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

THE INDIAN TOMB
1276. 9 Hagiographic tradition says that a compassionate butcher
had given a piece of mutton to the wandering saint for sustenance.
However, none of the inhabitants of Multan was willing to help the
saint and fry the meat on his hearth; blacksmiths, in whose smithies
fire never stop burning, proved to be particularly callous. Breaking
down from hunger, Shams Tabrizi collapsed in the dust on the
wayside, and Allah, taking pity on him, made the sun descend from
the heavens so low, that terribly intense heat browned the meat. And
this miracle is repeated every spring for the edification of the
inhabitants of Multan. During the ‘urs of the saint they cook and
give out to beggars pieces of fried mutton, give honour to butchers
and cast stones at blacksmiths in the streets.
Existence of springs and oases in deserts and arid regions is also
usually traced to the miracle of a saint who had in former times struck
earth or rock with his staff and had thereby called forth a stream of
water. In particular Punjabis believe that the water that saint Saidan
Shah Shirazi brought out from the earth flows from the very Ganges.
The appearance of freshwater springs in the region of contemporary
Karachi is ascribed to saint Shah Abdullah Ghazi, who extracted
water by a stroke of his staff against the rock on which his dargāh is
now situated.
Quite a number of Indian and Pakistani toponyms are derived from
names of well-known saints; others actually contain the word pīr,
which has become a synonym for saint: mountain ridge Pir Panjal,
mountain pass Haji Pir, hills Pir Wadhai and Pir Ghali, settlements
Pir Patho and Pir Sohawa, for example.
Although in people’s consciousness a miracle constituted the most
important event in the biography of a saint, moderate or, as they were
called, ‘sober’ mystics regarded karāmāt with utmost caution. In their
opinion, a miracle was not an indication of the spiritual perfection
of a saint, since it could distract him from pious devotion to God and
be a certain temptation and enticement. ‘Miracles are men’s menses’
declared the thirteenth-century Shaikh Hamiduddin Nagori, reflecting
the practice whereby a husband avoids his wife during her menstrual
days, so similarly God also avoids union with a mystic working
miracles. Generally speaking, public opinion denounced public
performance of miracles, which was nothing but usurpation of the
Prophet’s rights, and a dervish turning a rope into a snake or water
into milk before the eyes of a bazaar crowd evoked equal disdain
on the part of official representatives of religion, mystics as well as
pious laymen. Most often members of small marginal fraternities
(Madariyya, Jalaliyya, Hydariyya, for example), whose dubious,
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