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

THE OLD MAN OF AJMER
Harwani, whom he served over a period of twenty years. Having
obtained from the preceptor the garb of the fraternity (khirqa) and
a prayer rug (sajjāda) as a token of an inheritance of bliss, Mu‘inuddin
set off to Baghdad, where, according to certain hagiographic sources,
he called upon the ‘great intercessor’ ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani. 3 In the
course of the same journey he had the honour of spending some time
in the company of Najmuddin Kubra, the founder of the Kubrawiyya
fraternity and two of the most famous relatives in the world of Sufism
– Najibuddin Suhrawardi, the spiritual founder of the Suhrawardiyya
silsila, and his nephew Shihabuddin Abu Hafs ‘Umar, the eponym
of this order. It is worth noting here that the famous treatises on
questions of ethics and the practice of Sufism – ‘The Ethos of the
Novices’ (Ādāb al-murīdīn) by Najibuddin and ‘The Benefits of
Knowledge’ (‘Awārif al-ma‘ārif) by Shihabuddin Abu Hafs – became
normative manuals for Chishtis, who had not created their own
didactic literature.
The subsequent wanderings of Mu‘inuddin Chishti in Iran, Central
Asia and Afghanistan by their line of travel resemble al-Hujwiri’s
journey described above, but, alas, without the commentaries of the
traveller himself they are not of much interest. As was the custom
among dervishes (musāfirān), he moved from one sacred tomb to the
other, having visited the sepulchre of Abu Sa‘id bin Abul Khair
Mayhani already known to us from Kashf al-mah˝jūb, the tomb of
‘Abdullah al-Ansari in Herat, the grave of Shaikh Nasiruddin in
Astrabad and many other not so well-known mazārs. On the way he
visited the khānqāhs of contemporaries famous for their spiritual
services, in particular that of Abu Sa‘id Tabrizi (murshid of the
eminent saint of Bengal Jalaluddin Tabrizi) and also that of Yusuf
Hamadani, one of the founders of silsila-i khwājagān. On and off he
brought Shi‘as to the lap of Sunni orthodoxy, and set orthodox Sunnis
on the path of tașawwuf. 4 At last Mu‘inuddin reached Ghazna, where
the circuit of his wanderings came to a close: the Prophet appearing
in a dream sent him to India to convert non-believers.
Like the majority of his predecessors, Mu‘inuddin arrived in India
through Lahore, part of the Ghori domains since the year 1185;
this historic moment for the destiny of South Asian Sufism has
been depicted by Muhammad Iqbal in his mathnawī. The date of
passage of the future saint through Lahore can be determined quite
easily: most of the historians, including Abul Fazl in ‘The Akbarian
Codes’ (Ā’in-i Akbarī), 5 affirm that this happened in the year when
Mu‘izzuddin Ghori inflicted the final defeat on the famous hero of
Indian history, folklore and literature, Prithviraj Chauhan III, who
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