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

THE INDIAN TOMB
The well-known philosopher and Sufi, the tragic hero of Indian
history of the seventeenth century, Dara Shikoh wrote in the treatise
The Notebook of The Saints (Safīnāt al-awliyā) that with the death
of one walī the entire hierarchy of awliyā is set in motion and the
place of the deceased is taken by the subordinate walī, who, in his
turn, is replaced by a walī of still lower rank and this is how the entire
pyramid is reconstructed (Dara Shikoh 1965: 58).
Each member of the hierarchy played a particular role: quţb, as
apparent even from his title ‘pole/pivot’, governed the entire universe;
‘fulcrums’ supported and held in equilibrium the cardinal points, i.e.
the four directions of the world; ‘deputies’ were responsible for the
seven climatic zones of the world and ‘leaders’ concerned themselves
with people’s worries and problems, etc. Ibn al-‘Arabi indicated that
the higher members of the hierarchy possessed aggregate knowledge,
which was distributed among the saints of lower ranks. The entire
knowledge of the universe is concentrated in quţb and he is himself
a perfect Gnostic (‘ārif). This hierarchy evidently reflected the complicated
structure of Sufi orders (t¸arīqa), where with the increase in
the number of members shaikh was compelled to accomplish training
of the disciples and exercise control over the fraternity through
numerous deputies (khalīfa).
Already by the fourteenth century most of the towns in North India
had their own saint, upon whom the right to preach independently
was conferred by the supreme shaikh of the fraternity or by his
deputy, who, in their turn, traced their spiritual genealogy (silsila)
to the eponym of one of the Sufi orders. Generally speaking, it is
impossible to draw a clear distinction between the orders and the
cult of saints proper, since awliyā were part of the order itself during
their life-time, and after their death formed part of its isnād, the chain
of persons transmitting the mystic tradition and bliss.
In the popular Islam of the lower strata of society saints were
venerated in the first instance not as Gnostics but as miracle workers,
bearers of divine bliss (baraka), intercessors and patrons of various
social groups and castes of artisans. By virtue of their closeness to the
people, voluntary penury and their ascetic mode of life, awliyā often
carried greater authority than the ‘official’ experts of religion, and
therefore the authorities tried in every way possible to enlist their
support. Thus in the thirteenth century the Sultan of Delhi, Iltutmish,
tried in vain to appoint a Sufi master, Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki,
whom after his demise people started venerating as a saint, to the
important post of Shaikh ul-Islām 6 in his court, where he would have
been required to supervise the state’s spiritual matters. A century later
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