The wonder that was india

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communal hall. Towards the end of his life the local governor's hostility towards him scared off the common people, and their gifts to him stopped. His family suffered considerable deprivation, but he remained indifferent to these difficulties, concentrating on God alone.21 In 1265 he died.

The Baba's successor was Shaykh Nizamu'd-Din Awilya'. He came originally from Bada'un but had settled in Delhi. The stories of his own apprenticeship in the jama'at-khana at Ajodhan show that the Baba trained him in a very vigorous environment so that he could make the Chishtiyya order the dominant sufi silsila in India. The ethical influence radiating from Ghiyaspur, where the Shaykh resided, seems to have made a considerable impact upon the people of Delhi. The Shaykh was, however, completely estranged from Sultan Qutbu'd-Din Mubarak and Ghiyasu'd-Din Tughluq, although Nasiru'd-Din Khusraw had befriended him. When the future Sultan Ghiyasu'd-Din Tughluq invaded Delhi, Khusraw offered huge gifts to the holy men in Delhi to seek their blessing for his success. Three of the sufis rejected the gifts; others accepted them, intending to return them to the next ruler if Khusraw lost.

Shaykh Nizamu'd-Din accepted the gifts, but then, according to his custom, instantly distributed them among the needy. Naturally he could not return the gifts to the new Sultan. The 'ulama' and some other sufis, who were envious of the Shaykh, poured oil on the fire of growing enmity and reopened the old question of sama', accusing the Shaykh of frivolity and sin. More than two hundred and fifty scholars gathered to oppose the Shaykh at an assembly organized by the Sultan to settle the dispute. The Shaykh was accompanied only by his disciples. A heated discussion took place, but the Sultan refused to yield to 'ulama' pressure to deliver judgement against the Shaykh. The Shaykh died in April 1325, while the Sultan was away on his Tirhut expedition. They were still estranged. The Sultan died three months later, in July.

According to the Shaykh, the first lesson in sufism was not related to prayers or meditational exercises but began with the practice of the maxim: 'Do unto others what you would they do unto you; wish for yourself what you wish for them also.' Defining renunciation, the Shaykh said that it was not wearing a loincloth in a state of asceticism, for one should wear clothes and continue to eat, but rather the distribution of all unnecessary items to the poor. He was impressed by those people who fed all the hungry indiscriminately, ignoring caste and class distinctions. Like the contemporary 'ulama' and sufis, the Shaykh was hostile to the Muslim philosophers' cosmological theories and loved to relate

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anecdotes from Shaykh Abu Sa'id and Shihabu'd-Din Suhrawardi, condemning Avicenna and other philosophers.23

Shaykh Nizamu'd-Din Awliya' was succeeded in Delhi by his talented disciple Shaykh Nasiru'd-Din Mahmud, later known as Chiragh (the Lamp) of Delhi. Both he and some leading Chishtiyya saints were reluctant to serve the state, and this brought them into conflict with Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq, who wished the sufis to help him realize his political ambitions. During Sultan Firuz's reign many sufi khanqahs prospered as a result of state grants, although the Shaykh himself never abandoned his ascetic life. One of the Qalandars tried to assassinate him, but the Shaykh stopped his disciples taking revenge. He died in 1356. Because he considered none of his disciples worthy of receiving the relics bequeathed to him by Shaykh Nizamu'd-Din Awliya' they were buried with him in his grave.24

Shaykh Nasiru'd-Din's teachings were embodied in the Khayru'l-majalis, compiled by one of his disciples. They represent a peak in the Chishtiyya philosophy which had evolved in India during the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Following the tradition of his spiritual ancestors, the Shaykh emphasized the necessity for associating with the common people but simultaneously withdrawing from them. Shaykh Nasiru'd-Din was deeply distressed at the degeneration of Delhi sufism into mere formalism. Many of his disciples wisely decided to start new centres in the provinces rather than remain in the capital. This did not result in the disintegration of the centre, for other important Chishtiyyas stayed on in Delhi.

By the end of the fourteenth century the doctrine of Wahdat al-Wujud had become firmly rooted in India. Its principal Chishtiyya exponent was Mas'ud-i Bakk. Although he was related to Sultan Firuz, pressure from the 'ulama' compelled the Sultan to behead him. In a verse he cried out:

From Mas'ud-i Bakk there disappeared all human qualities.

