Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
48. Sufi Shaykhs of India and Pakistan- Part 3 of 3
By Professor DrNazeer Ahmed, PhD
Concord, CA
It was under the Tughlaq emperors that the Sufi movement ran headlong into the combined opposition of the ulema, the philosophers and the monarchs.
The kadis and the ulema sought a ban on sama’a, declaring it to be against the injunctions of the Shariah. To sort out these controversies, GayasuddinTughlaq, Sultan of Delhi, convened a conference of the leading ulema, kadis and philosophers in Delhi at his court in 1320. NizamuddinAwliya was also invited. What started as a conference turned into a court martial of the ChishtiyaSufis.
KadiJalaluddin, chief kadi of Delhi and ShaykhZadajam argued against sama’a. NizamuddinAwliya defended the practice, basing his arguments on certain Hadith. The opposition argued that the supporting Hadith were weak. The discussion became heated, so the Sultan turned to ShaykhIlmuddin, who was a philosopher (Mu’tazilite) and had traveled extensively through Persia, Iraq, Syria and Egypt. ShaykhIlmuddin answered that sama’a was halal for those who listened to it with their hearts and was haram for those who heard it with their nafs. Nonetheless, he too sided with KadiJalaluddin and asked the Emperor to forbid sama’a.
The Emperor deliberated and, not to be drawn into a religious controversy, gave a split decision permitting sama’a gatherings for the Chishtiya Order but forbidding it to the followers of the Qalandariya and Haidari Orders. (The Qalandariya and Haidari orders had not yet made major inroads into India at that time so the Emperor had nothing to lose in taking a position against the practices of these two orders).
GayasuddinTughlaq died in 1325. The tug-of-war between the Sufis, the kadis and the philosophers, continued in the court of Muhammed bin Tughlaq (d. 1351). One of the most capable monarchs of the age, Muhammed bin Tughlaq is an enigma to students of history. He was a scholar, a hafiz-e-Qur’an, well versed in Fiqh and was punctual in his prayers, fasting and zakat. Like the first four caliphs, he treated the non-Muslims with dignity and ensured that taxation was fair to all of his subjects. Yet, he was impetuous, intolerant of dissent and punished, with a vengeance, those who stood in his way. He was the first monarch who realized that ruling the vast subcontinent from far-away Delhi was hopeless and sought to establish his capital near the center of gravity of Hindustan, namely at Daulatabad, located about a hundred miles inland from the modern city of Bombay. When the entrenched bureaucrats, comfortable in their luxurious villas in the capital, dragged their feet, he forced them to move. Then, as fate would have it, the monsoons failed for five consecutive years and India was hit with a terrible famine. Daulatabad was without water. Tughlaq had the entire court trek back to Delhi, causing untold misery for everyone.
It was during the Tughlaq period and the preceding Khilji period that Islam was introduced into the Deccan and the Dakhni language, the parent of modern Urdu, was born. Borrowing an idea from Kublai Khan of China (d. 1294), Tughlaq introduced leather currency. This was a far-sighted move designed to further trade, which was constrained by the availability of gold and silver. But the wily Indians, Muslims and Hindus alike, frustrated this move by creating counterfeit currency. Tughlaq had to withdraw the currency at an enormous cost to the treasury. However, it is his interactions with the ulema, kadis, philosophers and Sufis of the age that concern us here because these interactions determined the shape of Islam for centuries to come.
Returning to the powerful Chishtiya movement, Shaykh Baba Fareed Ganj succeeded KhwajaQutbuddin in 1235. His forefathers had migrated from Kabul during the Mongol devastations. As directed by Moeenuddin Chishti of Ajmer, Baba Fareed migrated to western Punjab. If there was one person who may be given credit for the introduction of Islam into Punjab (and hence into today’s Pakistan), it was Baba Fareed. Impressed with his piety, sincerity and dedication, thousands, including some of the powerful Rajput clans, accepted Islam. Baba Fareed was a doctor of Fiqh and was a noted poet in Arabic and Farsi. Both the Sabiriya and Nizamiya branches of the Chishti Order within the subcontinent originated from him. He trained and sent teachers to the far corners of India and Pakistan. Notable among them were Shaykh Jamal of Hanswi, ImamulHaq of Sialkot, MawzumAlauddin Sabir of Sahranpur, ShaykhMuntaqaddin of Deccan and most importantly, NizamuddinAwliya of Delhi. Baba Fareed was the author of IsrarulAwliya (secrets of the sages), which contains encyclopedic information about Sufi thought and practices.
