Abdal Hakim Murad – Nizam alDin Awliya Paradigms of Leadership
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So we're in
Ramadan.
Is it the 6th day already?
Time flies.
And I thought that rather than do my
usual
slightly bookish thing, I do something a little
more,
gentle
and,
focus on
reading,
and
hopefully getting some blessings from the pages of,
certainly a leader from a time
long gone by.
Focusing in particular on this leader's reflections
on
Ramadan,
Taraweeh,
hunger,
detachment,
service, charity, those virtues
which we try to cultivate in this, blessed
time.
I thought initially it might be interesting to
focus on if I'm looking at a spiritual
figure rather than an alim
or
a political leader,
to look at the life of, Shahidullah Faridi,
died in 1978.
So we've just passed the 40th
anniversary of his death, and
perhaps particularly because he was English
began as,
John Gilbert Leonard,
might be particularly relevant, perhaps.
An inspiration to those who think that if
you're born in this wind blasted Northern Isle,
you're unlikely ever to join the caravan of
the saints, but he was certainly revered as
a as a saint and somebody whose oros
is actually coming up. It's in Ramadan. He
has a big Mazar
in Karachi and it's interesting to see how
he was able to uphold the highest traditions
of asceticism,
sanctity
in an age which had set its face
against it. His father was a very wealthy
millionaire
paper manufacturer
who was quite horrified by the fact that
both of his sons,
not just John but William from this, very
elite family
had gone east
and has become dervishes in the Chishti Sabri
Tariqa.
And in fact, if you go to
the mausoleum
of
Al Hujwiri
Datasab, which is like the spiritual hub of
Lahore, which was sadly in the the the
press
recently, you'll find that amongst the lesser
mausoleums there, there's the mausoleum
of Farooq Saab who died
1945,
the twilight of British
rule in India, who was actually William Leonard
and convert who became so revered as a
man of God that he achieved the honor
of being,
interred in that
very special place. But his brother,
Shahidullah
ended up after partition with his own Durga
in Karachi,
where he attracted
thousands of disciples.
You can still meet some of them.
And was particularly known for 2 things
that I want to focus on,
which was the Czisti
Tariqah's
famous
hospitality,
feeding
the poor.
Even though there's lots of stories about Shahidullah
once, and he went back to England and
his father took him to Oxford Street shopping,
trying to get him to look a bit
smarter
and had a famous,
argument with him in in Selfridges to the
amazement of the shop girls.
He didn't want this coat but he didn't
want that
coat. He didn't want the other coat. Which
coat did he want? He didn't want a
coat at all. He'd already bought some kind
of tatty thing with him from India and
that was
fine. A clash of 2 worlds.
But very much in the Shishti Zahid tradition,
they have resurrected
this ancient original meaning
of sof.
What is this word, tasawuf,
which we hear banded about,
usually by the ignorant on all sides. Well,
it originates with the custom of the holy
prophet
to wear
wool
And very often, if you look at the
cases where that's specifically mentioned in the Sira
and the Hadith,
you find that it's associated with his his
tarka dunya, with his abandonment of
worldly comforts and pleasure. Because in a desert
climate
wool is a lot cheaper than cotton or
linen, but it's kind of hot and uncomfortable
and
but this was what he wore. And so
to wear Buolodun bin Surf as the Holy
Prophet did
has been the bad,
if you like, of the mystic, but it's
a rather vague and perhaps unhelpful word, but
of the the one who sets his face
against
worldly things.
And that is the real meaning of Tasolwov
and the Sofi,
the one who is associated with
Tarkudunya.
And this is perhaps
nowadays the least popular aspect of the sunnah
with everybody
rushing after material goods. Al Hakum Ut Teketh
or the radical example of the holy prophet
who didn't just piously
urge feeding the poor, but was poor himself.
Binding that flat stone,
across his stomach because of the pangs of
hunger
without a coin spending the night in his
house. These are neglected Sonan.
Let's face it.
But part an axiomatic
part of his life. Giving,
not taking,
making sure that nothing remains
with you,
at the end of the day. If there's
a coin,
if there's food, you go out and find
somebody to give it to. Radical Tawakkol.
That's the sonnet
of wearing soof, which is
not terribly popular nowadays. Which of us seriously
does it? Let's be honest. But in the
month of Ramadan,
when we are hungry and the stomach starts
to hurt and we are amongst the hungry
rather than just moralizing about them. We perhaps
get some kind of tiny taste of what
it is
actually to practice what we preach and to
experience,
that
radical reliance on divine providence, which was the
the most challenging aspect of the Seerah of
the chosen one, Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. So
I thought about doing, you know, shahidullah Faridi
for so many reasons, and he's feeding the
poor still
regularly at his,
Langar and Karachi, the poor are fed.
But also,
the fact that most of his disciples turned
out to be women,
even though he had no connection with anything
that we might nowadays
understand as feminism.
There's a particular tradition amongst the Chishtia for
being particularly,
appealing to female disciples.
So,
what I want to do instead of looking
at Shahidullah Faridi who's really never talked about
his life, It was totally amazing. And if
you meet surviving disciples as I've done, you
hear,
most incredible
anecdotes, a very saintly miracle working,
self giving
fakir, a man who just lived in a
single room and just gave all the time.
That because there's so little information about him,
I'd like to turn to one of his
spiritual forebears.
Very much in the same tradition
of fasting, of hunger, of asceticism, of tarka
dunya. And that's the great, Saint of Delhi
Nizamuddin
Auliya.
There's just more information about him.
Largely because his, one of his, disciples, Amir
Hassan Sijazi,
wrote a book
for why it all for add
the benefits of the heart,
which,
relates
a kind of diary after each Majlis of
the sheikh,
Sijdi would write down what the sheikh has
said in that particular Majlis. And so we
have that and it's even in English.
Bruce Lawrence did a perfectly serviceable
translation.
Translated as morals for the heart, which is
fine, fahe de is kind of the benefit,
the moral benefit of a particular
discourse. And it only covers a few 100
out of the thousands and thousands of discourses
that he gave during his life, but it
gives a good,
quite,
granular
explanation of what it was actually like to
sit at the feet of a great,
Zahid,
a great Wali.
So I'm gonna be doing some readings from
that text. Well, I'm just boring you with
historiographic
details,
and
reflecting on ways in which this can help
us to contextualize
our experience of
renouncing the world during this fasting month of
Ramadan.
So, is
medieval Delhi.
And if you've been to Delhi or even
if you haven't been, you'll know that
his Mazar is kind of the, in many
ways, the spiritual hub of the city. There
was a Hindu shrine that really competes with
it in terms of the gigantic press of
people who go there every Wednesday Sunday. They
have the langar
with the dhikr and the free food for
everybody. And very often, a majority of people
who go are actually Hindus or people from
other religions because of the famous, shall we
say, pre
BJP, pre ideological Indian love of holiness
wherever or whatever it might be
manifested in. So, somebody who still dispenses
blessings and benefits and hospitality
to a vast number of people irrespective
of creed.
It's an extraordinary place. They have a website
now.
So someone who after 7 centuries is still
exerting
an influence
and
somebody who,
ref
invites us to reflect on what Islam did
in India, in Hindustan.
We do formal history and it sounds like
just a bunch of Sultans fighting each other,
fighting for conquest and
often not very edifying.
Even though the Sultans brought in many ways
many benefits
in a kind of imperial way.
So the main Sultan in the time of
his al Muidin, Auliya Allah edin Khaji, even
though he lived through many,
many reigns,
was
not just famous for endlessly conquering places from
rival sultans and bringing the booty back to
Delhi and building new wonders,
but also
for public works.
Delhi was one of the biggest cities in
the world.
And because of the seasonal nature of the
monsoon, needed a reliable supply of water.
So the great reservoirs around Delhi, the Hals,
the greatest of them is the Hals I
Alai, which he built.
He said in order to build something bigger
than his predecessor, which is the Haus e
Shamsi, they were always vying with each other,
but vying in good works.
And the population benefited,
the presence of a police force, the presence
of
city walls, night watchmen, a postal system, decent
roads.
