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

THE OLD MAN OF AJMER
Do thou teach me, O sire of heavenly rank,
How to lead my life amongst enemies!’
(Iqbal 1977: 96–7)
With the exception of the image of ‘a young man, cypress-tall’, which
remains on Iqbal’s conscience, the poet is right in all other respects:
indifference of the authorities, hostility of the ‘ulamā and envy of his
Sufi brothers tormented Khwaja in Lahore and Delhi as well as during
the first years of his life in Ajmer. Thus, during his sojourn in Lahore,
where Mu‘inuddin had found shelter in Dātā Darbār, he evoked the
envious hostility of Shaikh Husain Zanjani, 6 the eldest Lahore mystic.
Later in Delhi he was accorded quite a cold reception by the powerful
shaikh ul-Islām Najmuddin Sughra. The first years of life in Ajmer,
if one can trust certain hagiographic sources, were marked by tense
face-to-face between the Khwaja and the Rajputs.
Mu‘inuddin Sijzi had arrived in India at a turning-point in its
political history: defeat of Prithviraj III had made it possible for the
Ghorids to capture the territory formerly ruled by Rajputs, in
particular, Ajmer. Qutbuddin Aibek, a military leader from amongst
Turkish slaves (ghulāms), became the vicegerent of the conquered
lands. It was he who occupied Delhi in 1193, which had remained
under the rule of Rajputs even after their defeat near Taraori. After
Mu‘izzuddin Ghori’s death in 1206 Qutbuddin Aibek proclaimed
himself as the Sultan of all the Ghorids’ possessions in India and
made Delhi the capital of his state. The dynasty of Ghulams founded
by him was then in power for a whole century. It was this event,
witnessed by the saint, which marked the birth of the Delhi Sultanate.
Khwaja Mu‘inuddin did not stay long in Lahore and Delhi: he
followed the traditions of his predecessors belonging to the silsila,
who had chosen as their abode not the big cities of the contemporary
Muslim world but an out-of-the-way place called Chisht. Probably
one of the reasons why Khwaja’s choice fell upon Ajmer was the
proximity of Pu´skar, an important centre of pilgrimage for Hindus,
situated at a distance of only eleven kilometres from this town, giving
the ardent missionary the opportunity to convert to Islam the most
persistent of infidel ‘heathens’.
Situated on the bank of the artificial lake Anasagar and surrounded
by the Arawali hills, Ajmer derived its name from the rock Ajay merū
(‘Forbidding Hill’), where Rajput rulers of the clan of Chauhans
had erected Taragarh (‘Starry Fort’). In earlier times there had been
a Jain monastery at the foot of the hill, but this was destroyed by
Mu‘izzuddin Ghori’s troops and only a pillared hall survived. Out of
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