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

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THE OLD MAN OF AJMER During Akbar’s reign the main shrine (qubba) was rebuilt and crowned with a gilded dome; in any case the inscription in gold in nasta‘līq style on three sides of the drum (i.e. cylindrical base) of the dome goes back to 1579 and says: Khwāja-i khwājagān Mu‘īnuddīn Ashraf-i awliyā’-i rūy-i zamīn Aftāb-i sipihr-i kaun-o-makān Pādshāh-i sarīr-i mulk-i yaqīn Dar jamāl-o-kamāl-i-ān che sukhan Īn mubayyan buvad ba h˝ișn-i h˝așī n Ai darat qiblagāh-i ahl-i yaqīn Bar darat mihr-o-māh sūda jabīn Rūi bar dargahat hamīñ sānīd Sad hazārān malik chū khusraw-i chīn Khādimān-i darat hama Riz˝vān Dar safā rauz˝at chū khuld-i barīn Dharra-i khāk-i-ū ‘abīr sirisht Qaţra-i āb-i-ū chū mā’-yi mu’īn Ilahī tā buvad khurshīd-o-māhī Chirāgh-i chishtiyān rā rōshnā’ī (Tirmizi 1968: 30) Master of masters, Mu‘inuddin, Noblest of saints on the face of the earth, The sun on the celestial sphere of the universe The padishah on the throne of the realm of faith. What to say about his beauty and perfection? They are obvious from impregnable fortress. O, your door is like qibla for the faithful, Sun and moon rub their foreheads on your threshold. At your dargāh similarly prostrate Hundreds of thousands of kings like the sovereign of China. Your door attendants are all Riz˝vāns, (Since) in its sanctity your tomb is like paradise. The particle of its dust has the quality of perfumes, The drop of its moisture is like transparent water. O Allah, till the sun and the moon last, Let the lamp of the Chishtis shine brightly. If this inscription is compared with the couplet engraved on Data Sahib’s tomb, it will be clear that for these and many other texts of 71
THE OLD MAN OF AJMER similar purpose the key term is ‘door’ or ‘threshold’, expressed by the Persian words dar, āstān or by their Indian equivalents, for example by the word ćaukhaţ. A saint is one at whose threshold or door all the mortals – from kings to beggars – bow their heads and ‘rub their foreheads’. Sainthood is separated from mundane life by a spiritually insurmountable barrier – the much-trumpeted threshold. The special insular space, the khalwat, in which a mystic, who has renounced the world, dwells in his lifetime, retains its isolation, even after his death, in the dargāh, signifying the same spatial restricted insularity (dar – ‘door’; ‘gāh’ – place, space). In other words the sanctum, which is what the saint’s tomb is, manifests itself in detachment from the external environment and the gate, door or threshold are the entrance to the sanctum, the intermediate space, through which a person comes into contact with the saint or venerates him. The origin of this symbol has ritual as well as historical basis. As has already been mentioned, one of the main rituals of a saint’s tomb is the kissing of his threshold (āstānbosī ). This ritual in fact came into being earlier than the cult of Muslim saints, in a pre-Islamic age, when bowing one’s head at the threshold was a part of palace ritual at the courts of the Byzantine emperors and the Iranian padshahs. Later the kissing of the threshold (āstānbosī ) acquired a wide spectrum of meanings, connected with an expression of veneration and respect both to a temporal and a spiritual person. In the texts of inscriptions on tombs this ritual is even incorporated into the semantic connotations of the Arabic word bāb (gate). This term signified the rank of Muslim saints, serving as the ‘gates’, through which God, a quţb of the Sufis or a ‘concealed Imam’ of the Shi‘as, communicates with the faithful. The word bāb was even a part of the title of many Sufi shaikhs and awliyā, the most well-known of whom happened to be the Bab, the founder of Babism, a religio-political movement in Iran during the nineteenth century. The Muslim architecture that actualized many doctrinal postulates of Sufism realized the ritual symbolism of doors, gates and thresholds in numerous architectural images of portals, gates and towers located over gates, without which a saint’s tomb is just inconceivable. The sacred space of a dargāh begins at the gate (darwāza), leading into a riwāq, in front of which the faithful are required to leave their footwear. The front portal (peshtāq) of the tomb proper turns out to be more insurmountable: crossing it is prohibited to individual categories of visitors – sometimes to followers of other faiths and sometimes on the basis of gender – only to women or, on the contrary, only to men, sometimes to lepers or lunatics and so on, depending 72
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MUSLIM SAINTS OF SOUTH ASIA This bo
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MUSLIM SAINTS OF SOUTH ASIA The ele
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IN CHERISHED MEMORY OF MY FATHER, A
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FOREWORD Christopher Shackle In man
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FOREWORD keen literary sensibility
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1 THE INDIAN TOMB Everyone who has
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THE INDIAN TOMB deviation of an ind
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THE INDIAN TOMB an active syncretis
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THE INDIAN TOMB saints’ cult in I
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THE INDIAN TOMB Probably the most o
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THE INDIAN TOMB another saint of De
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THE INDIAN TOMB indication of the c
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THE INDIAN TOMB 1276. 9 Hagiographi
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THE INDIAN TOMB form with a dome in
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THE INDIAN TOMB Some of the saints
Page 34 and 35: THE INDIAN TOMB A powerful religion
Page 36 and 37: THE INDIAN TOMB They were known by
Page 38 and 39: THE INDIAN TOMB cenotaph of Sayyid
Page 40 and 41: THE INDIAN TOMB Mazhar Janjanan, he
Page 42 and 43: THE INDIAN TOMB The cult of saints
Page 44 and 45: THE INDIAN TOMB As a scholarly prob
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Page 48 and 49: 2 THE HERMIT OF LAHORE Everywhere a
Page 50 and 51: THE HERMIT OF LAHORE These examples
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Page 68 and 69: THE HERMIT OF LAHORE The saint of H
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Page 72 and 73: 3 THE OLD MAN OF AJMER A pious erud
Page 74 and 75: THE OLD MAN OF AJMER silsila, Iraqi
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Page 80 and 81: THE OLD MAN OF AJMER Prithviraj’s
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Page 86 and 87: THE OLD MAN OF AJMER on the saint
Page 88 and 89: THE OLD MAN OF AJMER and estate man
