Mu'in al-Din Chishti
Chishti Muʿin al-Din Hasan Sijzi (b. February 1, 1143 CC, Herat, Ghaznavid Empire – d. March 15, 1236 CC, Ajmer, Delhi Sultanate), known more commonly as Muʿin al-Din Chishtī or Moinuddin Chishti, or by the epithet Ghareeb Nawaz (lit. "comfort to the poor"), or reverently as a Shaykh Muʿin al-Din or Muʿin al-Din or Khwaja Muʿin al-Din by Muslims of the Indian subcontinent, was a Persian Sunni Muslim preacher and a Sayyid, ascetic, religious scholar, philosopher, and mystic from Sistan, who eventually ended up settling in the Indian subcontinent in the early 13th-century of the Christian calendar, where he promulgated the famous Chishtiyya order of Sunni mysticism. This particular tatiqa (order) became the dominant Muslim spiritual group in medieval India and many of the most beloved and venerated Indian Sunni saints were Chishti in their affiliation, including Nizamuddin Awliya (d. 1325) and Amir Khusrow (d. 1325).
Having arrived in Delhi during the reign of the Sultan Iltutmish (d. 1236), Muʿin al-Din moved from Delhi to Ajmer shortly thereafter, at which point he became increasingly influenced by the writings of the famous Sunni Hanbali scholar and mystic 'Abdallah Ansari (d. 1088), whose famous work on the lives of the early Islamic saints, the Tabaqat al-sufiyya, may have played a role in shaping Muʿin al-Din's worldview. It was during his time in Ajmer that Muʿin al-Din acquired the reputation of being a charismatic and compassionate spiritual preacher and teacher. Biographical accounts of his life written after his death report that due to his display of the gifts of many spiritual marvels (karamat), such as miraculous travel, clairvoyance, and visions of angels in his Ajmer years, Muʿin al-Din seems to have been unanimously regarded as a great saint after his passing.
As a saint, Muʿin al-Din Chishti's legacy rests primarily on his having been one of the most outstanding figures in the annals of Islamic mysticism. Additionally, Muʿin al-Din Chishti is also notable for having been one of the first major Islamic mystics to formally allow his followers to incorporate the use of music in their devotions, liturgies, and hymns to God (Allah), which he did in order to make the foreign Arab faith more relatable to the indigenous peoples who had recently entered the religion.
Born in 1143, Muʿin al-Din Chishti was sixteen years old when his father, Sayyid Ghiyath al-Din (d. c. 1155), died, leaving his grinding mill and orchard to his son. His father, Ghiyath al-Din, and his mother, Bibi Ummalwara (alias Bibi Mahe-Noor), were Sayyids, or descendants of Muhammad, through his grandsons Hassan and Husayn.
Despite planning to continue his father's business, Mu'in developed mystic tendencies in his personal piety and soon entered a life of destitute itineracy. He enrolled at the seminaries of Bukhara and Samarkand and visited the shrines of Muhammad al-Bukhari (d. 870) and Abu Mansur al-Maturidi Abu (d. 944), two widely venerated figures in the Islamic world.
While traveling to Iraq, in the district of Nishapur, he came across the famous Sunni mystic Khwaja ʿUthman, who initiated him. Accompanying his spiritual guide for over twenty years on the latter's journeys from region to region, Muʿin al-Din also continued his own independent spiritual travels during the time period. It was on his independent wanderings that Muʿin al-Din encountered many of the most notable Sunni mystics of the era, including Abdul-Qadir Gilani (d. 1166) and Najmuddin Kubra (d. 1221), as well as Najib al-Din ʿAbd al-Kahir Suhrawardi, Abu Saʿid Tabrizi, and ʿAbd al-Wahid Ghaznawi, all of whom were destined to become some of the most highly venerated saints in the Sunni tradition.
Arriving at South Asia in the early thirteenth century, Muʿin al-Din first travelled to Lahore to meditate at the tomb-shrine of the famous Sunni mystic and jurist Ali Hujwiri (d. 1072).
