Sufi Movement: Basics and the Chishtis

Khwaja Muinuddin Sijzi (Chishti), born in Sistan in 1143, reached the subcontinent in the early thirteenth century. He first went to Lahore to meditate at the tomb-shrine of the mystic Ali Hujwiri (Data Ganj Bakhsh), then travelled on to Ajmer, where he settled, married and worked to establish the Chishti order in India. NCERT lists him first in its chart of the major Chishti teachers, with his dargah at Ajmer, and calls his shrine the most revered of all, popularly known by his title Gharib Nawaz, 'comforter of the poor'. His disciples spread the order further: Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki in Delhi and Hamiduddin Nagauri at Nagaur in Rajasthan. Baba Farid belongs to the next generation, as the disciple of Bakhtiyar Kaki.

NCERT explains that Sufi silsilas began to crystallise in different parts of the Islamic world around the twelfth century. The word silsila literally means a chain, signifying a continuous link between master and disciple that stretches as an unbroken spiritual genealogy back to the Prophet Muhammad. It was through this channel that spiritual power and blessings were believed to pass to devotees. Special rituals of initiation developed, in which initiates took an oath of allegiance, wore a patched garment and shaved their hair. The idea of a chain is why every order kept careful lists of its masters and why the appointment of a khalifa mattered so much: it added one more link. The general Islamic word for a Sufi way or method is tariqa ('path'), while the lodge itself is the khanqah, so neither of those is the literal meaning of silsila.

Three of the four pairs are correct. Bahauddin Zakariya of Multan was the great Suhrawardi master of the Sultanate, a disciple of Shihabuddin Umar Suhrawardi of Baghdad. Jalaluddin Tabrizi, born at Tabriz in north-western Iran, also became a disciple of Shihabuddin Suhrawardi and later settled in Bengal soon after the start of Muslim rule there; a small order, the Jaliliyya, is named after him. Shah Badiuddin Madar (d. 1434), called Qutb-ul-Madar, initiated the Madari order, which is centred on his dargah at Makanpur in Kanpur district and is known for its syncretic features. Pair 3 is wrong: Khwaja Baqi Billah of Kabul, who died at Delhi in 1603, was the pioneer of the Naqshbandi order in the subcontinent and the master of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi.

The great Chishti chain in India runs as an unbroken line of master and successor. Khwaja Muinuddin Sijzi of Ajmer made Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki his successor, and Bakhtiyar Kaki spread the order in Delhi in the time of Iltutmish. His disciple Fariduddin Ganj-i-Shakar (Baba Farid) succeeded him and settled at Ajodhan (Pakpattan) in Punjab. Baba Farid in turn made Nizamuddin Auliya his successor, on Nizamuddin's third visit to Ajodhan. Nasiruddin Chiragh-i-Dehli was Nizamuddin's disciple and successor, and is counted as the last of the great Chishti saints of Delhi. NCERT's chart of the major Chishti teachers lists exactly this sequence: Muinuddin, Bakhtiyar Kaki, Farid, Nizamuddin and Nasiruddin. The order is therefore 3-1-4-2.

The Naqshbandi order is named after Bahauddin Naqshband (1318–1389), born in a village near Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan, although its practices go back to the twelfth- century masters Yusuf Hamadani and Abdul Khaliq Ghijduwani. It reached India late: Khwaja Baqi Billah, born and educated in Kabul and Samarkand, is credited with bringing it to the subcontinent at the end of the sixteenth century; he died in Delhi in 1603. His disciple Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi then made it popular within a short time. The order is known for strict adherence to the sharia and for silent zikr (inward remembrance of God), which distinguishes it from the vocal chanting of other tariqas; Bahauddin Naqshband was among the biggest advocates of silent zikr. It is the Chishtis, not the Naqshbandis, for whom sama was integral. Statement 3 is therefore wrong.

NCERT explains that the sufis remembered God in two ways: by reciting the zikr (the Divine Names), or by evoking His presence through sama', which literally means 'audition' or listening, that is, the performance of mystical music. It adds that sama' was integral to the Chishtis and exemplified their interaction with indigenous devotional traditions; at shrines, specially trained musicians called qawwals perform mystical chants to evoke divine ecstasy. Statement 2 is wrong on two counts. Sama' means listening, not remembrance (remembrance is the meaning of zikr), and it is a musical assembly, not a silent practice. Silent, inward zikr is the hallmark of a different tradition, the sharia-minded Naqshbandis, while many other orders practised vocal zikr. Statements 1 and 3 are therefore correct.

After Baba Farid of Ajodhan (Pakpattan) the Chishti order in India divided into two great lines. One, the Nizami branch, runs through Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi, whose hundreds of khalifas carried it to the Deccan, Bengal and beyond; Nasiruddin Chiragh-i-Dehli and Gesu Daraz belong to this line. The other, the Sabiri branch, began with Alauddin Ali Ahmad Sabir (1196–1291), the son of Baba Farid's elder sister Jamila; he was brought to Pakpattan as a child, was entrusted by Farid with the distribution of food in the langar, and became one of his successors. He is known as Sabir Kaliyari, 'Sabir of Kaliyar', because his dargah is at Kaliyar (Piran Kaliyar, near Roorkee in present Uttarakhand), not at Pakpattan, where Baba Farid's own shrine stands. Statement 3 is therefore wrong.

The Shattari order was founded in the fifteenth century by Shaikh Abdullah Shattar, who carried its teachings from Persia (Khorasan) to India and made India his home; the honorific 'Shattar' is glossed as 'the swift one', pointing to a rapid path of spiritual practice. Its most distinguished master was Shah Muhammad Ghaus of Gwalior (1500–1562), who developed the Shattariyya into a distinctive order and spread its influence across South Asia. He wrote the Jawahir-i-Khamsa, a manual of mystical practices, taught the Mughal emperor Humayun, stayed for about ten years at Ahmedabad, and died at Gwalior, where his tomb complex also holds the grave of the musician Tansen. Sources describe him as a master of the 'Qadiri Shattari' lineage, but the order with which he is identified is the Shattari.