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Page 94 and 95: 4 THE ASCETIC OF PAKPATTAN There is
Page 96 and 97: THE ASCETIC OF PAKPATTAN In the ear
Page 98 and 99: THE ASCETIC OF PAKPATTAN Maqșūd-i
Page 100 and 101: THE ASCETIC OF PAKPATTAN the newcom
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Page 110 and 111: THE ASCETIC OF PAKPATTAN This, for
Page 112 and 113: THE ASCETIC OF PAKPATTAN in 1604) a
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Page 118 and 119: 5 THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI It is dif
Page 120 and 121: THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI There are t
Page 122 and 123: THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI dervishes,
Page 124 and 125: THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI At the same
Page 126 and 127: THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI In contrast
Page 128 and 129: THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI (k’hićar
Page 130 and 131: THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI Hasan 1992:
Page 132 and 133: THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI not prevent
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THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI in Sufi kh
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THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI Sultan’s
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THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI ‘God’s
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THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI I have hear
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THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI melodies, a
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THE PEACEMAKER OF DELHI generous do
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THE SPIRITUAL SOVEREIGN OF MULTAN o
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THE SPIRITUAL SOVEREIGN OF MULTAN A
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THE SPIRITUAL SOVEREIGN OF MULTAN i
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THE SPIRITUAL SOVEREIGN OF MULTAN i
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THE SPIRITUAL SOVEREIGN OF MULTAN I
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THE SPIRITUAL SOVEREIGN OF MULTAN I
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THE SPIRITUAL SOVEREIGN OF MULTAN w
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THE SPIRITUAL SOVEREIGN OF MULTAN N
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THE SPIRITUAL SOVEREIGN OF MULTAN U
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THE SPIRITUAL SOVEREIGN OF MULTAN w
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THE SPIRITUAL SOVEREIGN OF MULTAN A
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7 THE WARRIOR SAINTS When Hindus an
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THE WARRIOR SAINTS endeavours to in
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THE WARRIOR SAINTS untouched; they
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THE WARRIOR SAINTS (mostly fabricat
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THE WARRIOR SAINTS so long. He set
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THE WARRIOR SAINTS Having finally s
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THE WARRIOR SAINTS It is known that
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THE WARRIOR SAINTS asthāna, is the
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THE WARRIOR SAINTS swallow living s
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THE WARRIOR SAINTS knowing how to g
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THE WARRIOR SAINTS In the same plac
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THE WARRIOR SAINTS his death on the
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THE MENDICANT SAINTS And, finally,
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THE MENDICANT SAINTS Qalandars used
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THE MENDICANT SAINTS spiritual prec
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THE MENDICANT SAINTS the English it
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THE MENDICANT SAINTS During his lif
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THE MENDICANT SAINTS up in a shawl,
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THE MENDICANT SAINTS and bite its h
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THE MENDICANT SAINTS yogis (or jogi
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THE MENDICANT SAINTS However, he we
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THE MENDICANT SAINTS not because it
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EPILOGUE As I have tried to show in
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EPILOGUE An equally important role
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EPILOGUE elephant ride. It exaspera
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NOTES 5 The profusion of relics in
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NOTES 2 THE HERMIT OF LAHORE 1 The
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NOTES His feet were firmly planted
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NOTES 4 THE ASCETIC OF PAKPATTAN 1
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NOTES despair and would come to me
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NOTES 6 In the last year of ‘Ala
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NOTES life). Here his opponent lost
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NOTES in his creative writings. Aft
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NOTES 5 The Hyderis of Khurasan der
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GLOSSARY bārahmāsa poems that dea
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GLOSSARY ī mān faith, creed inkā
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GLOSSARY nafs-i ammāra unregenerat
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GLOSSARY tarāwih˝ supererogatory
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BIBLIOGRAPHY u’d-dīn Chirāgh-i-
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Delvoye, F., ‘Nalini
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BIBLIOGRAPHY —— (1965) ‘Malf
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‘Abdar Rahim 164 ‘Abdul ‘Aziz
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cenotaphs (fake graves) 23-4 Chanda
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Jhelum 12 Jinnah, Muhammad ‘Ali 3
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Pir Badr 13, 165-9, 177, 201 Pir Bu
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Muslim Saints of South Asia: The eleventh to ... - blog blog blog

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