These were,
something that were new in the Indian experience.
The
I've recently been looking at Ian Almond's new
book. Can't remember if I've already mentioned him.
He works a bit on Islam and German
Romanticism and has some interesting things to say
about,
Nietzsche's interesting relationship to Islam. And his new
book is on Niraj Chaudhry, who is one
of India's great 20th century authors. He died
back in nineties, I think. He's buried in
Oxford.
And a very cross grained but brilliant person
who knew just about every language you could
imagine.
Very Europeanized
Bengali intellectual.
It tends to be from Bengal, the Calcutta
area that the real thinkers of India have
come from in the 19th 20th century,
even before Ram Mohan Roy and that movement,
the first indigenous Indian stirrings of a kind
of literary and philosophical renaissance in the face
of the fact of British,
imperial rule.
Somebody like Rabindranath
Tagore would be from that world, Narayan, the
short story
novelist. Other custodians of the Indic conscience,
usually Hindu and Niraj Chaudhary was also from
a Hindu background, but really an independent thinker.
And he had some interesting things to say
about the Muslim presence.
He kind of has the beginnings of a
Hindu
resentment complex here and there, but he does
say
some interesting things about
the the monotheistic
ethic and what that did to India. He's
generally quite contemptuous of Hinduism
Because he sees,
rightly or wrongly Hinduism as a tradition that
because of the idea of Samsara and reincarnation,
doesn't really have a sense that human suffering
is real rather than deserved.
If my child gets sick, that's because it's
the reincarnation of some other being that did
something bad, and this is karmic suffering. It's
just right and proper in the nature of
existence. And this is often
a charge that, say, Christian polemicists will lay
at the door of of Buddhism as well.
It can't really deal with the the shocking
fact
of of suffering and therefore, good works, charity,
and so forth tend not to exist. Instead,
you have an immensely stratified
vision of society. And because of this
moral reluctance, according to Choudhry, at any rate,
Islam reinvigorated
the civilizational life of the subcontinent. So he
writes things like this.
The conquest foregrounded the Muslim over the Hindu
as a triumph of virility over effeminacy,
of courage over cowardice,
of the lust and desire for life over
the fear and resentment of it.
And then Alman goes on, This sentiment becomes
so focused it makes even the non Hindu
reader uncomfortable
when Choudhary writes, quote, how amply the Hindus
of the 12th century
deserved to go down before the virile and
living Muslims.
So there is a certain sense in which
there was a a kind of injection of
testosterone and of adrenaline
in the very static,
and hierarchical world
of cast Hinduism and that Islam
prophetically turned things upside down with necessarily,
considerable
disruption with the introduction of a new spiritual
principle,
The sage
who can sit with people from any social
background
was something that necessarily introduced a new alchemy
into the enormously profound spiritual life of the
subcontinent.
I had a colleague who
was very a great Sanskritist
and studied with a with a Pandit in
India.
But they said, this is an American guy,
you know, I had to sit at the
guy's garden gate
with my hair wet.
Because if a hair from my head fell
into the land of the Brahmin,
it would have to be ritually cleansed, and
this was a huge inconvenience because I'm just
a Westerner. I'm unclean. I'm below the untouchables.
He still liked the pundits and, admired
the literature that he was studying, but that
is how things were.
And in some places in India still are,
so the introduction of the monotheistic principle remember
the holy prophet, Ali Salat, he has Ethiopians
and Persians and everybody
in his entourage and it doesn't make a
difference. He's overcoming the tribal system of the
ancient Arabs, represented
an extraordinary
breath of oxygen into that static world and
a new spiritual type
emerged. And certainly Nizamuddin Awliya is an example
of
how the greatness of Indian
Indic spirituality
is,
reinforced, but also massively
reinvigorated
by a new sense of,
human
unity. And very frequently, we find him adverting
to the fact that
all human beings are from Adam, if you
have that idea.
Be slaves of Allah as brothers.
And this,
despite certain stratifications that you find amongst Muslims
of subcontinental
origin,
remains the the Sharia
principle.
So,
the Muslims arrive in India,
and this spiritual
tradition arrives as well.
And, in the case of Nizamuddin Auliya, already
this is in the 7th century of Islam,
so, there's been a presence for for some
time. But it's it's through these
these zahids, these ascetics,
that Islam actually starts to spread in the
populace.
In the original conquest and it goes back
to Umayyad times,
at least in Sind,
in the far west of the subcontinent,
didn't really produce much by way
of
Islamization
because the soldiers and the onomat just kept
to themselves in cantonments,
rather like the British in India didn't mix
with the natives very much.
The olamat were speaking their own languages and
engaging with
Muslim issues.
But once you have
particularly tariqas like the tariq of Muayneddin Chishti,
whose Khalifas
become masters of indigenous languages
and who develop forms of Dawa that reach
out to the very poorest people and are
of the poorest people, rather than stuck in
the nice house of the Mufti or the
the the governor's palace, but of the population.
Then you find
Islam really spreading, and not just as is
conventionally understood amongst the
untouchables and the sudras and the people at
the bottom of the
the the social food chain, but, some
elite people as well. And they are attracted
by the the new spiritual principle that is
at work.
So,
the,
information that we have about museum Nizamuddin Auliya
represents kind of the maturation
of,
Islamic spirituality in India,
largely comes in modern times from the work
of an Indian historian Khaled Ahmed Nizami,
whose book on Nizami Di Auliya,
naturally, we have in the CMC library upstairs.
He was a very,
significant historian of mid late 20th century, India
who also has a book on Baba Farid
and on,
the 12th century
administrative
system of, the Muslim subcontinent.
So what I'll be doing for the rest
of this morning is basically
tracing, the narrative,
that he outlines,
and
benefiting
from his scholarship.
Nizamuddin Auliya is from
El Limbeid.
He is,
descended from the Imam Ali An Naki.
One of the 12 Imams that we usually
identify as the Shi'i Imams, even though they're
venerated by the
Sunnis as well.
And
Ali al Naki had two famous sons. 1
was Hassan al Askari, who went on to
become the next Imam, and the other was
Jaafari Sani,
Jaafar the second, who is the ancestor
of the the of Khojad Nizamatdin
Auliya. And they settle in Central Asia in
Bukhara
in
the 2nd 3rd centuries of Islam.
And then,
as so often happens,
they become refugees,
asylum seekers.
They have that experience of disruption which often
turns out to be spiritually very,
very bracing.
So it's the same Mongol invasion of Central
Asia that drives Bahad Din Walad
with the little boy who becomes Juleluddin Rumi
to the west,
to, Anatolia and they're settling Konya,
that drives the family of the descendants of
Imam Ali al Naki
south to the subcontinent
escaping the scourge of the Mongols. And they
get out of Bukhara
just in time, and maybe 35,000,
40000 people are immediately put to the sword
And the
remainder, particularly people who have professions,
leather workers and calligraphers and so forth, are
carted off in servile captivity to the Mongol
capital of Karakoram. And the city of Bukhara
is deserted, having been one of the great
metropoli of Islam.
Central Asia, in many ways, never really recovers
from the Mongol invasions because it's everybody is
dead.
Everybody is dead. There's just crows
and the land is there's still parts of
Uzbekistan that hadn't been properly repopulated,
following the Mongol catastrophe
8 centuries ago. So,
the family
moved to
at a town in India called Badaun, usually
badaun,
sometimes badaun.
And this was at the time about the
2nd most distinguished Center for Islamic scholarship in
Hindustan.
And it was absolutely full of madrasas,
hospices,
hanakas,
bridges.
It was
a wonder of early Islamic
India and a home of very many saints.
So both of, Khwaja
Nizamuddin Auliya's grandfathers
settled her. That's Khwaja Ali and Khwaja
Arab
to this little town which
is called Qubbatal Islam. It's not huge, but
it has so many scholars. It's called Qubbatal
Islam, the Dome of Islam.
It's near the river Ganges.
