Chishti silsila

Also called: Chishtiya · Topic: Bhakti and Sufi Traditions · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 2 "Bhakti-Sufi Traditions"

Meaning

The Chishti silsila (also called Chishtiya) is a sufi order. A silsila is a chain of teachers, each passing the teaching to the next. It is named after Chisht, the village where its founder Abu Ishaq of Syria settled. Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti brought it into India in the 12th century [2].

It became the largest sufi order in India because it took in local devotional customs and spoke the people's language. It also kept away from royal power. That makes it the main example of how Islam spread in India through shared culture.

Explanation

Background: arrival and core beliefs

• Several sufi groups came into India in the late 12th century. The Chishtis became the biggest of them.
• Why they succeeded: they fitted into the local setting. They took up Indian devotional habits instead of standing apart.
• Core Chishti ideas [2]:
• wahdat al-wujud (unity of being): only God truly exists, so everything is one with Him.
• Rejection of material goods.
• Absolutely no connection with the secular state.
• zikr (repeating the Divine Names), said in two ways: aloud (dhikr jahri) and silently (dhikr khafi).
• Members were pacifists, meaning they rejected violence.

The chain of great Chishti teachers

Teacher	Died	Dargah (tomb-shrine)
Shaikh Muinuddin Sijzi, called "Gharib Nawaz" (friend of the poor)	1235	Ajmer (Rajasthan)
Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki	1235	Delhi
Shaikh Fariduddin Ganj-i Shakar (Baba Farid)	1265	Ajodhan (now in Pakistan)
Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya	1325	Delhi
Shaikh Nasiruddin Chiragh-i Dehli	1356	Delhi

• Muinuddin Sijzi and Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti are the same person.
• After a Shaikh died, his successors were sent out across the subcontinent. This is how the order spread far beyond Delhi.

How the order worked: khanqah, music and language

• Khanqah life:
• A khanqah is a hospice, the place where a sufi master lived with his followers.
• Nizamuddin Auliya's 14th-century khanqah stood at Ghiyaspur, on the Yamuna, outside the crowded city of Delhi.
• It had small rooms for followers and a large hall, the jama'at khana, for living and praying together. The Shaikh lived in a room on the roof, where he met visitors.
• It ran an open kitchen (langar) paid for by futuh, which means charity that came in without anyone asking for it.

• Visitors included soldiers, slaves, singers, Hindu jogis (yogis), qalandars (wandering sufis who broke rules), the poets Amir Hasan Sijzi and Amir Khusrau, and the historian Ziyauddin Barani.

• Local practices taken in (the clearest proof of adaptation):

• bowing before the Shaikh
• offering water to visitors
• shaving the heads of new members

• yogic exercises

• Devotional music (sama'):

• Sama' literally means "audition". It is listening to mystical music, and the Chishtis made it central to worship.
• Music linked the Chishtis to bhakti, because bhakti worship was also full of song.
• Amir Khusrau (1253–1325) introduced the qaul, the hymn that opens and closes a qawwali. It is still sung first at Nizamuddin's shrine.

• Khusrau is widely seen as the creator of qawwali. The closing song, the rang, remembers his bond with Nizamuddin Auliya [5].

• Language of the people:

• The Delhi Chishtis spoke to visitors in Hindavi, the everyday speech of the region, and not only in Persian.
• Baba Farid's verses were later included in the Guru Granth Sahib.
• Sufis wrote masnavis (long poems in rhyming couplets) that used human love as a picture of love for God. One example is Malik Muhammad Jayasi's Padmavat, about Padmini and Ratansen of Chittor.
• Around Bijapur in the 17th–18th centuries, Chishtis wrote short Dakhani (Deccan Urdu) poems. Women sang them while grinding grain and spinning thread. The types were lurinama (lullabies), shadinama (wedding songs) and Charkhanama (zikr sung to the rhythm of the spinning wheel).
• These poems were probably inspired by Kannada vachanas and Marathi abhangs. Through them, Islam took root in Deccan villages.

Relations with the state, and the results

• The rule: live simply, with austerity (plain, poor living), and stay away from rulers [2].
• The practice:
• The Chishtis accepted unsolicited gifts, meaning gifts nobody had asked for.
• Sultans gave them auqaf (charitable trusts; the plural of waqf) and inam (tax-free land grants).

• The money was spent at once on food, clothes and ritual. Nothing was saved. This refusal to store wealth raised their moral standing.

• Why Sultans needed the sufis:

• The ulama (scholars of Islamic law) pushed rulers to enforce shari'a. But most subjects were non-Muslim, so full enforcement was not practical.
• Sultans therefore sought legitimation (the public stamp of a right to rule) from sufis. A sufi's authority was believed to come straight from God.

• Kings wanted to be buried near sufi shrines. They hoped the auliya (friends of God) would plead for them on Judgement Day. This is called intercession.