Since he in reality was Essence, he ultimately became Essence.25

Another follower of this doctrine was Sayyid Muhammad Husayni bin Ja'far al-Makki. His long life extended from the reign of Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq to that of Sultan Bahlul Lodi. He travelled widely. According to him the ecstatic cries of Bayazid and Hallaj did not emanate from themselves; their spiritual absorption had converted them into the same form as the Absolute Being.26

Another sufi, Mawlana Burhanu'd-Din Gharib, an aged khalifa

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of Nizamu'd-Din Awliya', was forced by Muhammad bin Tughluq to leave Delhi for Daulatabad in the Deccan. The sufi who did most to make the Chishtiyya silsila popular in the Deccan, however, was Sayyid Muhammad bin Yusuf al-Husayni, commonly known as Khwaja Banda Nawaz or Mir Gisu Daraz. He was Shaykh Nasiru'd-Din's leading disciple. Apparently the news of Timur's invasion of Delhi prompted Gisu Daraz to move to a safer place. He went first to Gujarat and later to Gulbarga on the western border of the Deccan. Mir Gisu Daraz was a prolific writer. His earlier works are based on the Wahdat al-Wujud philosophy, but he was later converted to the Wahdat al-Shuhud doctrines. He was influenced by the works of 'Ala'u'd-Dawla Simnani (d. 1336), the founder of the Wahdat al-Shuhud movement, who was violently hostile to the Wahdat al-Wujud beliefs. The Wahdat al-Wujud followers held that there cannot be two orders of reality (Creator and created), independent of each other, while the Wahdat al-Shuhud considered that ideas undermining the divine transcendence were heretical. Mir Gisu Daraz was amazed that Ibnu'l-'Arabi's followers should call themselves sufis, when they did not recognize God's true transcendental form. Condemning the works of Ibnu'l-'Arabi and the sufi poets, such as 'Attar and Rumi, who ardently supported the Wahdat al-Wujud philosophy, Mir Gisu Daraz denounced them as enemies of Islam. He died in November 1422, having lived for about 101 years.27

In Bengal the Chishtiyya centre was established by Shaykh Nizamu'd-Din Awliya's disciple, Shaykh Akhi Siraju'd-Din 'Us-man. At Pandua he made Shaykh 'Ala'u'1-Haqq, who held a high position in the government, his khalifa. Shaykh 'Ala'u'1-Haqq renounced the world. He died in 1398, and his spiritual descendants established Chishtiyya khanqahs in many parts of Bengal. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Chishtiyya khanqahs in Jaunpur, Rudawli (near Lucknow), Lucknow, Kalpi, and Gangoh (east of Delhi) exerted a considerable influence on the spiritual life in their respective regions. In the sixteenth century Thaneswar became an important Chishtiyya centre. Shaykh Jalal Thaneswari and his disciple, Shaykh Nizam Thaneswari, were famous Chishtiyya sufis, but in May 1606 Jahangir banished Shaykh Nizam to Mecca for blessing the rebel Prince Khusraw. The Shaykh died in Balkh in modern Afghanistan, having utterly condemned the Mughals as irreligious. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Chishtiyya centres in Delhi were also well known, although they could not compete with the popular Shaykh Salim Chishti, whose prayers, Akbar believed, were responsible for the birth of his son Prince Salim-in August 1569. Akbar built Fathpur-Sikri to show his

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gratitude to the Shaykh. At the same time the intellectually challenging Gujarat Chishtiyya centre pushed the Suhrawardiyyas even further into the background. The Chishtiyya centres in Burhanpur, Jaunpur, and Lucknow were also famous, but the outstanding Chishtiyya sufi scholar was Shaykh Muhibbu'llah Mubariz Ilahabadi. He was pitted against Mulla Mahmud Jaun-puri, one of the greatest Muslim philosophers India has produced. The Shaykh tried to undermine the importance of both philosophy and kalam. He also waged a battle royal against the opponents of the Wahdat al-Wujud doctrine and did not even spare 'Ala'u'd-Dawla Simnani and Gisu Daraz.