And it's still
a a mainly Muslim
town,
maybe 60% Muslim,
but a little bit forlorn because amongst the
many catastrophes of the partition was that the
kind of the Muslims who could afford to
leave,
middle classes and the elite left,
leaving the ordinary guys and and women behind
to survive as best they could. So even
though it's a mainly Muslim town, the kind
of
amazing,
spiritual and,
institutional
infrastructure
that was once
characteristic of the city is kind of all
cobwebby and broken down now. It's a a
melancholy kind of place. And that's the story
of much of the subcontinent, of course. Because
of the
right idea somebody had that the best thing
for the future of India's Muslims would be
to divide them into 3.
Well,
maybe it's worked out, maybe it hasn't. But
for places like Badaun, it's a kind of
shadow of its former self. But in those
times and in as the city in which
Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya spent the first 20 years
of his life, it was
astounding.
Saints and scholars
on every street corner.
It also tended to be known as a
place where you'd go if you really didn't
want to be too close to the government.
In this Shishti tradition and in the Sufi
tradition generally, you run away from the Sultan.
You don't have anything to do with political
power.
Firstly, you don't need the money. And what
else do they have to offer?
And secondly, they're involved in all kinds of
illicit acts.
Luxury is only the least of their sins,
but illicit taxation
and oppression and unnecessary wars, etcetera, etcetera. It's
not where the good Muslim wants to be.
So, the the pious and the devout, the
fastidious
tended to leave Delhi in the direction of,
this town Badawan, which made it an even
more kind of spiritual,
reclusive, ascetical, but, glittering
jewel in the
the Muslim
crown.
Certainly, Nizamuddin Auliya
always regards his roots as being there, even
though the age of 19, he leaves with
his mother for Delhi, and he never goes
back. He's always asking about the town. And
when,
Sijazi is,
the one who wrote this for
for Ad Mentions. I've been traveling from Bengal,
and we went through Badaun, and I visited
the tombs. And I visited the tombs of
your your father and your grandfathers. And
Nizamuddin Auliya is said to have wept copiously,
had a kind of nostalgia
for the for the city. And I was
also very proud of his identity in a
way that we need to remember as Muslims.
Islam, the universal religion, but being proud of
your roots and where you are from
is also really important. The holy prophet's yearning
for Makkah was not just a strategic desire,
but because that was his homeland where he
was from.
As the poet says,
I think it's from Eberl Morte's secular Abbasid
poet who says, however far in the world
your heart may travel,
your true love is the place where you
began
However many places in the earth, man may
settle, his yearning is always for the first
of those places.
This idea of nostalgia for where you originated,
not done to excess, of course, is a
natural human faculty. So he certainly has this.
In one of his interesting,
discourses,
he says, it's such a fantastic place that
the dialect of that place
is the language I used when I said,
yes. I bear witness at the day of
Alastobiram
Bikom,
when I was initially pledging my allegiance to
my lord, when all the nations were assembled,
this is the great verse in the Quran,
and everybody bared would bore witness to their
own nature and the divine nature in that
first primordial covenant,
he said, yes. I testify
in the dialect of that town. So,
the universalism of Islam also,
relates to people's particular patriotism, if you like,
love of place, which is certainly,
a fitri
human impulse and something,
which the saints
can manifest.
So
2 grandfathers,
and the
Khwaja Arab gives his daughter Bibi Zuleikha
to, the other Khwaja Ahmad.
And the father is born. The father dies,
we're told, when Khwaja Nizamuddin
Auliya is
still young or a baby or perhaps yet
unborn. The sources don't really give us a
sense of it. We know he was basically
half an orphan rather like, you know, the
holy prophet alaihis salatu salam and is brought
up by his
mother for a while. She is,
from this, obviously noble family, prophetic family,
very aristocratic
in her bearing,
hospitable,
very devout,
but absolutely penurious
after the father dies, the absence of anything
like a social support system for people who
are still refugees. They don't have larger family
in the neighborhood.
She subsists on almost nothing. And Khwaja Nizamuddin
Auliya's being accustomed
to real poverty and hunger is something that
comes from the necessities of
his childhood.
She
hopes for great things for her son and
sends him to the great scholars of the
city of of Badaun.
One of them is called Shirdi Mokri,
who was originally,
the slave of a wealthy Hindu
who
bought or purchased his own
freedom
and was a Quran specialist. He knew the
7 qira'at.
And as often happens with people who dedicate
their lives to the Quran,
all kinds of interesting miracles are attributed to
him. The kind of the fiery radiance of
the divine writ within one produces
interesting manifestations. So it was believed in Badawan
that if you sent your son to study
your kind of Qaida, your basic,
reading Quran,
to Shirdi Mokhret that one day somehow or
other, that child would certainly end up as
a Hafiz.
And actually, Nizamuddin Auliya becomes a Hafiz decades
later in his life, but he always attributes
it to that initial kind of tasting of
the Qur'anic ocean at the hands of this
shaddi mukri.
The other is a Mulla Allah edin Osoli
who is
a scholar who, again,
was
really impoverished.
And it's recorded sometimes he was so hungry
that he could hardly speak during his, during
his lessons.
But it's he who teaches him the basics
of Hanafi Firk. He studies the Hidaya, of
Orhanadin Marghinani, of course, mother Cholasani
and, Godori.
And there is a basic graduation ceremony, which
has to be really
austere.
Graduation ceremony in those days was quite a
magnificent affair. There was a special turban which
was wound by the
sheikh and placed on your head and it
had a line of silk in it and
it was a big deal. They had a
very simplified version of this, but he becomes
a scholar when he's still really just
a child.
But he wants to move on to Delhi
to study with the greater scholars there, so
he
asks his mother's permission.
And,
even though they don't know anybody there,
she agrees and they go together.
She's kind of in her forties by this
time. They travel to the city of Delhi,
and
they experienced also great poverty. They have to
move house several times in some of the
poorest slum quarters of the the great city.
On Sundays, there would be nothing to eat
at all, just nothing.
And on those days,
she is she would tell the son Nizamuddin,
today we
are duyufullah.
We are God's guests.
And you feel a special
blessing coming from that, just reliant upon the
creator.
And he would relate that, sometimes when
several days when they had had something to
eat went by,
he would kind of miss those days when
there was a special blessing of just
nothing in the house
at all.
She becomes sick.
It's possible that, you know,
that extreme hunger, malnutrition
contributes to this, but she makes a great
du'a
for him before
her death.
She has no family members to
entrust
her son to.
But she makes a Duat saying, Oh Allah,
I
entrust him to your cow.
And he always felt that the subsequent protection
that he'd received from the divine presence in
his life came from his mother's prayer. And
you find this quite often with the mothers
of
the the the Auliya and,
as we'll see
shortly, his own teacher, the one who came
to me, his teacher was
Fariduddin
Ganjeshakar
of Adrodan,
regarded his own mother as having been his
principal,
instructor in the spiritual way. This is this
is quite common, but a kind of veiled
phenomenon given the nature of Muslim society.
You know, we don't seek for
a public profile. We don't seek for
prestige or status. And the traditional,
charisma of the woman is to serve and
to make sacrifices for the sake of God,
behind closed doors. And that's how she
she transcends ego and that's her path to
sainthood. But recording that, most of it, it's
not recorded. And they didn't care because they
were doing it for God rather than
to be included in some
spiffy 21st century biography of
Indian saints. That was not their concern. They
were masturats
in all sense, veiled ones.
So in
Delhi, he used to go and sit by
the river, Jamuna, which has a big role,
even a symbolic role in the development of
North Indian Sufism.
And that's why he goes in order to
complete his hefs of the Quran, walks up
and down beside the river,
memorizing,
with a strong inclination to
seclusion. He doesn't feel at home really in
this great strange city, and he really wants
to be the kind of anchorite who just
lives alone, a solitary dervish.
And then as he was memorizing,
and this is a famous story, a very
beautifully dressed young man comes up to him,
tells telling him,
are you not afraid that you will be
ashamed
before the Holy Prophet on
the Day of Judgment when so many people
are flocking to him for help?
Do you want to be alone
and not follow his way?
Be focused on God through loving his creatures.
