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

THE WARRIOR SAINTS
There were, however, a few South Asian saints who called their
disciples akhī (brothers), analogous to the name used by Turkish
craft-guilds, who were considered to be warriors for the faith. In the
fraternities instituted by them rituals of initiation were borrowed
from futuwwa. If one were to believe Ibn Battuta, akhī and futuwwa
were synonymous concepts:
An Akhi, in their [Turkish] idiom, is a man whom the
assembled members of his trade, together with others of
the young unmarried men and those who have adopted the
celibate life, chose to be their leader. This is [what is called]
al-futuwwa also ... Nowhere in the world have I seen men
more chivalrous in conduct than they are.
(The Travels of Ibn Battuta 1962, 1: 419)
Although the system of akhī in its Turkish form does not have
analogues in Indian medieval society, it is obvious that Jalaluddin
Surkhposh Bukhari’s grandson, Makhdum-i Jahaniyan Jahangasht,
famous for his puritanism and religious militancy, made use of it as
a model for the Jalaliyya order founded by him. Thus, Jalali neophytes
wrapped their belts around their waists and tied their turbans in a
special way and were given some salty water to drink at the time of
their initiation into futuwwa, and the same procedure was followed
during initiation into the maternal Suhrawardiyya order. Jahangasht
called his disciples akhī and borrowed his ideal of spiritual brotherhood
from the Anatolian craft-guilds and the akhī and futuwwa
organizations in Khurasan and Transoxania. ‘Like the Ayyars of Iraq
and Iran who were associated with the Futuwwa organizations, the
Akhis were also warriors of the faith and claimed to have restored
Islam to its pristine purity’ (Rizvi 1986: 281).
At the same time both Jalalis as well as Madari dervishes who were
similar to them had a bad reputation for being bē-shar‘. Armed with
kat’ārs (daggers) and lāt’hīs (battle cudgels) they were the indispensable
participants in urban turmoil and disturbances, the most active
part of an urban rabble, instantly responding to any instigation for
mutiny. In the year 1659, during the disorders in Delhi connected
with the execution of Shaikh Sarmad and Dara Shikoh, dervishes of
these orders converged in the capital in groups, burning houses and
plundering and ransacking the shops of Hindu tradesmen. In peacetime
Jalalis and Madaris lived by begging in bazaars and fairs, or
entertained the mob with istidrāj (‘dirty miracles’ or ‘divine deception’)
of the lowest sort: thus, for example, Jalalis, who were Shi‘a, used to
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