THE KUBRAWIYYA

The principal centre of the Kubrawiyyas was Kashmir. The order was introduced there by Mir Sayyid 'Ali Hamadani, who had been initiated by one of Shaykh 'Ala'u'd-Dawla Simnani's disciples. After travelling through different parts of the Islamic world, the Mir arrived in Uch, but Makhdum Jahaniyan, the Suhrawardiyya leader, took no notice of him. The Mir then proceeded to Kashmir, where preliminary propaganda in his favour had already been disseminated by his cousin. Apparently he reached Srinagar in 1381. The miracles allegedly performed by the Sayyid in order to convert the brahman priest of the Kali temple are reminiscent of those attributed to Khwaja Mu'inu'd-Din Chishti and many other sufis. It is claimed that when the priest flew in the air, the Sayyid threw his slippers at him and brought him down. Ibn Battuta also states that he saw the yogis at Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq's court fly. The Kali temple was demolished, and a prayer platform was built there for the Sayyid. Like 'Ala'u'd-Dawla Simnani, the Mir was a zealous missionary and encouraged his followers to demolish Hindu temples and convert the Hindus to Islam. After staying three years in Kashmir, he left Srinagar but fell ill while travelling, dying in January 1385. His dead body was taken to Khuttalan (now in Tajikistan, USSR) and buried. However, a number of his disciples remained in Kashmir. They had been trained in the futuwwa (chivalric) Irani sufi tradition and resorted to forcible conversion. They also introduced the akhi (brotherhood) spirit of the Anatolian and Iranian dervishes who were either members of or associated with merchant and artisan guilds (isnaf). In Kashmir they appear to have found new avenues for promoting their commerical interests. They also ransacked Hindu temples in

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order to enrich themselves and their local followers.28

The arrival of Sayyid 'Alsi son, Mir Muhammad, in Srinagar in 1393 revived the evangelical spirit of the earlier Irani settlers. Sultan Sikandar (1389-1413) became a disciple of the young migrant and built a khanqah on the site where his father had first constructed a prayer platform. One of Sikandar's powerful and influential nobles, Suha Bhatta,29 became Mir Muhammad's disciple, adopted Sayfu'd-Din as his Muslim name, and married his daughter to his young teacher.

Under the influence of Mir and Suha, Sultan Sikandar demolished many ancient temples in Kashmir. Many puritanical and discriminatory laws were implemented, and jijya was introduced for the first time in Kashmir. The persecution of brahmans, their exclusion from the top tiers of government, and their replacement by Irani migrants hastened the conversion of the brahman elite, because they were unwilling to give up their superior positions in the administration. Before long, however, Sultan Sikandar realized the effects of his bigoted policy and, according to the brahman historian Jonaraja, 'fixed with some difficulty a limit to the advance of the great sea of the Yavanas (Muslims)' and abolished turush-kadanda (jizya).30 This change in state policy seems to have so disappointed Mir Muhammad that, after staying twelve years, he left Kashmir like his father before him. However, more than a dozen major disciples stayed behind and strengthened the already increasing predominance of Persian officers in the administration.

Another group of Irani immigrants, known as the Bayhaqi Sayyids, were also Kubrawiyyas; Sultan Zaynu'l-'Abidin (1420-70) became their patron. Paradoxically, they supported the Sultan's policy of crushing the fanatical Sunni elements in the administration and worked towards reconciling the Hindus and integrating the two.

In 1481 the Timurid Sultan, Husayn Mirza (1469-1506) of Hirat, sent Mir Shamsu'd-Din 'Iraqi to Kashmir as his envoy. The Mir preached the Nur Bakhshiyya sufi doctrines of Iran in Kashmir and became a fast friend of the leading Kubrawiyyas. After going back to Hirat he again returned to Kashmir in 1501 but this time he tried to convert the Kashmiris to Isna 'Ashari Shi'ism. Many of the Sultan's leading nobles became his disciples. The spread of Shi'ism, however, was energetically checked by the well-known Kashmiri Suhrawardiyya, Shaykh Hamza Makhdum, and his disciple, Baba Dawud. After Akbar's annexation of Kashmir in 1586 the religious atmosphere stabilized, and the Shi'I faith was contained.31

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THE QALANDARS

The development of the Qalandariyya is shrouded in obscurity. The movement had ripened in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the Persian verses of this period glorify the Qalandars' (wandering dervishes') attainments. The movement flourished in Syria, eastern Iran, and Transoxiania. Early glimpses of their order in India are preserved in the Chishtiyya records. According to these works, the Qalandars hated the khanqah life of the sufis, considering it sacrilegious, and accused the sufis of transforming themselves into idols. They also refused to obey the shari'a laws. They used Indian hemp and other drugs, shaved their heads, moustaches, beards and eyebrows, and always kept a razor handy. They wore iron rings through their ears, on their hands, and on other parts of their bodies. Authentic sufi records recount some incredible miracles performed by them. Leading sufis like Shaykh Baha'u'd-Din Zakariyya and Baba Farid were always the targets of the Qalandars' attacks. The Qalandars travelled widely and went as far east as Bengal. In Balban's reign, his rebel governor, Tughril, was so deeply devoted to a Qalandar that he gave enough gold for him and his Qalandars to wear gold necklaces, bangles, and earrings instead of iron ones.

