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

NOTES
without listening to it. ‘Every time that a musical assembly would gather
in his khanqah and the participants would recite the Qur’an, Shaykh
Shihab ad-din would hear it, but the actual musical performances, with
all their attendant commotion, he would not hear. Just imagine how
absorbed he was in his spiritual discipline!’ (Amir Hasan 1992: 119).
8 It was not clarified in the original Persian text of Fawā’id al-Fu’ād, but
Bruce Lawrence in his English translation mentioned the gender of
Qadi Hamiduddin’s beloved as masculine.
9 Hagiographic literature maintains that Baha’uddin Zakariya’s son was
kidnapped since he had threatened Hamiduddin Suwali Nagori, for
which the latter had cursed him. This is a rare evidence of open
hostility between members of two fraternities.
10 Baha’uddin Zakariya and the Qadi of Multan wrote a letter to
Iltutmish, in which they suggested that the Sultan’s troops should be
sent to the city in order to put an end to the Governor’s misrule. The
letter fell into Qubacha’s hands who executed the Qadi, and invited the
saint to his palace for an explanation. Shaikh Baha’uddin fearlessly
owned authorship of the letter and declared: ‘Whatever I have written,
I have written because it is true and I have also written it for the sake
of Truth (i.e. God). As for you, do what you want. By yourself, what
can you do? What rests in your hands?’ (Amir Hasan 1992: 219). The
Governor had to leave Baha’uddin’s deed without consequences, and
soon after the saint’s efforts were crowned with success, as in 1228
Iltutmish annexed Sind and Multan. Nasiruddin Qubacha, pursued by
the Sultan’s troops, was drowned in the Indus.
11 Earlier, having conquered Sind, Muhammad bin Qasim had executed
the local ruler Dahir and sent two of Dahir’s daughters to the Caliph
as a gift; out of a feeling of revenge, they had accused the Arab military
leader of rape. The Caliph sent an order to Muhammad bin Qasim,
according to which he had to be sewn up in the hide of a newly
slaughtered cow and sent to Damascus. Muhammad bin Qasim, who
was only eighteen years old, did not care to repudiate the slander,
obeyed the Caliph’s order and after a few days died of suffocation on
the way.
12 Prior to the story involving the dancing girl, the Shaikh ul-Islām had
endeavoured to open the Sultan’s eyes to the alleged fact that Jalaluddin
Tabrizi cohabited with a Turkish slave boy, and even spied upon him
from the roof of the adjacent house. Jalaluddin, having noticed the
shadowing, used to make the slave give him a massage in the bed,
teasing his persecutor for fun. However, in this case Iltutmish did not
allow the matter to be proceeded with any further, having ordered
Najmuddin Sughra to leave the saint alone.
13 Jalaluddin Tabrizi served his murshid with incomparable self-denial.
Thus, Abu Hafs Suhrawardi annually performed H˛ajj, and being an
elderly person of poor health, found it difficult to prepare his food on
the way. Jalaluddin accompanied him everywhere, carrying on his head
a small portable stove, on which food remained hot all the time.
14 Fakhruddin ‘Iraqi (died in 1289), a Persian mystic poet, author of a
poetical dīwān, the poem ‘Ushshāq-nāma (Book of the Lovers) and the
treatise Lama‘āt (Flashes of Light), propagated Ibn al-‘Arabi’s ideas
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