Mu'in al-Din Chishti

Mu'in al-Din Chishti
Mu'in al-Din Chishti, Ghareeb Nawaz, Sultan Ul Hind
A Mughal miniature representing Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī
TitleKhwaja
Personal
Born
Sayyid Muinuddin Hasan

1 February 1143
Chesht, Afghanistan [1][2] Nasrid kingdom
Died15 March 1236 (aged 93)[citation needed]
Ajmer, Delhi Sultanate
Resting placeAjmer Sharif Dargah
ReligionIslam
FlourishedIslamic golden age
ChildrenThree sons—Abū Saʿīd, Fak̲h̲r al-Dīn and Ḥusām al-Dīn — and one daughter Bībī Jamāl.
Parent(s)Khwāja G̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ al-Dīn Ḥasan, Umm al-Wara
DenominationSunni[3][4]
JurisprudenceHanafi
CreedMaturidi
TariqaChishti
Other namesKhwaja Gharib Nawaz, Sultan E Hind, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti , Khwaja-e-Khwajagan
ProfessionIslamic preacher
Muslim leader
Influenced by
Influenced
ProfessionIslamic preacher
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Mu'in al-Din Hasan Chishti Sijzi (Persian: معین الدین چشتی, romanized: Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī; February 1143 – March 1236), known reverentially as Khawaja Gharib Nawaz (Persian: خواجہ غریب نواز, romanized: Khawāja Gharīb Nawāz), was a Persian Islamic scholar and mystic from Sistan, who eventually ended up settling in the Indian subcontinent in the early 13th-century, where he promulgated the Chishtiyya order of Sunni mysticism. This particular Tariqa (order) became the dominant Islamic spiritual order in medieval India. Most of the Indian Sunni saints[4][8][9] are Chishti in their affiliation, including Nizamuddin Awliya (d. 1325) and Amir Khusrow (d. 1325).[6]

Having arrived in Delhi Sultanate during the reign of the sultan Iltutmish (d. 1236), Muʿīn al-Dīn moved from Delhi to Ajmer shortly thereafter, at which point he became increasingly influenced by the writings of the Sunni Hanbali scholar and mystic ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī (d. 1088), whose work on the lives of the early Islamic saints, the Ṭabāqāt al-ṣūfiyya, may have played a role in shaping Muʿīn al-Dīn's worldview.[6] It was during his time in Ajmer that Muʿīn al-Dīn acquired the reputation of being a charismatic and compassionate spiritual preacher and teacher; and biographical accounts of his life written after his death report that he received the gifts of many "spiritual marvels (karāmāt), such as miraculous travel, clairvoyance, and visions of angels"[10] in these years of his life. Muʿīn al-Dīn seems to have been unanimously regarded as a great saint after his death.[6]

Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī's legacy rests primarily on his having been "one of the most outstanding figures in the annals of Islamic mysticism."[2] Additionally, Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī is also notable, according to John Esposito, 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, which he did in order to make the 'foreign' Arab faith more relatable to the indigenous peoples who had recently entered the religion.[11]

  1. ^ "Chishti, Mu'in al-Din Muhammad". Oxford Islamic Studies.
  2. ^ a b Nizami, K.A., "Čis̲h̲tī", in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs.
  3. ^ Francesca Orsini and Katherine Butler Schofield, Telling and Texts: Music, Literature, and Performance in North India (Open Book Publishers, 2015), p. 463
  4. ^ a b Arya, Gholam-Ali and Negahban, Farzin, "Chishtiyya", in: Encyclopaedia Islamica, Editors-in-Chief: Wilferd Madelung and, Farhad Daftary: "The followers of the Chishtiyya Order, which has the largest following among Sufi orders in the Indian subcontinent, are Ḥanafī Sunni Muslims."
  5. ^ a b Ḥamīd al-Dīn Nāgawrī, Surūr al-ṣudūr; cited in Auer, Blain, "Chishtī Muʿīn al-Dīn Ḥasan", in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, Edited by: Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Blain Auer, "Chishtī Muʿīn al-Dīn Ḥasan", in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, Edited by: Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson.
  7. ^ a b Arya, Gholam-Ali; Negahban, Farzin. "Chishtiyya". In Madelung, Wilferd; Daftary, Farhad (eds.). Encyclopaedia Islamica.
  8. ^ See Andrew Rippin (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to the Quran (John Wiley & Sons, 2008), p. 357.
  9. ^ M. Ali Khan and S. Ram, Encyclopaedia of Sufism: Chisti Order of Sufism and Miscellaneous Literature (Anmol, 2003), p. 34.
  10. ^ Muḥammad b. Mubārak Kirmānī, Siyar al-awliyāʾ, Lahore 1978, pp. 54-58.
  11. ^ John Esposito (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Islam (Oxford, 2004), p. 53