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

THE MENDICANT SAINTS
the English it was given the name of the Grand Trunk Road, which
later Kipling would call the ‘backbone of the entire Hind’ and the
‘river of life, having no equal in the whole world’.
Along this very ‘river of life’ there came to the capital of the
Delhi Sultanate Shah Khizr Rumi, with whom begins the story of the
Qalandariyya fraternity in South Asia. A native of Anatoliya, Shah
Khizr Rumi was a disciple of the semi-legendary long-lived saint
‘Abdul ‘Aziz Makki, whom qalandars traditionally regard as a
contemporary and associate of the Prophet. Finding himself in Delhi
during the reign of Iltutmish, Khizr Rumi came under the charm of
Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki and took initiation into the Chishtiyya
fraternity from him. The great shaikh permitted him to wear the
clothes and observe the customs of the qalandars, insisting only that
he should refrain from performing ‘unclean’ miracles. In that way we
find Khizr Rumi at the source of the new derivative fraternity of
Qalandariyya-Chishtiyya, which was especially popular in Jaunpur
and other eastern regions of present Uttar Pradesh. Later on, the
Jaunpuri branch of Qalandariyya-Chishtiyya became Shi‘a. The
fourth successor of Khizr Rumi, namely Qutbuddin b. Sarandaz
Jaunpuri (who died in 1518), instituted the dhikr formulae of the
order: ‘Ya Hasan is forced between the two thighs, Ya Husain on
the navel, Ya Fatima on the right shoulder, Ya ‘Ali on the left shoulder,
and Ya Muhammad in his soul’ (Trimingham 1971: 268).
The most widely-known representative of this fraternity is another
disciple of Khizr Rumi called Sharafuddin Bu ‘Ali Qalandar (who died
in 1324), whose tomb in Panipat became a place of mass pilgrimage.
Bu ‘Ali Qalandar became a very authoritative figure in later Sufi
tradition when some authors of the sixteenth century, among them
Sayyid Murtaza of Murshidabad, the compiler of Yoga Qalandar,
traced the Qalandariyya discipline back to Bu ‘Ali of Panipat. As a
true qalandar, Bu ‘Ali did not observe the injunctions of sharī‘at, and
lived a life devoted to ascetic practices and mortification of the flesh.
Wandering throughout the Islamic world, he spent some time in
Konya where, according to information in Akhbār al-akhyār, he
became acquainted with Jalaludddin Rumi’s son Sultan Weled, the
head of the Mawlawi ţarīqa founded by his father. In any case
the verses (a few doctrinal poems and a dīwān), ascribed to Bu ‘Ali
Qalandar, display a knowledge of Mathnawī and of Rumi’s lyrical
poetry.
Besides verses Bu ‘Ali, like many other Sufis, used to elaborate
upon his mystic experience in letters (maktūbāt). In one of them he
wrote:
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