And this was the moment of his tallbo
when he realized that
his way would not be the way of
the, the hermit, but the way of one
who serves
others and exists in the crowd,
Daraju man, in amongst the masses.
And then he makes a symbolic gift of
all the food he has on him to
the young man who then leaves. So it's
just kind of symbolic
event, but it indicates something of the particular
temper
of Nizamuddin Auliya's,
spirituality.
So he doesn't want to live in the
city of Delhi itself because,
like just about everybody of a past disposition,
he's afraid that he'll just get caught up
in the entanglements of this, kind of, all
powerful imperial
state and be,
dragooned into the bureaucracy.
So he settles in a village near Delhi
called Rhiaspor, which is on the banks of
the river, which was then kind of just
a few poor people,
few fishermen living
there. Not much going on.
And the extreme hunger continues.
His mother is now dead.
And he sustains himself as a scholar just
by leaving a bowl outside his door, hoping
that by the end of the day, somebody
will have put some food
in it.
He continues to learn.
We tend to think Zomadin Auliya is the
great Sheikh Huhta Ors. Everybody goes to visit
in Delhi, but actually
he was, an alim
of a very considerable degree and his teacher,
Baba Farid,
insisted that you should only authorize somebody to
carry on the the path of Sufism.
You can only become a Muqaddam or a
Khalifa
if you've really got your Ijazah in the
key Islamic sciences.
Never authorize anybody into SAWUF who doesn't have
that
exoteric
armature.
And and he continues studies with a number
of significant scholars including Kamal Adina Zahid, who's
the best known Muhandid or Hadith scholar of
Delhi.
And then
the terrible time comes when he gets a
message from the Sultan.
He's been noticed, the last thing he wanted.
And,
the Sultan has been busy confiscating
things at random, confiscating land, confiscating property of
rich merchants in order to continue his campaigns
and his lifestyle. If you've been to the
palaces of India, you'll see,
if you go to the
palace in in Lahore, which I visited, they've
got all kinds of interesting
features like a spiral staircase for elephants.
The Indian Sultans really knew how to live.
So,
the Sultans were grabbing the the wealth of
the poor and of the scholars. And so
the sheikh sends back a message to him
saying,
you've taken everything away, everything else from me.
Do you want to take my prayer from
me as well?
Is that
all that I have left and you're going
to take that?
So,
he continues to study for a long time.
We have Ijazas that he has awarded from
Khamanadin Zahid,
Moshelek al Anwar famous Hadith collection, which you've
memorized,
when he's still in his for when he's
already in his forties.
So it's not the standard image of
you throw away the books and start clapping
your hands and be a mystical Sufi. No.
It's just an
the
Sufi path is a way of deepening
your understanding of exoteric scholarship and indeed, disciplining
yourself, so that you have more time
and capacity for memorization.
And he becomes,
particularly
known in the sciences of Fiqh and Hadith.
And you see that a lot in his
discourses.
Questions about some of the Ramadan discourses are
just about issues in
Fiqh, moon sighting,
Taraweeh rules, and so forth. A lot of
his classes are about
those things. He also becomes
really well known as a debater, of course,
in the Persian language, which is the language
of
Muslim scholars in North India at the time.
So he was known as Nizamuddin
Mahfil Shikan.
He's got so many titles, but,
Mahfil Shikan means breaker of gatherings.
When he was in a gathering where the
scholars were disputing, he could immediately shatter everybody
with a well chosen Dalil or a Hadith
expressed in a particularly
elegant and persuasive way. However,
the Sufi tradition and the Trishti tradition in
particular opposed this and regard it
as problematical. So you find that in his
in his majalis as recorded by Sijazi, you
don't get
scenes of a lot of argumentation.
He's always looking for
something positive to say about, others. And this
comes up, as we'll see, in his relations
with,
non Muslims as well. So he's sitting
in his majlis one day and his disciples
are saying, look at that. Look out the
window. There's an idol worshipper. Look at him
going up and down this
crude statue.
And his response is
we can all learn something
not from his beliefs, but from the sincerity
of his devotions.
That's very characteristic.
You don't make concessions, but you look for
what is best in every situation,
in order not to feel proud, so that
you benefit rather than just end up feeling
superior.
So he moves away from the world of,
kind of, formal rhetorical debating society,
dispute amongst the olema and towards
a more characteristically
irenic
approach, which he becomes
well known for.
He still hasn't found his his sage, his
guide.
When he was still in the town of
Badaun, he had heard of the repute of
Baba Farida Din Ganji Shakaar of Ajordan, which
is now called Pakpatan, which is,
in Pakistan.
But,
one night when in Delhi,
he heard
Amu Azzin in the middle of the night
reciting the famous verse,
Has not the time come
for those who believe
that their
hearts should submit
to the remembrance of God and to the
truth that has been revealed.
So without any preparation, he just goes out
of his house and walks off and goes
to Adro Dan, which is
100 of miles away to the West. And
he comes into the presence of the sheikh,
who is now
around about 90 years old, the great Baba
Farid.
And Khaled Nizami also has a good book
about
Baba Farid, which is also worth
and some of you, if you're from Pakistan,
you may have traveled around Punjab. You may
even have been to the place. It's
quite,
quite phenomenal.
And so he comes into the presence of
the Sheikh and the Sheikh recites a poem.
The flame of being separated from you has
been burning our heart.
The tempest of yearning to meet you has
ravaged our lives. So the Sheikhs knows that
this particular disciple is on his way. It's
as if this is the star pupil that
he's been waiting for all his life, this
kind of tatty
guy who comes from
Delhi.
And he's really nervous in the presence of
the Sheikh.
And of course, there are tests.
1st test is,
you will spend the night with us
and you will sleep in one of these
beds, in one of these cots. And he
sees a lot of the dervishes are just
sleeping on the ground and
that the the cots are for the sort
of the scholars and the senior people,
guests and
but in the nick of time, he suppresses
any hint of protest and recognizes that, to
accept a spiritual guide means that you accept
the instructions of that guide.
So
he then asks Baba Farid,
I'm at a crossroads.
Should I give up my studies of Elmer,
and become a dervish
or should I continue?
Baba Farid replies,
characteristically,
in the Chishti lineage,
I've never asked anybody
to give up
the pursuit of sacred knowledge of Elmer.
Continue as a scholar
and as a dervish.
And in the fullness of time, one of
those qualities will prevail in you over the
other.
He
visits him
every year
in the month of Ramadan. This is his
Ramadan practice.
He leaves behind everything in Delhi and walks
to Adjordan and sleeps in the Hanukkah of
the sheikh who is teaching him to overcome
the residues of pride in his heart and
to cultivate the love of others.
Overcome pride,
love others.
And at the age of only 23, when
al Sheikha is 93, he becomes his chief
Khalifa and his
deputy.
But this only comes after some
sharp lessons.
Baba Farid's principal practice in his formal majelis,
was to read and teach from a book
called the Awarif al Ma'arif of Shehabit in
Surawardi,
which is one of the great classical texts
of normative
Sufism.
And he had a rather
defective manuscript
from which he was reading.
And on one occasion,
the young,
disciple
said,
Oh Master, I could get you a better
copy.
And this is taken to be an objection.
And Baba Fried says, Can't this poor dervish
not correct a bad copy by himself?
Nizamuddin's
horrified,
throws himself down in apology and then kind
of runs out and goes into the the
forest.
India is still full of wilderness areas at
the time,
in absolute despair.
And finally, a friend goes from him to
ask for Baba Farid's forgiveness.
And Baba Farid says,
what I do, I do to perfect you.
A peer,
spiritual guide,
is just a dresser of brides.
Interesting expression.
In other words, you ought to be,
presented
to the Lord in submission to the Lord
of creation. I'm just the one who gets
you ready for that role and that,
that experience.
So, in the year 664,
on 13th Ramadan,
he formally gives him the Khilafat to the
amazement of people who've
been in his Dargah all his
life. And he says, you will be a
tree.
A tree under whose cool shade
all humanity
will find
a cure,
will find healing.
