Simon Digby, Before Timur Came - Provincialization of The Delhi Sultanate Through The Fourteenth Century

BEFORE TIMUR CAME:
PROVINCIALIZATION OF THE DELHI SULTANATE THROUGH

THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
BY
SIMON DIGBY*
Abstract
on the relationship
examines
information
essay
present
the capital
territories
of the Dehli
Sultanate
with
city during
sources
in Persian
drawn mainly
rather
from hagiographical
of
The
provincial
the fourteenth
is
This
century.
series of
than the much-utilized
of some of the fac
discussion
a brief
in the city of Dehli
itself. After
compiled
in the fourteenth
and change
century
continuity
operative
it turns to a series of case
where
evidence
Sultanate,
studies,
chronicles
in the
tors of
settlement
of
of Muslim
communities
the capital
city
to the east. Evidence
the aegis of
India. The main
under
routes
of
of
territories
is available,
the Sultans
of Dehli
in northern
from
extending
south and
in the
settlements
the Dehli
the processes
and in a radius
of
were
extension
to the
a process
centers
of power
of provincial
of growth
suggests
to the detriment
and the administration
in the capital
of the authority
of the Sultan
lodged
in 1398. The
the
latter part of the paper
examines
the collapse
of this authority
city before
It
of the provincial
of the fourteenth
century.
consequences
developments
political
linguistic
is argued
that
to the present
etudie
L'article
affected
changes
les
sur
informations
et
Sultanat
de Dehli
sources
aux
puisees
du
ritoires
surtout
these
Simon
Digby,
Bonaguil,
learned
friends who
Amid
multi-disciplinary
and categories
(University
material
in North
Indian
la relation
entre
climates
of
sensibility
that have
endured
day.
approach
of evidence,
of Karachi),
who
livelihood
la ville
hagiographiques
les etablissement
durant
capitale
en
langue
le XIVe
persane
regionaux
Ces
siecle.
plutot
dans
qu'aux
has
of medieval
like here particularly

interest
long shared my
Indian
Gerard
Sufis;
to recall
and
critical
Fussman
Professors
approach
(College
of his
researches
ter
sont
series
Channel
Islands
JE3 6AR.
Rozel,
Jersey,
have
tolerated my own old-fashioned
antiquarian/empiricist
to the perception
of history
with me
and have
discussed
I would
les
donnees
de
and
details
Riazul
Islam
the
regarding
de France
and
on the
to me
who
made
available
the
equipe
University),
I came
and was my
Amin
of Chanderi
host and guide when
there; Shahid
qasba
in the rural envi
who
of Delhi),
of the Muslim
presence
my awareness
(University
deepened
ronment
views
of Awadh;
Behl
of Pennsylvania)
with whose
and Aditya
(University
regard
in northern
of sensibility
climate
'non-communal'
created
India by the
ing the enduring
to him for per
I am indebted
I am in substantial
medieval
Awadhi
agreement.
premdkhydns
to quote
mission
I am also grate
the conclusion
of a talk of his at the end of my own paper.
Strasbourg
medieval
ful
to A.H.
sources
Morton,
and
usage
has
his wide
of SOAS,
who with
of medieval
formerly
knowledge
and suggested
corrections.
I am responsible
read this typescript
errors.
? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2004

Also
available
online
- www.brill.nl
JESHO47,3
Persian
for
all
BEFORE TIMUR CAME 299
dans
chroniques
compilees
tains facteurs
responsables
les
territoires
du
Sultantat
des
la ville
de
l'Est.
Les
de
temoignages
1'autorite
du
en
ecroulement
des
1398.
developpements
ments
ont
qui
engendrerent
dure jusqu'a
Delhi
Keywords:
From
Deccan
traitent
sultans
une
Apres
changement
d'etudes
de
discussion
concise
au XIVe
en vigueur
cas passe
la revue?en
de
siecle
cer
dans
fonction
les processus
des communautes
d'etablissement
et dans un rayon autour de la ville
de Dehli
cap
routes d'epanouissment
menerent
du Sud vers
principales
au detri
une croissance
des centres
de pouvoir
suggerent
regionaux
et son administration,
son
la ville
Sultan
dans
capitale
logees
jusqu'a
La derniere
section
etudie
de 1'article
les consequences
linguistiques
Les
et
politiques
des modifications
nos
Sultanate,
du XIVe
regionaux
dans
les climats
hagiography,
Muslim
siecle.
de
II est
sensibilite
avance
dans
que ces change

l'lnde
septentrionale
jours.
Sufi
the time of its foundation
migration,
regional
languages
at the close
of the twelfth century, the polity

to
forces. The most
strong centrifugal
subject
areas to which
the arms of the invaders penetrated, notably Bengal,
the
and the extreme south of India, had only intermittently been under con
of the Dehli
distant
des
elle-meme.
et du
un nombre
de Dehli,
Elles
temoignages
disponibles.
sous la protection
musulmanes
itale de l'lnde
septentrionale.
ment
de Dehli
la continuite
Sultanate
had been
to the authority of the Dehli Sultans. At

trol by or shown nominal allegiance
a welcome
these distant regions provided
dispatch of specie and luxury
as tribute, sent to avoid the prospect of a costly visitation
commodities
by the
Sultan himself and the displacement
of the local warrior power holders.
best
a further heartland area, bounded to the northwest by the

