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

THE OLD MAN OF AJMER
Gesudaraz, recorded in 1399–1400. Gesudaraz is talking of an
injunction to perform ziyārat of the panj pīr, who, as explained, ‘are
the five Great Shaykhs who preceded Gēsūdarāz, viz. Nașīr al-dīn,
Niz.ām al-dīn, Farīd al-dīn, Quţb al-dīn and Mu‘īn al-dīn’ (Digby
1983: 97).
There also exists a little historical evidence about Firoz Shah
Tughluq, Sher Shah Suri and Zafar Khan, progenitor of the Sultans
of Gujarat, visiting the tomb. However, during the times of the Delhi
Sultanate, for a person who did not have the sultan’s suite (sawārī)
at his disposal, reaching Ajmer was not that easy, as the town was
situated away from major caravan routes and the way to it from
Delhi was considered to be unsafe because of attacks of Rajput
detachments and armed bands of robbers. 9 Only during the reign of
Akbar, who had made travel in the empire relatively hazard-free and
not so risky, did Ajmer Sharif turn into a place of mass pilgrimage.
Since sovereignty over Ajmer opened the way to numerous Rajput
principalities, with which the Great Mughals were constantly at war,
many of the masterpieces of ritual architecture which adorn this town
were built in fulfilment of the vows made to the saint by Mughal
sovereigns and their military leaders in exchange for victory over yet
another Rana (prince) of Mewar, or Marwar.
As testified by Abul Fazl, Akbar became interested in the saint’s
personality on hearing qawwālī in Agra eulogizing the miraculous
power of his baraka. He performed his first pilgrimage on 14 January
1562, after which he saw to it that a road was laid from Fatehpur
Sikri to Ajmer, along which at distances of one kos (approximately
three kilometres) apart, small towers (kōs-minār) were erected, which
have survived to this day. After the capture of the Rajput fortress of
Chittor, Akbar on his return journey visited Ajmer for the second
time on 6 March 1568. This time he made a present of a huge
cauldron 10 to the dargāh for cooking food for pilgrims and generously
showered gifts and money on the Khwaja’s descendants.
The emperor’s devotion to the saint of Ajmer grew commensurate
with his intercourse with Shaikh Salim Chishti (d. 1571), to whose
supernatural intercession tradition ascribed the birth of long-awaited
heir to the throne prince Salim (future Mughal emperor Jahangir).
He performed his third ziyārat in February 1570 as an ordinary
pilgrim, traversing the path from Agra to Ajmer on foot to offer
prayers of thanks to the saint for the birth of the first-born. A year
earlier he had a mosque erected from red sandstone in one of the
three courtyards of the dargāh. The mosque now bears the name
Akbari Masjid.
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