This idea of the sage as a tree,
and in hot countries in particular, you know,
trees are pretty welcome refuges from the burning
of the sun. It's often used in the
sultans. So famously,
the dream of Osman, the founder of the
Ottoman dynasty, is that he saw his sheikh
touching his chest as he was sleeping and
a tree comes out and animals and human
beings of different kinds come to
take a shelter under that tree, and that's
his image of what his role as a
ruler is going to be. But for the
scholar as well, the tree which is just
indifferent in who it shades, Animals, human beings,
different denominations, different genders. A tree is a
generous,
generous
phenomenon, which is one reason why we use
the image of the tree for designing the
new Cambridge mosque, of course. So
it's time for him to return to Delhi.
Babafarid knows that he's got no money.
He's just wearing
a kind of rag and he doesn't even
have additional cloth in order to add patches
to his rag. This is extreme destitution.
Middle ages wasn't so unusual.
Babafarid gives him, a silver coin
for his journey.
Nizamuddin knows that this is the last coin
that Babafarid
possesses
and so he goes to him at Iftar
time.
There's no food.
And so he gives him back the coin.
He places the coin at the master's
feet,
and Babafarid
prays that Allah will give him some share
of the dunya
because he's so ready to renounce this coin
that he needs for his journey.
The prayer is that he will not
experience want. And Nizamuddin
says, I fear
that that would damage my heart.
Berber Farid says, Do not fear.
What you possess will not involve you in
any
attachment or misfortune.
And Nizamuddin says this before
departing, by appointing me as your Khalifa, you've
done me a very great honor and have
given me a treasure.
However, I'm a student.
I'm averse to dunya attachments.
The calling is high beyond my ability.
All I want from you is not khilafat,
but just your good opinion and your kindness.
But, Babafried reassures him, says he's got his
full confidence.
And Hazrat and Zomadin,
unwilling to disobey his master, accepts the role.
So he takes from him the symbolic prayer
rug and the staff.
And he gives him
2 pieces of advice as he's leaving.
If you must incur debt, try to repay
it quickly.
Secondly,
always try to please your enemies.
Know his parting words. And shortly afterwards, Bazarid
passes on to the abode of eternity.
Nizamuddin is back in Delhi, this enormous world
city full of need, destitution,
religions,
confusion,
the terror of the palace, and sets to
work.
Very difficult to do anything without engaging somehow
with the imperial bureaucracy,
but he still manages to set up a
vast network. This is one of the achievements
of the Chishtiya in particular.
He sets up,
a network of 100
of
centers and branches, as it were, of his
movement all over India, Muslim India and beyond
the boundaries.
His disciples are sent out
literally
everywhere.
He is back in Riaspur,
which is now where he's buried and is
the Hazrat Nizomidine,
which is a bustling district of Delhi. There's
even a Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station. It's just
another city quarter.
And lots of people are flooding in in
order to benefit from his teachings.
He is a,
a well known
ascetic
Zahid who enjoys
everyone's
confidence.
The pattern of his life, life is shaped
by the 5 daily prayers.
He eats very little.
At Suhor time,
once one of his friends heard him say,
there are many poor who sleep in the
corners of the mosques and patios of shops,
who have nothing to eat.
How could any more food go down my
throat?
So here, the kind of asceticism is linked
to a sense of social responsibility.
Most of the day was spent,
just receiving visitors,
High and low, they'd come to
see him. Except after Zohar, he would have
his hadith class. This is a kind of
formal
Darcey alim.
And at Iftar, he would eat a piece
of bread and some vegetables,
and the rest he would
distribute. And then he would go back to
where he lived, which was basically just a
wooden kind of shack on the roof of
the Dargah,
the retreat center which he built by the
river.
I mentioned that he has this strong aversion
to associating with rulers.
And this becomes part of his teachings.
Do not approach the doors of kings, he
says, seek no recompense from them.
If a letter came from the Sultan, he
would just leave it unopened.
He'd never open it.
The Sultan,
worried about this hugely popular
phenomenon down the road, and Rias Por would
send spies
to try and check him out. Is this
political? Is this,
one of the sultans, Sultan Jalaluddin Khaji,
made him a gift of some villages,
but he refuses.
Then the Sultan
tries to get him to come to the
palace,
but without success.
And his Omidyin Auliya says, that's why my
house has 2 doors. If he comes in
through 1, I run out through the other.
But a number of government disciples still become
government officials still become his disciples, and this
is how he exercises his influence on society.
Not through having some kind of political or
economic control of it, but just through transforming
individual
souls. And they say that the city of
Delhi acquired a different,
more devout, and more compassionate temper as a
result of his apolitical
lifestyle.
One of his teachings there's 3 kinds of
dervishes.
There's the Salic,
those who renounce the world
and devote themselves entirely to dhikr and ascetical
practice.
That's the Saliq.
There's the Waqif,
people who
have a certain,
balance
between
service in the world and service to God.
And the raja,
the hopa,
the vain hopa, is those who've achieved some
progress in their spiritual lives, but then become
complacent or lose interest and just hope that
God will somehow make things
better for them or
forgive them.
Many of the people who are coming for
blessings,
are women. And I mentioned this in connection
with,
Hazrat Shahidullah
Faridi. And I've been in touch with some
of his people who knew him. They're old
ladies now. And the majority of them are
women.
There's some interesting teachings.
Not a feminist by modern standards,
upholder of
a traditional vision of society and
dimorphism,
but somebody who thought that the upliftment of
society should come through
respect.
We've seen the importance of his mother and
of his teacher's
mother.
So he always taught that women were equally
able spiritually
as men.
And he once said, If a tiger comes
at you from its lair,
do you bother to check whether it's male
or female?
In other words, what counts is the creature
itself. And in the case of humanity, that
he had them. These gender differentials are not
a significant thing.
So, yeah, very many,
women are are coming to see him.
We know a little bit about where he's
staying, his Jama'at Khanan,
which is a large hall for the sunnah
ceremonies, the dhikr to be held
with lots of little rooms, small rooms, where
his disciples would stay,
opening onto it.
And visitors would come
all day.
He never refused to see a visitor
and he never refused anybody bea. Anybody who
wanted to be his disciple and would not
be turned away. And he had,
disciples from all religions,
not just Muslims. And this is a famous
aspect of many of the Shishti sheikhs,
that you don't have to be Muslim in
order to
benefit somehow from the sage. Although, clearly, his
way is the Mohammedan way. So,
these individuals are coming,
and a lot of gifts are coming, what
they call the futor in Nataretto, which is
gift of food,
Because of his
mission of sacred hospitality, which is the way
of Mohaina Deen Trishti of Ajmer himself,
Much of the sheikh's effulgence is passed out
not just through
words of wisdom, but through practical gift and
particularly gift of food. So wealthy people, people
hoping for the sheikh blessings, prayers, forgiveness, whatever,
act of tober, something to do before Hajj
or before you die, would give
a lot of
food to the Dargah,
which would then be, organized by officials who
were appointed there,
and,
distributed to the poor. So,
enormous kitchens. They said the kitchens of his
dargah were bigger than the royal kitchens in
Delhi.
And the rule of his changha was that
no gift could remain
for more than a week.
So one of the practices that he would
adopt before going for Junoir prayer, before leaving
his Chanukah, would be to go to the
storeroom
to make sure that there was nothing left
and everything had been meticulously
swept and
cleaned.
So,
this langar
fed a huge number of the poor of
Delhi.
And he liked to make it good food
as well. He would appoint appoint good cooks.
Well, just give people kind of the cheapest,
rubbishy stuff. Some of the food that was
donated was of good quality. So it was
known to be,
good
food.
And also,
when he noticed people coming regularly, he would
make inquiries
and would allocate a stipend for those people
once their circumstances
had been,
acknowledged. So once he was
walking by the river and he found a
woman who has
dug a well, was drawing water from the
well rather than from the river. And he
says, why didn't you get your water from
the river? We all drink from the river.
And she says, oh, the river river waters
tastes
so good that it gives me and my
children an appetite for food. We don't have
any food. But this water,
it it it doesn't give us any kind
of hunger.
