Relationship between the Sultans and the Sufis of Medieval Delhi - Essay Example

The Author’s Name] [The Professor’s Name] [The Course Title] [Date] Relationship between the Sultans and the Sufis of Medieval Delhi In Hindustan, the Chishtī order is best known for its consistent refusal to ask kings for financial support. As one Persian verse states, "How long will you go to the door of prince and sultan? This is nothing but going to the foot of Satan." (James, 15-48) The tension between accommodation and resistance to royal authority by Sufis will find expression in the conflicting historiographies employed by court historians and hagiographers. Despite the wide variation in Sufi attitudes toward kings, a fairly consistent pattern of royal patronage of Sufi institutions emerged throughout the Muslim East. Sultans set up charitable trusts (awqāf) as endowments for khānqāhs or hospices, which, particularly in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, were likely to be splendid and well-equipped residences with spacious individual quarters. Though rarely themselves of a mystical temperament, kings often specified that their tombs be attached to Sufi tomb shrines and lodges, much like the royal abbeys of Christian Europe. In this way they could borrow sanctity from the tombs of Sufi saints nearby, while benefiting from the blessings of prayers and Qur̔ān recitations that were underwritten by royal grants. (James, 15-48) The technical form taken by these grants was a benefice (inām) deriving from a land tax collected directly by the recipient without going through the state treasury. This form of revenue assignment (iqṭā), originally developed to pay armies in lieu of salary, was standardized by the Būyids and, from the time of the Seljuks, was the most common way of making religious endowments. (Hodgson, 220-22) The Turkish sultans of Delhi as well as the Mughuls regarded the administration of such endowments as a major function of government. (Blochmann, 278-85) Though many of the Indian Sufi centers were modest and self-sustaining (particularly among the Chishtīs), in Syria and Egypt the khānqāhs tended to be large establishments, most of which received their suport from amīrs and the king. (Lapidus, 73-74) As early as the eleventh century, the conservative Ḥanbalī scholar Ibn al-Jawzī had noted the luxurious way of life observed in some Sufi establishments, where food, drink, singing, and dancing were of more importance than Islamic scholarship and piety. "They ask every tyrant for the world," he observed, "and do not scruple about the gift of the tax-collector. And most of their hospices are built by tyrants who endow them with ill-gotten wealth." To Ibn al-Jawzī, this seemed a far cry indeed from the seriousness and asceticism of the early Sufi movement. (Grewal, 133-40) Just as Sufis had to establish relationships with the kings, so they also played a definite role with the populace. A great Sufi master after death became in some ways more influential than in life. The saint's tomb became the center of rituals of pilgrimage both for Sufi disciples and for the general public, though the aims of the two groups generally differed; the Sufis sought spiritual guidance from the departed saint, while ordinary folk typically asked for help with the problems of everyday life. (Habib, 1-42) The Islamic laws of inheritance tended to encourage the creation of a hereditary establishment, since the sons of a saint would usually inherit the property and would be entrusted with the care of the saint's tomb. The descendants of saints would carry some of the charisma of their ancestors, regardless of whether they possessed any spiritual qualifications themselves. So while the intensive training of Sufis continued as before, with the growth of the Sufi orders a great many people became peripherally involved with Sufi shrines as an institutional form. Miracles, healing, and various kinds of assistance in matters both occult and ordinary were the standard features of this approach to Sufism, and from time to time it involved practices of which the stricter jurists disapproved, such as music, prostration, and excessive reverence for saints both living and dead. (Memon, 190-92) Parallel to the main Sufi movement and closely related to it were some manifestations of mysticism that were defiant of social convention. An early branch of Sufism was the path of "self-blamers" (malāmatiyya), who humbled their egos by deliberately incurring society's reproaches through objectionable behavior. Such behavior was only intended to outrage, and did not include actually breaking Islamic law. (Ernst, 145-50) Yet there were others, particularly the free-wheeling qalandars, who resembled dropouts rather than ascetics, and who were known more for irreverence and bizarre behavior than for their observance of religious proprieties. By the thirteenth century, the Sufi movement was very broad. It built upon the individual contributions of loosely associated ascetics and mystics of early Islam and constructed from them a series of discrete hierarchical organizations extending throughout the Islamic world, undisturbed by political borders. As Marshall