The Qalandars belonged to different groups. The more famous jwalqis wrapped themselves in blankets;32 others went naked except for a loincloth. The founder of the Haydari Qalandars belonged to Turbat-i Haydar near Mashhad in Iran. Jamali says that the Haydaris passed round iron rods through their genitals and called them sikh-i muhr (rod of the seal). This custom, acquired from the Hindu Naga sannyasis, indicated their determination to remain . celibate. The Haydaris, and other Qalandars too, pierced their ears and wore iron rings. This practice was borrowed from the kanphata (split-ear) yogis.

Shaykh Abu Bakr Tusi Haydari settled on the banks of the Jamuna in Delhi and built a khanqah there. Many important sufis, including Shaykh Nizamu'd-Din Awliya', used to call on him. Abu Bakr often visited the court and, at Sultan Jalalu'd-Din's instigation, mortally wounded the powerful dervish Sidi Mawla. The leading princes and noblemen were deeply devoted to the Sidi, but the Sultan considered him an arch-conspirator and a threat to his rule. In about 1342 Ibn Battuta also met a party of Haydaris at Amroha. Describing their feats, he records:

Their chief asked me to supply him with firewood that they might light it

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for their dance, so I charged the governor of that district, who was 'Aziz known as al-Khammar, to furnish it. He sent about ten loads of it, and after the night prayer they kindled it, and at length, when it was a mass of glowing coals, they began their musical recital and went into that fire, still dancing and rolling about in it. Their chief asked me for a shirt and I gave him one of the finest texture; he put it on and began to roll about in the fire with it on and to beat the fire with his sleeves until it was extinguished and dead. He then brought me the shirt showing not a single trace of burning on it, at which I was greatly astonished.33

A most prominent Qalandar, Abu (Bu) 'Ali Qalandar (d. 1324), lived in Panipat. Like others of his kind he had previously been a trained religious scholar but, in a fit of ecstasy, gave away his books and became a Qalandar, though he kept using the shari'a laws. Although some of the sufi letters and verses ascribed to him are not genuine, the authentic ones are deeply impregnated with spirituality. A seventeenth-century Chishtiyya believed that Abu 'Ali had been initiated into the Chishtiyya order by Khwaja Qutbu'd-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki's spirit. This gave rise to a Chishtiyya-Qalandariyya silsila.34

Although Shaykh Baha'u'd-Din Zakariyya was at war with the Qalandars, his son-in-law, Shaykh Fakhru'd-Din 'Iraqi, had followed their practices during his youth. In his old age 'Iraqi adopted the settled life of the khanqah, but he never gave up his independent thinking. La'l Shahbaz, another prominent Qalandar, was also a disciple of Shaykh Baha'u'd-Din Zakariyya. Many incredible miracles are ascribed to his tomb in Sihwan in Sind.

THE MUSLIM INTELLECTUAL PERCEPTION OF HINDUISM

The establishment of Turkic rule in India opened up many opportunities for contact between Hinduism and Islam. Only al-Biruni (d. after 1050), however, took the trouble to translate Sanskrit classics into Arabic. He then wrote his monumental Kitab fi tahqiq ma li'l-Hind in order to acquaint his Ghaznavid rulers with Hinduism. He admitted that there were many barriers separating Hindus from Muslims but claimed that they were based either on political reasons or on language barriers. The Sanskrit scientific and religious texts were composed in verse form; consequently many errors and interpolations had entered into them. This made it difficult to authenticate books without painstaking research.35

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Al-Biruni's task was made even more difficult because he never visited centres of brahmanic scholarship such as Kanauj, Varanasi, and Kashmir. He stayed in Ghazni, where his assistants were a few Sanskrit scholars and educated merchants. He mentions a man from Somnath, some people from Kanauj, and a man who had travelled through Nepal as his informants. He found the contemporary Hindus were full of religious prejudices, insularity, exclu-siveness, national pride, and conceit.36 Al-Biruni admits that previous generations of Hindus were more liberal but stresses that prejudices against foreigners were universal. He also acknowledges the fact that, although the Hindus he met refused to enter into religious arguments, many Muslims forbade any discussion at all on religious matters.

