Naqliyat-e-Miyan Abdur Rasheed RZ - Khalifatullah Mehdi (AHS)

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was working at Nanded. I informed him about the missing book and
requested him to keep in touch with the railway authorities. I went
to Kalmanuri. My brother had recovered. I returned to Nanded the
next day. When I came to the railway station, the stationmaster gave
me the glad tidings. The book had come. I paid the necessary
amount of money to cover the expenses. When the book came into
my hands, I saw that it was decently packed with the seal of the
Aurangabad railway Police.
The readers know that Aurangabad is eight hours train journey
away from Nanded. There are many big and small railway stations
on the way. Numerous people entrain and detrain at these stations.
Despite all this, the return of a book that was lying uncared for on a
seat is no ordinary event. Certainly, Allah Who answers the prayers
had answered the supplications of this faqir by the intervention of
the soul of Bandagi Miyan Shah Yaqub Hasan-e-Vilayat RZ .
QUALITY OF THE BOOK
Comparing the five copies of the manuscript of Naqliat has
shown that the book has passed through three stages of
development. The two copies of Janab Faqir Amir Miyan Sahib of
Akeli and Janab Faqir Syed Dilawar of Begum Bazar represent the
first stage. They come to an end at 173 naqliat [Parables]. They
appear to have been copied recently and were very much the same
in the matter of correctness and errors. They could be the copy of
each other. The copies of Janab Syed Ashraf of Channapatna and
Janab Faqir Ghazi Miyan of Basitpura appear to be of the second
stage. The first of these two copies has 84 parables in addition to
the 173 parables in the copies of the first stage. In the second copy,
some parables are missing in the middle. This appears to be the
mistake in copying, because these two copies appear to be of the
same quality up to the end. The geographical distance between their
sources is obvious. Their age too can be gauged by the quality of
the paper. The date of copying is not mentioned in them. Otherwise,
the difference between their timings of copying could be known. Be
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that as it may, these two copies are not of recent copying. In the
copy of the third stage, there are 45 more naqliat in addition to the
173 naqliat of the first stage and the 84 naqliat of the second stage
copies. This copy greatly helped us in correcting the various
versions of the parables. Further, some incomplete parables could
also be completed with the help of this book. This copy contains the
name of the copier and the date of copying…. [The name of the
copier is Ashraf alias Shah Sahibji Miyan and the date is Rabi-ul-
Awwal 1216 AH.]
Be that as it may, the last mentioned three copies are almost
the same with more or less the same number of parables. In short,
we have tried our best to collect all the material of the five copies in
our final text. The passages, which we have not taken in our text,
we have placed in the margin [or footnote] with necessary
references. This was necessary also under the principles of
correction, so that the [future] scholars could get help from the
variations in the texts in their [chains of] arguments. The passages
we have relegated to the margins in accordance with our opinion
could very well be the very material that might possibly form the
basis of their argument. Hence, it was necessary that the difference
in the various copies should be preserved for the [future] readers.
This will also show the qualities of the copies of various families of
murshids. Further, the readers will be able to know how careful we
have been in correcting the text and in cases of differences in the
wording of the texts in various copies; they will be able to see the
standards of passages we have selected for our text. We cannot
claim that we have not erred in selecting the passages for the texts
and the margins. It is possible that the future scholars might find
mistakes in our work, and we will be grateful to the sincere scholars
if they inform us of our mistakes. But such mistakes will not
impede the work of the scholars, because they can take the passages
in the margins, if they like, instead of depending on the passages we
have selected for the text. And they can build their arguments
accordingly. This is an occasion to consider how difficult it would
have been for the scholars to find out what there was in which of