The Chishtis in the Subcontinent

The Chishtis were the most influential Sufi group among those who migrated to India in the late twelfth century. Their success came from adapting to the local environment and absorbing features of Indian devotional traditions.

Life in the Chishti khanqah

The khanqah (hospice) was the centre of social life. Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya's hospice, built around the fourteenth century on the banks of the Yamuna in Ghiyaspur (then on the outskirts of Delhi), gives us a clear picture. It had several small rooms and a large hall called the jama'at khana where inmates and visitors lived and prayed. The inmates included the Shaikh's family members, his attendants, and disciples. The Shaikh himself lived in a small room on the roof of the hall, where he met visitors in the morning and evening. A veranda surrounded the courtyard, and a boundary wall ran around the entire complex. During one threat of a Mongol invasion, people from neighbouring areas flocked into the khanqah seeking refuge.

A wali (plural auliya), meaning "friend of God," was a Sufi who claimed proximity to Allah and acquired His Grace (barakat) to perform miracles (karamat).

The khanqah had an open kitchen (langar) run on futuh (unsolicited charity). From morning till late night, people from all walks of life came — soldiers, slaves, singers, merchants, poets, travellers, rich and poor, Hindu jogis (yogis), and qalandars. They came seeking discipleship, amulets for healing, and the Shaikh's intercession in various matters. Notable visitors included poets Amir Hasan Sijzi and Amir Khusrau, and the court historian Ziyauddin Barani, all of whom wrote about the Shaikh.

Practices adopted in the khanqah — bowing before the Shaikh, offering water to visitors, shaving the heads of initiates, and yogic exercises — represented attempts to assimilate local traditions. Shaikh Nizamuddin appointed several spiritual successors and deputed them to set up hospices in various parts of the subcontinent. This spread the teachings, practices, and organisation of the Chishtis rapidly, drawing pilgrims to his shrine and to the shrines of his spiritual ancestors.

Chishti devotionalism: ziyarat and qawwali

Pilgrimage to the tombs of Sufi saints, called ziyarat, is widespread in the Muslim world. It is an occasion for seeking the Sufi's spiritual grace (barakat). For over seven centuries, people of various creeds, classes, and social backgrounds have expressed devotion at the dargahs of the five great Chishti saints. The most revered shrine is that of Khwaja Muinuddin, popularly known as "Gharib Nawaz" (comforter of the poor).

The earliest textual references to Khwaja Muinuddin's dargah date to the fourteenth century. Its popularity grew because of the austerity and piety of its Shaikh, the greatness of his spiritual successors, and the patronage of royal visitors. Muhammad bin Tughlaq (ruled 1324-1351) was the first Sultan to visit the shrine, but the earliest construction to house the tomb was funded in the late fifteenth century by Sultan Ghiyasuddin Khalji of Malwa. Because the shrine was located on the trade route linking Delhi and Gujarat, it attracted many travellers.

By the sixteenth century, the shrine had become very popular. The spirited singing of pilgrims bound for Ajmer inspired Akbar to visit the tomb. He went there fourteen times, sometimes two or three times a year, to seek blessings for new conquests, fulfilment of vows, and the birth of sons. He maintained this tradition until 1580. Each visit was celebrated with generous gifts, recorded in imperial documents. In 1568, for example, he offered a huge cauldron (degh) to facilitate cooking for pilgrims, and he had a mosque constructed within the dargah compound.

Part of ziyarat is the use of music and dance, including mystical chants performed by specially trained musicians or qawwals to evoke divine ecstasy. Sufis remember God either by reciting the zikr (the Divine Names) or evoking His Presence through sama' (literally "audition"), the performance of mystical music. Sama' was integral to the Chishtis and exemplified their interaction with indigenous devotional traditions.

Each Sufi shrine had distinctive features. An eighteenth-century visitor from the Deccan, Dargah Quli Khan, wrote about the shrine of Nasiruddin Chiragh-i Dehli in his Muraqqa-i Dehli (Album of Delhi). He noted that the Shaikh was not just the lamp of Delhi but of the entire country. People crowded there, especially on Sunday. During Diwali, the entire population of Delhi visited and stayed in tents around the spring tank for days, taking baths to obtain cures from chronic diseases. Muslims and Hindus paid visits in the same spirit.

Languages and communication

The Chishtis adopted local languages not just in sama'. In Delhi, those associated with the Chishti silsila conversed in Hindavi, the language of the people. Other Sufis, such as Baba Farid, composed verses in the local language, which were later incorporated into the Guru Granth Sahib. Others composed long poems or masnavis to express ideas of divine love using human love as an allegory. For example, the prem-akhyan (love story) Padmavat, composed by Malik Muhammad Jayasi, revolved around the romance of Padmini and Ratansen, king of Chittor. Their trials were symbolic of the soul's journey to the divine. Such poetic compositions were often recited in hospices, usually during sama'.

A different genre of Sufi poetry was composed in and around the town of Bijapur, Karnataka. These were short poems in Dakhani (a variant of Urdu) attributed to Chishti Sufis who lived in this region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These poems were probably sung by women while performing household chores like grinding grain and spinning. Other compositions were in the form of lurinama (lullabies) and shadinama (wedding songs). It is likely that the Sufis of this region were inspired by the pre-existing bhakti tradition of the Kannada vachanas of the Lingayats and the Marathi abhangs of the sants of Pandharpur. It was through this medium that Islam gradually gained a place in the villages of the Deccan.

A song called Charkhanama (set to the rhythm of the spinning wheel) illustrates how devotional practice was woven into daily life. It instructs the listener to do zikr (remembrance of God) at each stage of spinning — zikr-i jali (loud remembrance) while taking the cotton, zikr-i qalbi (remembrance of the heart) while separating it, and zikr-i aini (remembrance of the eye) while spooling the thread. The breath is counted up to twenty-four thousand and offered to the pir (spiritual guide) as a gift.

Sufis and the state

A major feature of the Chishti tradition was austerity, including maintaining a distance from worldly power. However, this was not absolute isolation from political power. The Sufis accepted unsolicited grants and donations from political elites. The Sultans, in turn, set up charitable trusts (auqaf) as endowments for hospices and granted tax-free land (inam). The Chishtis accepted donations in cash and kind. Rather than accumulate donations, they preferred to use them fully on immediate requirements such as food, clothes, living quarters, and ritual necessities (such as sama'). This enhanced the moral authority of the shaikhs, which in turn attracted people from all walks of life. …