So hearing that, Pete adds her to the
list of those who receive a regular stipend
from the Langa.
And it's still the case. Thursdays Sundays, you
get free food, from the Durga
of Nizamuddin Auliya in
Delhi. So the poor, the barefoot, ragged,
sick masses are coming,
But also people from the elites,
they're also interested in sanctity and salvation.
One of them is Amir Khosrow, who is
maybe the best known poet in India at
the time. Tauthi Ahind,
the songbird of India,
who is really even though he's of Turkic
origin, like a lot of these migrants from
Central Asia,
really one of the, maybe 4 or 5
greatest ever Persian poets with his famous Khamsa,
which is a huge volume with 5 extended
poems on various secular and religious
subjects.
Writes a lot of court poetry.
He has this Giran as Sardain.
It's one of the great monuments of Persian
literature, which is basically all about the splendor
of the court and the wonder of the
Sultan. It's kind of royal panegyric is in
that in that,
zone.
Educated in that not only did he know
Persian, but he could write in Arabic and
Sanskrit as well.
And he writes a book about Nizamuddin
Auliya,
which, has also survived, which is
very flowery and baroque and difficult really to
extract concrete information from. But he seems to
have been his closest friend.
It's interesting that
even though Nizamuddin Auliya is living this ragged
existence,
distributing food to the poor,
the guy who comes and and spends evenings
with him, and sometimes they talk late into
the night, is this very kind of fancy
elite
poet from the Royal Court. They just somehow
hit it off.
Yep, so this is how he
spends his time.
And
if you go there today, you'll see a
lot of
Muslims, non Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, everybody goes
there just to get something. Usually people from
the lowest orders of society. But, Hindus used
to come,
as well and there's some enigmatic stories. So
for instance, once,
he noticed that there were 6 Yogis,
the Hindu ascetics,
standing outside the door of the Hanukkah.
And the disciples said, well, they've come to
seek your blessings.
And then
the end of the day, they finish their
meditation, and And they're about to leave and
they're asked, why did you come? And they
said, we tried to understand
the spiritual place of the Sheikh, but we
couldn't understand.
So what that means, who knows? But there's
some kind of
inter religious
deep exchange
going on despite the fact that he is
Islam. He is,
axiomatically
embedded in his own Islamic tradition. But it
is through
these Shishti saints that so many, millions really,
have come into Islam
across the subcontinent
and the age of conquests and merchants,
gave way to the age of mass conversions.
And many of his disciples in
remote areas, would spread Islam specifically amongst
the Hindu populations,
through not adopting a kind of very elite
foreign discourse.
Unfortunately, this is not, tends to be said,
the way in which Tariqas function in the
modern West, where they tend to be bastions
of ethnic difference.
If you go to a Chishti place in
Luton now,
it's not going to be engaging much with
the non Muslim population and bringing in everybody
and speaking English, it'll be
a very mono ethnic, a kind of bunker
of somebody else's culture. So they're profoundly malfunctioning
here now.
But in their heyday,
in India, these are the ones who provided
the stepping stones to Islam for countless millions,
which is why Islam is a religion of,
30% of the population of the subcontinent,
if not more.
Compare that to Christianity, which came to India
long before Islam and had all of the
advantage of
British rule for centuries. Christians are only about
1% of the population of India. So it's
these people who live with the poor rather
than the kind of English sergeant major or
the missionary in his top hat. These people
get into the culture, live with the culture,
and experience the sufferings of the masses who
win the hearts of the population.
And so it was. So in 13/25,
he dies.
One of the last things he says is
that when he dies, he wants there to
be nothing left in his house or in
the Langar. So the food has to be
distributed
and everything's swept and cleaned. And he
designates
Khajun Nasiruddin Shirar as his,
disciple,
telling him that he has to stay in
Delhi and suffer the hardships of life there.
And the historians recall that when news of
his death
were was known,
every house in Delhi went into mourning,
Hindu and Muslim
alike.
And his Jenaiza
led by the grandson of the great,
Baha'i
Baha'i Zakhari of Multan.
Multan is the city of saints in Pakistan,
an amazing ancient place. And Baha'i ad Din
Zakaria's shrine is biggest,
edifice there.
And so it was that family that had
this particular honor. So,
let's now move to what I really wanted
to do, which is to hear the
the words of the tradition
directly. And I wanted to start with
advice from his own teacher,
Baba Farid
of, Pak Patan.
Now you'll notice with this tradition
that this is certainly not
the highly intellectual,
philosophical,
Gnostic Sufism of the Ibn Arabi school
that, also is coming into India at this
time.
The people like Mohammed, Burhan Puri, and so
forth, which becomes an enormously,
brilliant and sophisticated
tradition, which, of course, has its intrinsic legitimacy.
This is more
grassroots,
working with the masses,
compassion, feed the poor. It sees itself as
being,
closer to the original sonnet of sort of
selfless
asceticism and wool wearing. So these are not
complex sentiments. They are
straight from the heart. So from Baba Farid,
Busy yourself ceaselessly
with active discipline, or Jair Hader, struggling against
the ego.
Laziness
is the devil's workshop.
In our way of life, fasting achieves 50%
of success.
Educate yourself
and your dependents.
Avoid all sinful actions.
Always rectify your own faults before seeking to
rectify
others.
What you hear from me, commit it to
memory
and spread it widely.
If you have to
go into Eartikef,
seclude yourself for a period,
do so in a mosque
where the prayer at the namaz
is conducted in congregation.
Deactivate
your ego, your nafs. Make your nafs idle.
Consider the world as being something far from
you and as insubstantial.
Privacy or seclusion,
busy yourself with the worship of God.
If in such seclusion you grow tired of
large acts of worship, then try smaller ones.
Should you be troubled by your ego, then
gratify it with a little rest or some
sleep.
Shower your blessings and favors upon whoever may
visit
you. So these are
basic akhlaq of
the tariq.
There's nothing
hugely intricate about this, but it is through
these teachings that
India so substantively
became Muslim. And it said that,
but for partition,
which will more or less stop the conversion
process in India,
within 300 years, India would have a strong
Muslim majority.
But, of course, that that tradition with the
segregation of communities,
has come to an end.
So reading from the,
Foa Eid al Foa'ed of
Amir Hassan Sijazi, who is one of his
disciples and who writes down
what happened in some of the sheikh's informal
conversations.
I've just chosen a few of these, some
of which are Ramadan related.
This is Friday 5th Ramadan,
the year 707.
What is the preeminent form
of optional prayer? He asked.
Then he explained that according to the decree
of Mawlana Zaghir ed in Hafiz,
may Allah grant him peace, it was the
Tarawih prayer.
Every evening, recalled the master, he would also
urge me to read 3 sections of the
Quran.
So that after 10 consecutive evenings, I might
complete the whole of the Quran
and obtain the benefit of performing this task.
At his command, after the congregational prayer, I
would retire to observe the Tarawih prayers.
Good, he would explain to me. That is
a commendable thing
for you to do.
The Master once told the following story about
a certain chaste saint.
Many times, he used to say that all
virtuous deeds such as prayers, fasting, invocations,
and saying the tesbi prayer beads are a
cauldron.
But the basic staple in the cauldron is
meat.
Without meat, you do not experience any of
these virtuous deeds.
So finally, after hearing this many times, they
asked that peer, many times you've used that
analogy.
Please explain it.
Meat, replied the saint, is renouncing
worldliness.
While prayer, fasting, invocation,
as well as repetition of utespi,
all such virtuous deeds presuppose that the one
who does them has left the world
and is no longer attached to any worldly
thing.
Whether he observes or does not observe prayer,
invocations, and other practices,
there is no cause for fear if these
things are not obligatory.
But if friendship with the world lingers in
his heart, he derives no benefit from supplications,
invocations, and the like.
After that, the master observed,
if one puts oil, pepper, garlic, and onion
into a cauldron and adds only water, the
end result is known as pseudo stew. Don't
know what that is in Persia Persian. But
the basic staple for stew is meat. There
may or may not be other ingredients.