Hodgson observed regarding the growth of medieval Sufi orders, "a tradition of intensive interiorization re-exteriorized its results and was finally able to provide an important basis for social order." (Hodgson, 218) Sufism functioned as a typical part of Islamic society, and its social extension inevitably had to find some kind of modus vivendi with the ruling power, whether in collaboration or in opposition. This is the background that stood behind the Sufis of medieval India. According to Baranī, religious repression of Hindus has been the cornerstone of Turkish rule in India since the time of Maḥmūd of Ghazna; Baranī even claimed that the Prophet Muḥammad himself commanded that Hindus should be killed and enslaved whenever possible, since they were the worst enemies of Islam. (Afsar, p.18) Although this spiteful and anachronistic attitude may be explained as the result of Turkish racism and Baranī's personal resentment against Hindu courtiers, the virulent perception of Hindus as the opponents of Islam was a perceptible element in the climate of opinion in fourteenth-century Delhi. The shrill tone of Baranī's exhortations to militancy against Hindus may also be taken as a sign of the extent to which the sultans felt free to ignore anti-Hindu ranting. (Hardy, 128) In any case, the negative concept of the Hindu as anti-Islamic clearly emanated from the poets and historians who formulated the imperialist ideology of the Delhi sultanate. Perhaps the fullest dramatic development of the Islamic conquest of "infidel" India is a work that takes the form of a religious martyrology, the Mir'āt-i Mas'ūdī (The mirror of Mas'ūd). Written by a Sufi named ' Abd al Raḥmān Chishtī (d. 1655), ostensibly on the basis of a work dating from the Ghaznavid period, this book is a romance depicting the valiant life and death of Sālār Mas'ūd, "the Prince of the Martyrs." (Eliade, 308-27) Inspired by a visitation of the spirit of the deceased martyr, ' Abd al-Raḥmān Chishtī described Sālār Mas'ūd's exploits in the service of Sultan Maḥmūd of Ghazna against the heathen foes. The martyr initially escapes poisoning by refusing food from a treacherous Hindu host: "The Prophets . . . never eat food prepared in the house of a Hindu, nor will I," says Sālār Mas'ūd. (Eliade, 308-27) The story portrays Sultan Maḥmūd as a dedicated opponent of idolatry who exults in the destruction of temples; he "laid down the image of Somnát at the threshold of the Mosque of Ghazní, so that the Musulmáns might tread upon the breast of the idol on their way to and from their devotions." (Eliade, 308-27) The culmination of the story comes when Sālār Mas'ūd determines to destroy a temple of the sun in the town of Bahraich. "Here will I often come, till the crowds of unbelievers, and the darkness of unbelief, be removed from hence. Until this place be cleansed from idolatry, it is impossible for the faith of Islám to spread in the land of India." (Eliade, 308-27) Despite the intrinsically improbable nature of the story, this kind of martyrology has had a wide acceptance. Ironically, the shrine of Sālār Mas'ūd is greatly revered among Hindus, who celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom according to the Hindu calendar with rituals of obviously Hindu origin. (Kerrin, 143-61) As I have discussed elsewhere, martyrology as a literary form became increasingly popular among Indian Muslims from the seventeenth century onward. Sufi writers, including ' Abd al-Raḥmān Chishtī, expanded the stories of Sufi martyrs in their hagiographies. (Menahem, 178-83) The association of religious martyrs with sultans was natural in this kind of edifying literature, but it could also play into the political ambitions of rulers who wished to identify their expansionism with holy warfare. Like the tales of Maḥmūd of Ghazna in Persian literature, the Indian stories of Prithvīrāj became the focus of intensely romantic, not religious, sentiment. In a similar way the fifteenth-century legend of Rājā Hammīr Dev and his fight against Sultan ' Alā' al-Dīn Khaljī (ca. 1300) sets forth the ideals of Rajput chivalry against the ruthless invaders, making an epic story of the unconquered resistance of the Rajputs; battles and exploits that occurred centuries apart are collapsed into a single anachronistic event in the Hammīr legend. Typical themes in the Hammīr cycle are the alliance of the Ra puts and the Mongols against the Delhi sultan and the humiliation of Muslim women. The Sufi movement had existed in tension with the emerging monarchical structure of the sultanate ever since the Seljuk Turks had come to power as protectors of the caliph in the late eleventh century. Sufis both supported the sultans as the theoretical upholders of Islamic law and questioned them as rulers whose morals and legitimacy might be doubtful in practice. Sultans in turn had made state patronage of Sufis as a cornerstone of policy. In the polity of the sultans of Delhi, Sufis formed a disparate but recognizable political group, alongside others such as the military, the Turkish nobility, and the religious scholars. From time to time alliances occurred between Sufi and sultan, while just as often conflicts