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

NOTES
4 THE ASCETIC OF PAKPATTAN
1 The dates of life of these ‘founders’ are not indicative of even the lower
time limit of the formation of literary norms in the modern Indian
vernacular. In the majority of cases this time limit coincides with the
end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, i.e.
with the period of disintegration of the Great Mughals empire, is
accompanied by the final loss of status of Persian language and the
giving up of diglossia between Persian and Indian vernaculars.
2 kāfī – strophic form with repeated refrain, of lyrical-mystic content; in
the area of prevalence of Siraiki, Punjabi and Sindhi languages it was
used for rendition during qawwālī.
3 He follows Ibn al-‘Arabi’s example, i.e. his faith and religion are
determined by the Sufi teaching of wah˝dat al-wujūd.
4 Hū – from the Arabic huwa – He; He is; it is used for the invocation of
God at the time of dhikr. All the verses of Sultan Bahu end with this
pious exclamation; it also became a part of his name.
5 Mir Dard poetically explained why there was no difference between the
places of worship on the mystical level:
Dair thā Ka‘ba thā yā but khāna thā
Hum to sab mĕhmān the vān tūhī șāh.ib-i khāna thā
In monastery, at Ka‘ba or in temple
We all are guests; only Thee are the Master of the house.
(Asad ‘Ali 1979: 156)
6 The authorship of apocryphal malfūż. āt of Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki,
Fawā’id as-salākīn, is ascribed to Shaikh Farid himself. The fantastic
legends about Shaikh Farid are collected in the malfūz.āt ascribed
to him, Rāh˝at al-qulūb, supposedly compiled by Nizamuddin Awliya.
The latter denied his authorship. According to Nasiruddin Chiragh-i
Dihli’s reliable evidence ‘neither Shaikh ul-Islām Fariduddin nor Shaikh
ul-Islām Nizamuddin, nor for that matter any of the Chishti saints
or preceding shaikhs of my silsila ever wrote any books’ (Hamid
Qalandar 1959: 52)
7 The saint’s grandfather Qadi Shu‘aib was a Muslim judge. His
illustrious lineage and relations with the ruling dynasty are most likely
just a legend. Muhammad Ghauthi Shattari traces Baba Farid’s
genealogy in the fifteenth generation to Caliph ‘Umar.
8 Jawāhir-i farīdī, not a trustworthy source, narrates a typical story how
Qarsum Bibi used to leave Farid alone in the forest for a long time,
inculcating into him the aptitude for complete solitude and fasting.
When after yet another prolonged absence he returned home, his
mother started combing his hair. Farid could not control himself and
cried out for pain. ‘You have wasted your time and have achieved
nothing’, his mother said when she found him sensitive to pain (Nizami
1955: 24).
9 The following discourse of Baba Farid is quoted by Amir Khurd: ‘The
dervishes prefer to die of hunger, rather than to borrow for the purpose
of satisfying their own desires. Debt and relinquishment of the world
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