Similarly, the basis for spiritual progress is leaving
the world. There may or may not be
other virtuous practices. So what it's saying is
that our our forms of worship and our
avka and our sessions are just kind of
ingredients,
but the essence of the thing has to
be turning away
from our attachments to the world.
As the hadith says,
shunning the world of
beguilement, of distraction.
Well,
and repenting and going towards,
the abode of
eternity.
Monday, 25th, Jumad Al Ula, the year 708.
Conversation turned to the virtue of giving food
to others.
On the blessed tongue of the master came
these words,
there is no merit attached to providing food
just for your own people.
Then he began to talk of Khwaja Ali,
the son of Khwaja Rukund Deen, the Venerable
Chishti saint. May Allah bless both of them.
He was taken captive during the onslaught of
the unbelieving Mongols.
They brought him toward before Chinggis Khan.
At the time, one of the disciples of
that noble dynasty
of Chishti saints was present, Not only present,
but in a position of authority at the
Mongol court.
When he saw that Khwaja Ali had been
taken prison, he was dumbfounded.
To himself, he thought, how can I procure
his release?
In what way should I mention his name
before Genghis Khan?
If I say that he comes from a
noble family and is himself a saint, what
will Genghis Khan care?
And if I mention his obedience and devotion
to God, that too will have no effect.
After pondering a long time, he went before
Genghis Khan and announced,
the father of this man was a saint
who gave food to people.
He ought to be set free.
Did he give food to his own people,
asked Genghis Khan, or to people who were
strangers?
Everyone provides food to his own people, replied
the courtier, but the father of this man
gave food to strangers.
Genghis Khan was very pleased with this reply.
A true saint, he noted, is someone who
gives food to God's people, and immediately he
ordered them to set Khwaja Ali free.
He also gave the saint's son a cloak
and apologized for having detained him.
'In every religion,'
concluded the master,
giving food to others is a commendable action.
Thursday 13th Jumrath Thurni 708. You have to
remember that Khwaja Nizamuddin is not just fasting
in Ramadan, but fasting the white days, the
3
moonlit nights at the middle of each lunar
month. And also,
very frequently at other times as well, observing
the fast of Dawud, which is fasting alternatively
alternate days.
So this assembly is a long discussion of
fasting with detailed reference to prophetic precedence and
their interpretations.
If someone fasts continuously, explained the master, the
pain of fasting becomes easy for him. The
reward is greater, however, for the person on
whose soul the act of fasting weighs more
heavily.
Hence, the fast of David is this, one
day you fast,
the next day you break the fast.
Thursday, 27th of Jamada Thurney 708.
When evening came, and it was Friday evening,
a woman presented herself to the master and
professed allegiance to him. She took her bea.
He then began to comment on the numerous
benefits that accrue from the virtue of women.
And here you have his
famous image. The Master then declared that dervishes
who ask saintly women and saintly men to
pray on their behalf
invoke saintly women first.
When a wild lion comes into an inhabited
area from the forest, he explained, no one
asks, is it male or female?
Similarly, the sons of Adam, whether they be
men or women, must devote themselves to obedience
and piety.
Thursday, 25th Charbon,
the year 708.
He then began to tell the story of
a certain grocer
who fasted for 25 years.
He informed nobody about his practice. Even the
members of his own household did not know
that he was fasting.
If he was at home, he would lead
people to believe that he'd eaten at his
shop. And if he was at his shop,
he would lead people to believe that he
had eaten at home.
The basis for spiritual endeavors must be a
sound intention,
observed the master. Because while people note what
you do, God almighty takes note of what
you intend to do.
When your intention is fixed on God, then
a little amount of work will be greatly
rewarded.
In this connection, he told a story about
the Friday mosque in Damascus.
It had a large Wakhf endowment.
The administrator of that place was such a
powerful person that he was almost equivalent to
a second emperor.
Indeed, if the emperor had a monetary need,
he would take out a loan from the
endowment administrator.
Now it happened that a Dervish who hankered
after those endowment funds began to practice obedience
and devotion in the congregational mosque of Damascus,
in the hope that he might gain fame
and be offered that religious trust.
For some time, he busied himself with acts
of worship and yet no one mentioned his
name.
Then one evening, the power of his worship
caused him to repent of his hypocrisy.
He made a pact with God almighty.
I will worship you for your sake alone.
I'm not making this pact in order to
obtain control of that trust.
He continued to busy himself with acts of
worship,
omitting no detail and performing everything with sound
intention.
Before long, some people approached him to take
the job of administering the mosque endowment.
No, he told them, I've left that. For
a long time I've been very desirous of
such a position, and it's only because I've
left it that they now offer it to
me.
In short, he continued to busy himself with
God Almighty and did not become tainted by
engaging in the occupation
of administering the waf.
Monday, 2nd of Safar 713.
1 of those present remarked,
some persons when speaking about you, it's it's
about Puja Nizam Ad Din, have ascended certain
pulpits in the city, and have gone to
certain places, and proceeded to say such unseemly
things that we cannot repeat them here.
The Master
replied,
I pardon them all.
What sort of place would it be were
men to be constantly engaged in hatred and
slander of others?
Everyone who speaks ill of me, I pardon
him.
You also must pardon slanderers and not harbor
any enmity towards them.
After that, he spoke about a certain chaju
of Indrapati.
Continuously you would speak ill of me and
wish me ill.
Speaking ill of others is one thing, wishing
them ill is something else still worse.
In short, the 3rd day after he died,
I went to his grave and offered prayers
on his behalf.
O Allah, I prayed, whatever bad thing he
said about me, or bad thought he harbored
of me, I forgive him.
Would you please not punish him on my
account?
In this connection he said, if there be
trouble between 2 persons, one of them should
cease the initiative
and cleanse himself of ill thoughts toward the
other.
When his inner self is emptied of enmity,
inevitably that trouble between him and the other
will lessen.
Wednesday 7th of Rajab, 715.
He began to speak about repentance.
Repentance is is of three kinds, past, present,
and future, he explained.
Repentance of the present means repenting and feeling
regret for whatever wrong one has done.
Repentance of the past means being reconciled with
one's enemies.
If someone, for instance, takes 10 dirhams from
another and then says, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
That is not genuine repentance.
Genuine repentance consists of giving back the 10
dirhams, and admitting that one has done a
wrong.
That is real repentance.
And if someone speaks ill of another, he
should go offer apologies, ask pardon of that
person, and be reconciled with him.
And if that person who has spoken ill
of died, before reconciliation was possible,
what to do?
One should act as if he were still
alive and had been spoken ill of. In
other words, one should say such good things
about him, even after his death, that he
will be well remembered.
And what to do if one kills a
person who dies without an heir?
One should free a slave.
That is to say, you cannot bring the
dead to life, and so instead you should
free a slave.
In freeing a slave, it is as if
one has brought a dead person back to
life.
And what to do if one commits adultery
with another man's wife?
There is no provision in Sharia that one
should go and apologize to the husband.
What to do then?
Go and seek forgiveness from God.
In the same vein, he spoke about a
wine drinker who decides to repent.
What should he do? He should give soft
drinks and cool water to the people of
God.
For every act of penance should be consonant
with the sin that was committed.
The second kind of repentance, he continued,
pertains to past sins,
that is what has just been described.
As for the third kind of repentance that
pertains to the future.
One makes the resolve never to sin again,
never again to commit such sins as one
previously committed.
On this point, he told a story about
the time when he professed allegiance to Sheikh
Islam Fari de Deen, Qadasallahu
Sirahu, and also repented of his former misdeeds.
Several times on his blessed lips came the
remark, 1 should be reconciled with 1's enemies,
and he kept stressing that one must make
restitution to those who have a
the and also that I had borrowed a
book from another and had lost
it. As the great sheikh, may God illumine
his grave, continue to speak about reconciliation with
one's enemies,
I realized that he was indeed the channel
for disclosing the world of secrets.
So he was
talking about me.
I resolved to return to Delhi in order
to settle my accounts with these 2 men.
