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

NOTES
5 THE PEACEMAKER OF DEHLI
1 There is no paucity of hagiographic literature on Nizamuddin Awliya.
Among them (apart from the books of authors already referred to
above) are ‘Ali Jandar’s Durar-i Niz.āmī (Ms. in Salar Jung Museum,
Hyderabad), Muhammad Jamal Qiwam’s Qiwām al-‘aqā’id (Ms. in the
library of Osmania University, Hyderabad), Gesudaraz’s son Sayyid
Muhammad Husaini’s Jawāmi‘ al-kalim (published in 1937) and Afżal
al-fawā’id, ascribed to Amir Khusrow. Apart from that the authorship
of the afore-mentioned fabricated malfūz.āt, Rāh˝at al-qulūb and Rāh˝at
al-muh˝ibbīn was ascribed to Nizamuddin Awliya himself, which was,
however, strenuously denied by him.
2 Ghiyathpur (or Moghulpur), a village in the suburbs of the so-called
‘New city’ (Kilugarhi), where the capital of Sultan Balban and his son
Kaiqubad was located in the thirteenth century. The ‘New city’ was
situated to the northwest of the ‘Old city’ (Mehrauli) of the Ghorids.
3 The opposition lāzimī-muta‘addī has been borrowed by the mystical
literature from grammar, where the former term signifies the intransitive
verb (action limited to the subject), and the latter, the transitive (action
directed towards the object). It is exactly this meaning of grammatical
transitiveness, which is applied by Nizamuddin Awliya to religious
service (Nizami 1992: 51).
4 In explanation of the idea of worldly life without involvement with and
attachment to worldly matters Nizamuddin narrated the parable about
a saint, who had sent his wife to take food to a dervish, living on the
other bank of the river. There was no ford in the river, and the saint
told his wife to ask the water to part out of respect to her husband, who
had never slept with a woman. The wife, who had given birth to the
saint’s children, was extremely amazed at such a direction, but obeyed,
and the river parted before her. Having fed the dervish, the woman
asked how she should now return. The dervish repeated her husband’s
instructions: she should tell the river to give way to her for the sake
of a hermit who had not taken food for thirty years. The bewildered
woman, before whose eyes the dervish had had his meals, carried out
the order and reached home safely, where she demanded an explanation
from her husband. The saint said: ‘I never slept with you to
satisfy the passion of my lower self. I slept with you only to provide you
what was your due. In reality, I never slept with you, and similarly,
that other man never ate for thirty years to satisfy his appetite or to fill
his stomach. He ate only to have the strength to do God’s will’ (Amir
Hasan 1992: 152).
5 The earliest historical work, ascribing the saying to Nizamuddin
Awliya is ‘Tārīkhi Mubārak Shāhī’ of ‘Abdullah Sirhindi (end of the
fourteenth century). In the sixteenth century Bada’uni, in Muntakhab
at-tawārīkh, explains the origin of this saying: ‘Among the inhabitants
of India the opinion is widespread, that Sultan Ghiyathuddin Tughluq,
because of the enmity harboured by him towards the Sulţān almashā’ikh,
sent him a notification while on the way to Lakhnauti:
“After my return to Delhi either the Shaikh will remain there or
myself.” The Shaikh replied: “It is still far away to Delhi” (Bada’uni
1973, 2: 301).
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