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

THE OLD MAN OF AJMER
former, but richer, twice as big as the Exchange in London;
in the midest whereof hangs a curious candle-stick with many
lights. Into the third you pass by a brazen gate curiously
wrought, it is the fairest of the three, especially, near the door
of the sepulchre, where the pavement is curiously interlaid;
the door is large and is inlaid with mother-of-pearl and the
pavement about the tomb of interlaid marble; the sepulchre
very curiously wrought in work, of mother-of-pearl and gold
with an Epitaph in the Persian Tongue.
(Tirmizi 1968: 17–18)
Even in our day, as in the Great Mughals’ times, making an offering
to the dargāh, adorning or carrying out repairs of any of its numerous
buildings is an act of piety, and that is why on first impression Ajmer
Sharif resembles a construction site, where saws whine, hammers
chatter and the smell of oil-paint lingers. In the first courtyard of the
complex, which one reaches, as usual, by passing through a lofty
quadrangular tower, Buland Darwaza, next to the Akbari Masjid
mosque there are two huge copper cauldrons, replicas of those which
were donated by Akbar and Jahangir. The meals cooked there are
meant for the pilgrims as well as for the saint’s descendants, who
possess the exclusive right to despoil the cauldron regularly under the
pretence of the ritual dēg-i Chittōr kushā (‘cauldron of victory over
Chittor’). The story goes that in commemoration of this victory the
Khwaja’s descendants literally take the cauldron by force, snatching
away the rice with an unequivocal warlike display.
In the second courtyard of the dargāh there is the saint’s mausoleum,
its newly gilded dome dazzles one’s eyes; an elegant silvery vault is
erected over the front portal, and central doors are inlaid with
engraved silver panels. They lead to a fretted cubical structure, inlaid
with mother-of-pearl, inside which, in the mazār covered with green
brocade, the founder of Chishtiyya fraternity is laid to eternal rest.
Contiguous to the mausoleum is Shah Jahan’s mosque, erected on
a parapet and surrounded with a balustrade of polished marble. Its
richly ornamented interior is clearly visible through five arched doors.
Opposite the mosque towers the gate Shahjahani Darwaza, flanked
on both the sides with spacious halls for ritual gatherings (mah˝fil
khāna). The tombs and mazārs of the saint’s disciples and descendants,
the Mughal nobles and military leaders cling closely to each other in
the far corners of the courtyard, enclosed in stone fences or lattices.
Among them there is Bibi Hafiz Jamal’s mausoleum, situated in an
exclusive ‘women’s annexe’, Begum Dalan, where quite a number of
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