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

THE MENDICANT SAINTS
Qalandars used to shave their heads and beards, sometimes leaving
the moustache untouched. All-knowing Ibn Battuta explained the
outward appearance of qalandars by an episode from the biography
of Muhammad b. Yunus as-Sawaji (who died in 1232), the founder
of the Qalandariyya fraternity. 3 A certain woman living in Sawa
(Iran) enticed him into her house on a plausible pretext, and having
failed to win his love, locked him up in the pantry. The ingenious
qalandar, having been locked up, shaved his head and beard clean,
not leaving even his eyebrows. When the temptress saw what her
object of passion had turned into, she lost all interest in him and set
him free. In gratitude for his deliverance from sin as-Sawaji retained
this new appearance throughout his life and entrusted his followers
never to part with a razor.
The Chishti malfūz. āt often refer to the shocking behaviour of the
qalandars. Qalandars and those congenial souls the juwāliqs were
inimically disposed to the ‘settled ones’. They did not recognize their
sainthood and considered them to have been secularized and ‘turned
into bourgeoisie’. However, at the same time they constantly visited
khānqāhs and had the brazenness to ask for gifts and money. The
scandals which they in the process perpetrated – let us recall the
breached wall in Baba Farid’s jamā‘at khāna or the riot in Baha’uddin
Zakariya’s khānqāh – can be only partly explained by the qalandars’
‘programmatic’ endeavour to incur censure. The gentle and patient
Nizamuddin Awliya considered a visit by qalandars to be a peculiar
penance or at least a sobering agent, which God granted to the
shaikhs, so that they did not get too conceited in the atmosphere of
general adoration:
A juwaliq entered the room. And he began to utter some
shameful remarks that are inappropriate for a saintly
assembly. The master – may God remember him with favour
– said nothing. In short, he lived up to the expectations that
the juwaliq had on him. After that he turned to those present
and emphasized: ‘This is what has to be done (in such
circumstances). Just as many persons come, place their head
at my feet, and offer something, so there ought to be people
like this who come and speak unabashedly. It is through such
acts that the saint can offer penance for those other acts’.
(Amir Hasan 1992: 136)
Qalandars did not confine themselves only to shameful words: in the
year 1353 a wandering dervish called Turab, who was dissatisfied
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