arose. Yet the tension between the two never disappeared. In classical Islamic literature, the lives of Sufi saints are often found in local biographical works devoted the notables of a particular city. Books of lives of the saints frequently have an explicitly political context, signaled by a dedication to a sultan or other powerful political figure or by reference to disputes over precedence within Sufi orders. Implicit political motives can also be inferred by reference to contemporary events or by comparison with other hagiographic texts ostensibly describing the same period. What follows is a brief outline of some of the most important works on Sufi biography relating to the Chishtīs from the sultanate period and the Mughul era to the present. The increasing overlap of religious and political objectives is one of the fundamental themes of these texts. Soon after establishing Daulatabad as second capital, Sultan Muḥammad ibn Tughluq embarked on one of his most ambitious and controversial projects, to transfer the entire Muslim elite of Delhi to Daulatabad. Medieval authors like Ibn Baṭṭūa and Baranī distorted and exaggerated the reasons for this move and its extent, maintaining that the sultan's decision was motivated by petty revenge, and that he completely depopulated the city of Delhi with this irrational decision (they commonly use the phrase "the destruction [takhrīb] of Delhi"). Since Delhi still remained a capital, it is not possible to accept Barani's claim that the capital was shifted to Daulatabad, and that Delhi was destroyed. Modern historians, beginning with Mahdi Husain, have shown both Delhi and Daulatabad were capitals, and that substantial policy reasons dictated the transfer of the Muslim religious classes from one city to the other. Since the move to Daulatabad was the basis for the establishment of a Sufi center in Khuldabad, it will be useful to review here the evidence for the sultan's program, and the various interpretations put upon it. Despite the sultan's elaborate plans, the migration to Daulatabad backfired politically to the extent that it generated intense resentment and opposition among those forced to emigrate. The venture was also a failure from an economic point of view. With revolts in Telangana and Ma'bar dissolving the short-lived Tughluq control of the south, and with the devastation caused by bubonic plague in the Deccan and famine in Hindustan, Sultan Muhammad ibn Tughluq permitted the transplanted Delhiites to leave Daulatabad, probably in 1335. The abandonment of the Daulatabad project was due to the financial reverses that the empire suffered. Incorporation of the Deccan into the empire was more of a financial drain than the old raiding ventures with their low overhead. Consequently, after the sultan's attempts at currency reform failed to remedy the deficit problem, the Khurasan expedition was called off. Instead of bankrolling Tughluq expansionism into central Asia, the Deccan had emptied the Delhi treasury. Works Cited Afsar Saleem Khan, ed. Żiyā' al-Dīn Baranī, Fatāwā-i jahāndārī, Publication of the Research Society of Pakistan, no. 25 ( Lahore: University of the Punjab, 1972), p. 18. Blochmann H., 2nd ed. rev. by D. C. Phillott ( New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1977 p 278-85. Eliade, Mircea. From Hagiography to Martyrology: Conflicting Testimonies to a Sufi Martyr of the Delhi Sultanate." History of Religions XXIV ( 1985), pp. 308-27. Ernst, Carl W. "An Indo-Persian Guide to Sufi Shrine Pilgrimage." In Manifestations of Sainthood in Islam, edited by Grace Martin Smith and Carl W. Ernst. 1983. Oxford; 145-50 Grewal, J. S. "Concepts and Interpretations of Medieval Indian History." In Medieval India: History and Historians, pp. 133-40. Amritsar: Guru Nanak University, 1975. http://www.questia.com/read/61769622 Habib, Mohammad. "Chishti Mystics Records of the Sultanate Period." Medieval India Quarterly 1 ( 1950), pp. 1-42 Hardy, Peter "The Growth of Authority over a Conquered Political Elite: The Early Delhi Sultanate as a Possible Case Study." In Kingship and Authority in South Asia, edited by J. F. Richards, pp. 192-214. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1978. p. 128. Hodgson, Marshall G. S. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization. Vol. 2, The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1974. pp. 220-22 James Dickie, "Allah and Eternity: Mosques, Madrasas and Tombs," in George Michell, ed., Architecture of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), pp. 15-48. Kerrin Graefin v. Schwerin, "Saint Worship in Indian Islam: The Legend of the Martyr Salar Masud Ghazi," in Ritual & Religion among Muslims of the Sub-continent, ed. Imtiaz Ahmad ( Lahore: Vanguard, 1985), pp. 143-61. Lapidus, Ira M. Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages. Student edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. pp. 73-74. Memon, Muhanunad Umar. Ibn Taymiya's Struggle Against Popular Religion. The Hague: Mouton, 1982. 190-92 Menahem Milson. Translator: Suhrawardī, Abū Najīb al-. A Sufi Rule for Novices, Kitāb Ādāb al-MurīDīn. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975. 178-83 Read More