• Points of friction:

• Both the king and the Shaikh expected prostration and kissing of the feet.
• Nizamuddin's disciples called him sultan-ul-mashaikh ("sultan among Shaikhs"), a title borrowed from royal language.

• In 1313, Nizamuddin refused a ruler's gift of gardens and land. He quoted Baba Farid: take money for the dervishes, but refuse land deeds.

• The later pull of royal patronage: Akbar built Fatehpur Sikri around the dargah of Shaikh Salim Chishti.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: the order arrived in the late 12th century and was strongest under the Delhi Sultanate (13th–14th centuries). It continued under the Mughals and in the Deccan (17th–18th centuries).
• Main sites: Ajmer, Delhi (Ghiyaspur, and the shrines of Nizamuddin and Chiragh-i Dehli), Ajodhan, Bijapur and Fatehpur Sikri.
• The Ajmer dargah over time:
• It sat on the Delhi–Gujarat trade route. Muslim traders, craftsmen and soldiers settled around Muinuddin's headquarters there [3].
• The earliest written mentions of the dargah date only from the 14th century.
• Muhammad bin Tughlaq (r. 1324–51) was the first Sultan to visit.
• Sultan Ghiyasuddin Khalji of Malwa paid for the earliest tomb structure in the late 15th century.
• Akbar visited 14 times up to 1580. He gave a huge cooking pot, the degh, in 1568, and built a mosque there.

• Today, pilgrims come in the hundreds of thousands, many from abroad, for the urs (the saint's death anniversary, seen as his union with God) [3]. The government marks the 813th Urs, and the Prime Minister sends a chadar (ceremonial cloth) to be placed on the tomb each year [4].

• Written sources:

• Amir Hasan Sijzi's record of Nizamuddin's conversations, including the 1313 refusal of land.
• Jahanara's Munis al Arwah, which describes her 1643 pilgrimage to Ajmer.
• Dargah Quli Khan's Muraqqa-i Dehli (18th century). He saw Hindus and Muslims together at Chiragh-i Dehli's shrine, even at Diwali.
• The verses of Amir Khusrau, called "Tuti-e-Hind" (Parrot of India), in qawwali, ghazal and rubai form [6][7].

Don't confuse with

• Suhrawardi silsila: the Suhrawardis worked with the Delhi Sultans and sometimes held court offices. The Chishtis kept away from the state.
• Naqshbandi silsila: the Naqshbandis were close to the Mughals. The Chishtis refused court ties.
• Abu'l Hasan al Hujwiri (Data Ganj Bakhsh): he was an earlier sufi (d. 1073, Lahore) who wrote Kashf-ul-Mahjub. He was not a Chishti teacher. His shrine is Data Darbar.
• Abu Ishaq of Syria vs Muinuddin Chishti: Abu Ishaq founded the order at Chisht. Muinuddin brought it to India and is buried at Ajmer.

Prelims Hooks

• Correct order of Chishti teachers: Muinuddin Sijzi (Ajmer) → Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki → Baba Farid (Ajodhan) → Nizamuddin Auliya → Nasiruddin Chiragh-i Dehli.
• Muhammad bin Tughlaq was the first Sultan to visit the Ajmer dargah. Ghiyasuddin Khalji of Malwa funded its first tomb. Akbar gave the degh in 1568.
• Baba Farid's verses appear in the Guru Granth Sahib.
• Amir Khusrau introduced the qaul and is called Tuti-e-Hind [6][7]. The closing rang of a qawwali honours Nizamuddin Auliya [5].
• Bijapur Dakhani songs: lurinama (lullaby), shadinama (wedding song), Charkhanama (spinning wheel).
• Chishti doctrine: wahdat al-wujud, with zikr as dhikr jahri (aloud) and dhikr khafi (silent) [2].

Mains Points

• Adaptation explains why the Chishtis led. Bowing, offering water, head-shaving, yogic exercises, Hindavi speech and Dakhani women's songs show the order taking in local forms. The court-linked Suhrawardis and Naqshbandis reached fewer ordinary people.
• Power and piety needed each other.
• Sultans ruled a mostly non-Muslim population, so they looked to sufis for legitimation and for intercession after death.
• The sufis received endowments but spent them at once. Their poverty became a source of moral power.

• The tension shows in the contest over prostration, the title sultan-ul-mashaikh and Nizamuddin's 1313 refusal of land.

• Shared culture, not force, spread Islam. Sama', qawwali [5], Baba Farid in the Guru Granth Sahib, Jayasi's Padmavat and the Charkhanama show sufi and bhakti traditions meeting through music and local languages. The 18th-century Diwali crowd at Chiragh-i Dehli's shrine shows this shared culture lasted.

Related concepts

• Muinuddin Chishti
• Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki
• Nizamuddin Auliya
• Nasiruddin Chiragh-i Dehli
• Baba Farid
• Shaikh Salim Chishti
• Gesu Daraz
• Langar
• Sama
• Zikr

Read more

• The Chishtis: khanqah life, devotionalism, language, and the state