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

THE HERMIT OF LAHORE
that is why tradition seldom records the date of birth of a saint,
apparently because of its uselessness, but always the exact date of his
assumption, which becomes the cult anniversary of his ‘urs. We have
to concede that the decisive factor of transformation of a mystic into
a saint was by no means his worldly life, even if full of virtue, great
deeds of asceticism and renunciation, but the wonderful gift of
baraka, which the disciples and followers, neighbours and members
of the community of the saint or some other groups of the social
environment began to sense all of a sudden and without any definitive
reason.
Hagiographic literature is never tired of narrating the occasions of
fortuitous revelation of baraka: on coming across an unknown tomb
a passer-by, or a shepherd, or a merchant, travelling in connection
with his commercial business, is all of a sudden overcome by spiritual
trepidation, followed by spiritual or physical healing. In greater
measure this applied to the tombs of unpretentious ‘spontaneous’
saints – vagrant qalandars, lonely recluses, peculiar malāmatīs, in
short, to all those not connected with fraternities and in their lifetime
not having influential patrons or devoted murīds. The posthumous
fame of those who strove for spiritual perfection in the lap of the
fraternity was taken care of by the ţarīqa itself, which canonized its
shaikhs even in their lifetime.
As the news spread in the region about the baraka radiating from
the tomb, it came to be regarded as a local shrine – inhabitants of
the neighbouring villages, or of the nearby muh˛allas (quarters) of a
town, or members of a particular caste and trade community started
thronging around the tomb. The involvement of sultans, members of
their families, military leaders, big landowners and other important
dignitaries of this world considerably consolidated the status of
the saint. The representatives of state authority or simply rich people
often reconstructed, enlarged and beautified the tomb, instituted
waqfs for its maintenance, awarded lands and money to the saint’s
descendants. Such a fusion of spontaneous lower-class reverence
with the recognition of the tomb on the part of the upper strata of
society, taking institutional and material form, once and for all consolidated
the reputation of sanctity for the tomb.
The unrestrained yearning in the consciousness of the masses for
the materialized embodiment of everything having a bearing on faith
called into being the images of the saints, at times from absolute
obscurity, without any regard whatsoever for logic or rational
explanation. As has been already mentioned, wherever faith rests
on figurative concepts it is hardly possible to discern any marked
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