On reaching Delhi from Adro Dan, I first
went to see the man to whom I
owed 20 gitaals.
He was a cloth merchant from whom I
had purchased a robe.
At no time did I manage to save
20 gittals that I might repay him.
It was difficult for me to make a
living.
Some days I would earn 5 jettals, other
days 10 jettals.
As soon as I managed to save 10
zitals, I went to the house of that
cloth merchant and called up to him.
He came out of his house to meet
me. I told him, I owe you 20
zettals, but I do not have the means
to pay you the full amount at one
time. I have brought you these 10 zettals.
Take them, I will bring the other 10
shortly, if God almighty wills.
When he'd heard me out, the man remarked,
fine.
You have come from a saint.
Then taking the 10 jutals, he told me,
I forgive you the 10 remaining jutals.
Next, I went to see the man whose
book I had borrowed.
When I met him, he did not recognize
me.
Who are you? He asked. Oh, sir, I
replied, I am the person who took a
book on loan from you and lost it.
Now I will seek to make another copy
of the book like the one you lent
me and I will bring it to you.
When he'd heard my pledge, this man replied,
fine.
You show the influence of the place from
which you came. I forgive you that book.
Saturday, 10th Ramadan,
716.
Conversation turned to Taraweeh prayers.
Do you say these prayers at home or
in the mosque? He asked me. At home,
I replied, but the prayer leader of the
mosque is a virtuous man.
Yes, noted the master. Once in the congregational
mosque, he completed a full recitation of the
whole Quran during Tarawih prayer.
Every evening, I added, that prayer leader whose
name is Sharafuddin,
reports a juz at the Quran.
The master, may God remember him with favor,
remarked, Indeed he does.
One evening I said prayers behind him. Even
though there had been heavy rains that evening
and the streets were full of mud, I
still went to say my prayers.
With such care did that man recite the
prayers that he seemed to pronounce each letter
as correctly as it is possible to pronounce
it.
In this connection, the Master began to talk
about a scholar from Sonam.
His name was Maulana Daulatyar.
He too would recite prayers so eloquently that
no one could succeed in reciting as he
did.
The Master then began to talk about Khwaja
Aziz, the chief police officer of Badaun.
He was a fine man, a disciple of
dervishes himself attached to Sheikh Dia ad Din
of Badaun.
From time to time, he would remember other
dervishes, and summoning them to an audience, he
would arrange a special event on their behalf.
There was in Badaun a youth who'd recently
converted to Islam.
He related to the master the following incident.
One day, I was proceeding towards the public
gardens of Badaun.
This noble officer was seated underneath a tree
and had set up a table.
When he saw me from afar he shouted,
Hello, come here.
I was afraid. I didn't want to disturb
him.
Yet I did approach him and he treated
me with extreme deference, extreme deference, seating me
next to himself.
After eating some food, I got up and
left.
This is another traditional
institution,
that one always treats with real deference. People
have recently converted to Islam. You don't patronize
them. You
look up to them.
Thursday, 4th of the blessed month of Ramadan,
in the year of the Hijra 717.
A disciple of the masters arrived and brought
a Hindu friend with him. He introduced him
by saying, this is my brother.
When he had greeted both of them, the
master, may God remember him with favor, asked
that disciple,
and does this brother of yours have any
inclination towards Islam?
It is to this end, replied the disciple,
that I have brought him to the Master,
that by the blessing of your gaze he
might become a Muslim.
The Master became teary eyed.
You can talk to these people as much
as you want, he observed, and no one's
heart will be changed.
But if you find the company of a
righteous person, then it may be hoped that
by the blessing of his company, the other
will become a Muslim.
And then in connection with sincerity and honesty
among Muslims, he told the following story.
There was a Jew who lived in the
neighborhood of Khwaja Bayezid Bistami,
When Khwaja Bayazid died they said to that
Jew, Why did you not become a Muslim?
He replied, If Islam is what Bayezid professed,
then I cannot attain it. But if it
is what you profess, then of such an
Islam, I would be ashamed.
Sunday, 23rd Muharram,
7/21.
Conversation turned to the morality of dervishes and
their dealings with those who harbor ill will
towards them.
There was a King named Tarani who were
called the Master, but they killed him in
an uprising.
Sheikh Sefed Din Baharazi, may God have mercy
upon him, had a great affection for this
Tarani.
After his death, they made another man king.
That newly installed king appointed a certain astrologer
in a position of favor, and that astrologer
harbored enmity towards Sheikh Saifeddeen Baharazi.
When the astrologer had the opportunity to address
the monarch, he said, the kingdom has been
entrusted to you. Drive out Sheikh Saifed Din
Baharazi for he is a master in toppling
kingdoms.
The king accepted his advice.
Go, he commanded his astrologer, and by whatever
means you have at your disposal, bring the
sheikh here.
The astrologer left, and when he called on
the sheikh, he showed obvious disrespect.
He took off his turban, wrapped it around
his waist, and did other similarly impudent things.
In short, when Sheikh Seifed Dean came to
the royal court, he stared so intently at
the king that the latter became embarrassed.
Immediately descended from his throne, and uttering profuse
apologies,
began to kiss the hands of the sheikh.
He offered a horse and other presents to
the sheikh. He implored his forgiveness saying, I
did not command that you be brought here
in this manner.
The sheikh departed the royal court and returned
home.
The next day, the monarch sent that astrologer
bound hand and foot to the sheikh with
a message, I have given the command for
this astrologer to be killed. Now I'm sending
him to you. In whatever way suits you,
kill him.
As soon as he set eyes on that
astrologer, the sheikh once freed his hands and
feet.
He made him put on the cloak that
he, the Sheik, was wearing.
Today join with me, he said, in remembering
God.
That day was Monday.
The sheikh went to the mosque to offer
his customary remembrance of God.
He took the astrologer with him, and ascending
the pulpit, he spoke the following couplet.
To though to those who do me wrong,
I would, if possible, do only good.
After narrating this story, the master observed,
every action that comes from man, whether good
or bad, the creator of that is God
almighty.
Hence, whatever is done is done ultimately by
God.
Why then should I be disturbed by someone
no matter what he does?
Tuesday 17th of Safar
7/22.
Conversation turned to the generous disposition of the
dervishes and their beautiful conduct.
One evening, he recalled, a thief entered the
house of Sheikh Ahmad Nahrawani.
May God grant him mercy and comfort.
And this sheikh Ahmad was a weaver.
The thief searched the whole house and found
nothing.
He was about to leave when sheikh Ahmad
cried out and made him promise that he
would wait a minute.
Sheikh Ahmed then looked into his own workshop.
He took a bundle of yarn that he
himself had made, and from it spun several
reams of yarn.
After separating these reams from the rest of
the yarn, he offered them to the thief.
Take them, he said. The thief took them
and left.
The next day, that thief, together with his
mother and father, returned.
Touching their heads to the ground before Sheikh
Ahmed, they repented of their thievery.
So those are some
drops from the ocean of
that small proportion of the sheikh's,
gatherings, which have been recorded by Amir Hassan
Sijzi. And they give us perhaps,
in a way better than just an academic
discourse could,
a sense of the perfume that attended those
amazing transformative
gatherings. And, what we find in them is,
an extraordinary
embrace,
of humanity in its difference of the sinner
and of the non Muslim
and of disadvantaged
classes of society, of women,
they're all welcome on his carpet.
And this was the way in which the
subcontinent
traded up to Islam,
not through the Muftis
and the Ullama I kiram and not through
the sultans, but through this kind of
humble teaching.
Simple,
loving, effective. So perhaps the moral of today's
lesson is, if we wish not just to
survive
in our Western diaspora, but to thrive and
to expand,
perhaps we should humble ourselves,
have more respect for our neighbors,
fuss less about
Islamophobes,
and try to melt hearts because that's the
most important part of the human being. So
may Allah, bless us in this month of
Ramadan
and send down his mercy upon us as
we remember those of past ages
who were such munificent distributors of his mercy.
Cambridge Muslim College, training the next generation of
Muslim thinkers.