From Lahore, he continued towards Ajmer where he settled and married two wives, the first was a daughter of Saiyad Wajiuddin, whom he married in the year 1209/10. The second was the daughter of a local Hindu raja. He went on to have three sons—Abu Saʿid, Fahkr al-Din and Husam al-Din — and one daughter Bibi Jamal. Both sons are believed to be from the daughter of the Hindu raja. After settling in Ajmer, Muʿin al-Din strove to establish the Chishti order of Sunni mysticism in India. Many later biographic accounts relate the numerous miracles wrought by God at the hands of the Mu'in al-Din during this period.
Muʿin al-Din Chishti was not the originator or founder of the Chishtiyya order of mysticism as he is often erroneously thought to be. On the contrary, the Chishtiyya was already an established Sufi order prior to his birth, being originally an offshoot of the older Adhamiyya order that traced its spiritual lineage and titular name to the early Islamic saint and mystic Ibrahim ibn Adham (d. 782). Thus, this particular branch of the Adhamiyya was renamed the Chishtiyya after the 10th-century Sunni mystic Abu Ishaq al-Shami (d. 942) migrated to Chishti Sharif, a town in the present-day Herat Province of Afghanistan in around 930, in order to preach Islam in that area. The order spread into the Indian subcontinent, however, at the hands of the Persian Muʿin al-Din in the 13th-century, after Mu'in al-Din is believed to have had a dream in which the Prophet Muhammad appeared and told him to be his "representative" or "envoy" in India.
According to the various chronicles, Muʿin al-Din's tolerant and compassionate behavior towards the local population seems to have been one of the major reasons behind conversion to Islam at his hand. Muʿin al-Din Chishti is said to have appointed Bakhtiar Kaki (d. 1235) as his spiritual successor, who worked at spreading the Chishtiyya in Delhi. Furthermore, Muʿin al-Din's son, Fakhr al-Din (d. 1255), is said to have further spread the order's teachings in Ajmer, whilst another of the saint's major disciples, Hamid al-Din Sufi Nagawri (d. 1274), preached in Nagaur, Rajasthan.
The tomb (dargah) of Mu'in al-Din became a deeply venerated site in the century following the saint's death in March 1236. Honored by members of all social classes, the tomb was treated with great respect by many of the era's most important Sunni rulers, including Muhammad bin Tughuq, the Sultan of Delhi from 1324–1351, who paid a famous visit to the tomb in 1332 to commemorate the memory of the saint. In a similar way, the later Mughal emperor Akbar (d. 1605) visited the shrine no less than fourteen times during his reign.
In the present day, the tomb of Muʿin al-Din continues to be one of the most popular sites of religious visitation for Sunni Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, with hundreds of thousands of people from all over the Indian sub-continent assembling there on the occasion of [the saint's ʿurs or death anniversary. Additionally, the site also attracts many Hindus, who have also venerated the Islamic saint since the medieval period.
A bomb blast on October 11, 2007, in the Dargah of Mu'in al-Din during the time of Roza Iftaar had left three pilgrims dead and 15 injured. A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Jaipur punished with life imprisonment the two individuals convicted in the 2007 Ajmer Dargah bomb blast case.
In recognition of the enduring legacy of Mu'in al-Din Chishti, Indian films about the saint and his dargah at Ajmer include Mere Gharib Nawaz by G. Ishwar, Sultan E Hind (1973) by K. Sharif, Khawaja Ki Diwani (1981) by Akbar Balam, Mere Data Garib Nawaz (1994) by M Gulzar Sultani. A song in the 2008 Indian film Jodhaa Akbar named "Khwaja Mere Khwaja," composed by A. R. Rahman, pays tribute to Muʿin al-Din Chishti.
Various qawwalis portray devotion to the saint including Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's "Khwaja E Khwajgan" and the Sabri Brothers "Khawaja Ki Deewani".
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