In the Kitab fi tahqiq ma li'l-Hind, al-Biruni's main thesis is that 'the beliefs of educated and uneducated people differ in every nation' and that the educated 'strive to conceive abstract ideas and to define general principles', while the uneducated submit to derived rules and regulations. This dichotomy applied to both religion and science. Discussing the Hindu concept of God, al-Biruni says that Hindus believe that 'He is eternal, without beginning and end, acting by free will, almighty, all wise, living, giving life, ruling, preserving, one who in His sovereignty is unique, beyond all likeness and unlikeness.'37 Al-BirunI quotes from Patan-jali's Yoga-Sutra, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Sankhya-Karika to substantiate this assertion. He contends that, at the level of the common people, anthropomorphism is found in Hinduism, Islam, Jewry, and Christianity. He goes on to say that Caliph Mu'awiya, the founder of the Umayyad dynasty, thought idols 'were only memorials'. When his army brought back golden idols adorned with jewels after sacking Sicily in 672-3, the Caliph ordered their sale in Sind.38 He considered the matter from an economic not a religious point of view and had no scruples about their use in 'abominable idolatry'. Al-Biruni upheld Mu'awiya's practical approach as meaningful, and suggested that Mahmud's policy of indiscriminate destruction of idols was malevolent.

Although al-Biruni, like other scholars, does not attempt to define Hinduism, he identifies it in relation to other religious communities. He says:

As the word of confession, 'There is no god but God, Muhammad is His prophet', is the shibboleth of Islam, the Trinity that of Christianity, and the institute of the Sabbath that of Judaism, so metempsychosis is the shibboleth of the Hindu religion. Therefore he who does not believe in it does not belong to them, and is not reckoned as one of them.39

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Al-Biruni's distinction between the religions of the masses and those of the elite is extended to differentiate scientific and legendary theories. He says that the Puranic version of the world's shape and other geographic details and the scientific truths discovered by the astronomers are contradictory. He contends, however, that the astronomers allowed religious prejudices to influence their own interpretation of their discoveries, so that the theory that the earth was a rotating ball and other natural scientific laws were glossed over by the scientists to conform to Hindu mythology. The common people who depended on the astronomers for their knowledge therefore received mainly religious explanations instead of scientific truths, an unscientific mixture of fact and fiction.

Proud of his mathematical and scientific heritage, al-Biruni was hostile to mystical ideas. He condemned sufi irrationalism and compared Muslim alchemy and Hindu rasayana (chemistry) with witchcraft. In his Kitab fi tahqiq he provides a penetrating study of human relationships and cultural complexities in various faiths. Although he concentrates mainly on Hindu society, he relates it to the social behaviour and psychology of other religious communities and investigates the intimate relationship between belief, religious philosophy, and social organization. Al-Biruni concludes that the strangeness of others' customs is essentially relative, and gives a historical explanation of cultural and social behaviour. He does not specifically defend the social customs and manners of the Hindus but explains their caste, class, and family organization, their cultural attitudes, folk customs, mores, and prejudices in a historical context. His analysis shows that a historical perspective and a knowledge of the history of ideas are required to understand society.

Al-Biruni defines the Hindu colour divisions as tabaqat (classes) and the castes (jati) as birth divisions (nasab). The brahmans were created from the head of Brahma, the Kshatriya from his shoulders and hands, the Vaishiya from Brahma's thigh, and the Sudra from his feet. Below the Sudra were the Antyaja or casteless. They were divided into eight guilds: fullers, shoemakers, jugglers, basket- and shield-makers, sailors, fishermen, hunters of wild animals and birds, and weavers. The villages and towns were inhabited by the superior classes, while the Antyaja lived just outside them. The Hadi, Doma, and Chandala, who did the cleaning and scavenging, were outcasts. It was claimed that they were the result of an illegal act of fornication between a Sudra father and a brahmani mother and were therefore excluded from the recognized Hindu community. Foreigners were also regarded as 'unclean' or mleccha, and

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39. Akbar controlling the elephants who cross the Jamuna, Akbar-Nama (p. 105)

40. Political lessons through animal behaviour, from the Anwar Suhayli by Kashifi (p. 156)

41. Black buck painted by Manohar with beautiful calligraphy on the borders (p, 301)

42. Dara Shukoh with Miyan Mir, Mulla Shah and the khanqah servants (pp. 266-7)

43. Jahangir weighing Prince Khurram (p. 117); the Khan-I Khanan holds the balance

44. Shahjahan with two princes, possibly Dara and Shuja', watching Sama' (Sufi music) c. 1650 (p. 243)

45. Jahangir riding, painted by Manohar (p. 301)

46. Integration of Sufi music with Bhaktas; Kabir is in the front on the left (pp. 361-3)