The mantle of leadership of the Chishtiya Order passed on to NizamuddinAwliya in 1257. No other Sufi master achieved the acceptance of the Indian masses and the Sultans of Delhi, as did NizamuddinAwliya. Indeed, his was the zenith of the Sufi movement in Hindustan. He was a scholar of Hadith, a fountain of spirituality, a powerful debater and a dedicated teacher. It is related that at any given time, over 3,000 students and two hundred qawwals attended his zawiyah at the outskirts of Delhi. Chief among his students were ShaykhHishamuddin of Multan, ShaykhBurhanuddinGareeb of Deccan, ShaykhYaqubPatni of Gujrat, SirajuddinUthmani and Bu Ali Qalandar of Panipat. The great poet Emir Khusro was a murid of NizamuddinAwliya.
The relationship between the Chishtiya Order and the Delhi Sultanate had been cordial until that time. The Sultans, aware of the hold that the Sufis had over the masses, sought to cultivate the blessings of the Sufi masters. The advent of the Khilji dynasty (1296-1316) saw the armies of the Delhi Sultans conquer the entire subcontinent, all the way to the southern tip of the peninsula. The architect of these conquests, the mighty AlauddinKhilji, was of a secular bent. But he was aware of the power of the Sufis and sought cordial relations with them. It was Alauddin who sent word to NizamuddinAwliya expressing his desire to meet the Master. The message elicited the famous riposte from the Shaykh: “My hut has two doors. If the Emperor enters it through one door, I go out the other”. After Alauddin, there was a brief period of turbulence in Delhi, followed by the establishment of the Tughlaq dynasty (1316-1351).
NizamuddinAwliya passed away in 1325 and designated MaqdumNasiruddin Mahmud (commonly known as Chirag-e-Dehli, the light of Delhi) as his successor. It was the same year that Muhammed bin Tughlaq ascended the throne of Hindustan. To break the hold of the Sufis and to keep them busy with superfluous work, Muhammed bin Tughlaq forced them into his service. Chirag-e-Dehli was asked to assist the king with royal robes, a ceremony that signified obedience and submission to the crown. When the Master refused, he was thrown into jail. Others were forced out of the capital. For instance, ShaykhShamsuddinYahya was forced to retire to Kashmir. ShaykhShahabuddin was told to serve the king. When the learned Shaykh refused, his beard was pulled out, a fatwa was passed against him by KadiKamaluddin of Delhi and he was finally killed. Delhi was depleted of the Sufi masters, except for those who could not leave because of age or official constraint.
Muhammed bin Tughlaq had spent his youth in the company of philosophers and he was a Mu’tazilite by training. He was particularly influenced by ShaykhIlmuddin, the renowned philosopher of the times, who lived in Delhi. ShaykhIlmuddin had traveled through Syria and had met Ibn Taymiyah of Damascus (d. 1326) and had absorbed his reformist and counter-Sufi thoughts. Tughlaq, in his Mu’tazilite thinking, was similar to Harun al Rashid, but he lacked the sagacity and statesmanship of Harun. Just as the successors of Harun punished those who opposed the Mu’tazilite doctrines, so did Muhammed bin Tughlaq.
It is an irony of Islamic history that those who should have been the most liberal in their tolerance of dissident thought, namely the philosophers, turned out to be the most intolerant. Twice they had the opportunity to influence history-once during the early years of the Abbasids (circa 800) and the second time during the powerful Tughlaq dynasty of India (circa 1330). Both times they failed miserably and embarked on a tyrannical suppression of those who disagreed with them. Islamic history, in turn, rejected them. Their role was relegated to the periphery of the Islamic body politic, to the detriment of both philosophy and the Muslim ummah. Muhammed bin Tughlaq died in 1335, classified a maverick sultan by history.
The Sufis survived and prospered because theirs was the kingdom of God, untouched by the vagaries of time. They sang of the love of God and people resonated to their tune. They gave of themselves for the love of humankind and fought for what was right, often laying down their lives in the struggle. The ulema and kadis were defeated, because they were employees of the kings and could be fired from their jobs at will. Despite their independence, they were construed to be an arm of the ruling classes. The philosophers lost because of their tyrannical approach. They were bogged down in endless argumentation and they over-extended their approach to the Qur’an, a subject that was clearly beyond the scope of their methodology. The Islam that survived was a Sufic Islam, inward-looking, spiritual, amalgamating within its folds the cultures of the lands where it flourished. It was different in color and character from classical Islam (up to the destruction of Baghdad in 1258), which was empirical, vibrant, extrovert. It was this Sufic Islam that was destined to shape the history of Muslim peoples after the 13th century.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
Back to Pakistanlink Homepage
