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

THE OLD MAN OF AJMER
day reality and at the same time being men well-versed in temporal
affairs and regulators of people’s fates.
Towards the end of existence of the Delhi Sultanate, the social
work, enormous in terms of the volume of help rendered and the
range of social strata covered, which was carried out by saints and
the ţarīqas connected with them, started prevailing over the task
of proselytizing and providing spiritual sustenance for the faithful,
which was typical of the earlier period. Help was given by way
of money and food to thousands of indigent people, the resources of
the awqāf and offerings of private persons being utilized. Constant
intercession before a temporal power on behalf of the disgraced and
aggrieved, and intervention in political conflicts, fraught with the
threat of internecine war among the nobility or destruction and ruin
of some group or other of the social environment, substantially
changed the notions about wilāyat, leading both to the further
consolidation of the institution of saints in public life of the period
and to its steady secularization. It was also at this time, in the fifteenth
century, that the role and professional and group differentiation
among the South Asian saints finally takes shape. This was brought
about by the purely utilitarian requirements of direct practical help
on the part of the saint, which was discussed in Chapter 1.
The main contribution to the creation of the social image of the
saint as an intercessor for the unfortunate and consoler of the distressed
was made by the aforementioned great shaikhs of the
Chishtiyya order, who had set the example of an extraordinarily
active life. In their broad-based and multifaceted activity, lyrically
delightful mysticism, full of sentimental tender emotion, paradoxically
existed side by side with the programmatic practicality of spiritual
preceptorship and with ideas of universal service, manifested in the
first instance in the social adaptation of neophytes and in material
support for the poorest strata of the population. In spite of all this
the shaikhs of the Chishtiyya fraternity, in accordance with the Sufi
principle of khalwat dar anjuman (‘seclusion in the midst of the
people’), constantly observed strict asceticism, experienced ecstasies,
visions and revelations, peculiar to true clairvoyants. In other words,
living and working in the midst of laymen, they themselves contrived
to avoid worldly temptations.
Although the Chishtiyya silisla had its origins outside South Asia,
in Eastern Khurasan, during the times of the Delhi Sultanate a fraternity
of the same name took shape and developed exclusively in the
territory of India, becoming, side by side with the Suhrawardiyya
order, the most popular and widespread ţarīqa. The founder of the
60