, no banners and
spears are held at his mazār in Sylhet.
Like many other saints of East Bengal Shah Jalal gradually acquired
the traits of a guardian of waters and patron of trades connected with
water, for example fishermen and boatmen. The rites of the saint’s
veneration are bound up with the sacred pond, adjacent to his tomb.
In the pond, where the faithful perform ritual ablutions, there are
huge fish, and the feeding of these fish is the principal pious act of
ziyārat to Sylhet. If the fish eat the offering, the pilgrim’s supplication
will be heard. In this sense Shah Jalal’s cult is quite similar to the rites
of veneration of Mangho Pir or Bayazid Bistami in Chittagong and,
again, is influenced by Hindu rituals.
Connection of the saints of East Bengal with the element of water
has manifested itself even in the image of the sailor saint Pir Badr
(who died in 1420), the centre of whose activity became Chittagong
(in the territory of what is now Bangladesh). Like Salar Mas‘ud and
Shah Jalal, Shaikh Badruddin or Pir Badr-i ‘ālam is a historical person;
references to him are to be found not only in hagiographic works but
also in Badauni’s famous Muntakhab at-tawārīkh. This historian, in
particular, refers to the saint’s grandfather, a certain Shihabuddin
nicknamed ‘Haqq-go’ (Telling the truth or Truthful), who was
executed on Muhammad bin Tughluq’s orders because he publicly
called this Sultan a tyrant. Pir Badr spent his childhood in Meerut
and was educated in Multan where he was initiated into the
Suhrawardiyya order by Jalaluddin Bukhari. Later, at the invitation
of Sharafuddin Yahya Maneri, he moved to Bihar where was initiated
into the Firdawsiyya order, which was predominant in that province.
He married into a Bihari Hindu family and set off for Sonargaon and
Chittagong in East Bengal.
In the second half of the fourteenth century the Sultan of Sonargaon,
Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah (during whose rule Ibn Battuta visited
Bengal), went on several military expeditions for the purpose of
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