We may distinguish
limits of agriculture of the Panjab and the Ganga-Jamuna
Doab, and extending
as far south as Malwa, which provided the agricultural surplus necessary
to feed
of the new capital of Dehli.
the large urban population
Between
these two
we may distinguish
an intermediate area at some distance to the south
and east of the capital in which
the authority of the Sultan was maintained
not
to uphold their authority
only by the holders of iqtac (grants) and the garrisons
and to enable them to collect a portion of the agricultural
surplus, but also by
or
and increasing
of
the continuous
immigration
ethnically
socially homoge
extremes
neous
settlers who were bands of Sayyids or Afghans

groups of Muslims?e.g.,
or Darveshes?emigrating
to relatively
small defensible
settlements where
they
could maintain
themselves
(or even against the
against competitive
neighbors
Sultan and his representatives).
Of the settlements
after the establishment
of
new nuclei
of military
in the capitals of Dehli
force and organized government
at the beginning
of the thirteenth century, some clearly origi
the armed support of the Sultan and his local grant holders. Other
and Lakhnavati
nated with
in lands adjacent to forest cover, scrub or desert, could have been

in search of a better livelihood, or of sedentariza
the result of group migration
at or beyond the peripheries
tion and the spread of cultivation,
of the Sultan's
settlements
300
SIMON DIGBY
of local historical
traditions of Muslim
may note the occurrence
in Gangetic
India antedating
the Ghurid conquests
1961:
(Nizami
cAbd
al-cAziz
b.
Sher
Malik
1948:
76-8;
8).
or eighth
In the fortunes of the Sultanate of Dehli,
the fourteenth Christian
power.1 We
settlements
century was a period that does not need to be stretched or truncated for
an overall survey by the historian. It is delimited by two battles that the Sultans
of the capital city against
of Dehli
the walls
invaders from
fought outside
not only was the capital in danger of devasta
Central Asia. On both occasions
Muslim
outcome of defeat would have been the loss of military

tion, but a predictable
to the unity and
and financial
contributed
control of the distant regions which
state.
In
of
winter
this
formidable
the
of
cAla3
al-Din Khalji
1299,
upkeep
a
in
the
hard
battle
(Jackson 1999:
repelled
Chaghatayid
Qutlugh Qocha
fought
In December
1398, the army of Amir Timur put to flight the Sultan
223).
Mahmud
the city of Dehli
(Jackson 1999:
Tughluq and looted and depopulated
313).
In the fourteenth century, the sharpest change occurred in the fourth decade.
Within
the first third of the century, the Sultanate and

on a plateau of prosperity
and power. This was
to the city. This promoted
the efficient
precious metal
to
extremities
extended
the
whose
army
striking range
were
the capital city

notably
on
based
remittances
of
maintenance
of a huge
and
of the subcontinent
to provide for the needs

promoted a great extension of clearance and cultivation
of
the
of the agglomerated
population
capital.
The changing fortunes of the Sultanate of Dehli are reflected in the monetary
in the 1290s of an enormous
of the period. The phase
that began
history
of specie gathered from the sequential plunder
("dethesaurization")
unhoarding
of the treasure of Hindu
temples and local Indian dynasties, was exhausted by
the disbursements
of Muhammad
b. Tughluq
by 1340. The surplus had been
on
on
horses
and
materiel,
spent
raising huge armies,
military
particularly
(Digby
1971:
35-6;
Jackson
local dynasty
emerging
of the fourteenth century
See
Eaton's
analysis
of
1999: 315). The

led to a silver famine
(Eaton
conditions
loss of control
in Dehli
1994: 41, 96; Digby
for
the
growth
of
from
to an
of Bengal
the fourth decade
1971: 44;
the Chishti
1982: 96-101
shrine
of
).2
Pakpattan
(Eaton 1982: 333-56).

2
to
in Laknavati
in 1339 hoarding
silver
tankas
and refusing
muqtdc
tr. K.K.
Basu
1932:
also the detail, mentioned
later in
(Sihrindi,
106-7);
in Lakhnavati,
in
before
his death
this paper,
that the Chishti
Shaykh
Siraj al-Din
dispatched
some silver
to the author Mir Khwurd
tankas
1885: 289).
1357 "as a remembrance"
(Kirmani
an uninterrupted
was
in Bengal,
in north
This
of silver
with
India, contrasted
supply
shortage
remit
See
the
them
to endure
Sultan's
to Dehli
until
the
sixteenth
century
(Eaton
1994:
95-6).
Till
the end of the fourteenth
gin?continued
trade of Gujarat
to be received
of sub-Saharan ori
century some gold?ultimately
at
the
administration
Dehli
from the maritime
by
(Digby 1980: 129-30).

was marked by the attempt
b. Tughluq
The reign of Muhammad
(1325-1351)
to transfer the capital to Dawlatabad
in the Deccan,
the move?prompted
by
in west
the court to Sargadwari,
and his final years of campaigning
famine?of
ern India. These were

and administration
at Dehli
dent sultanate
of the ruling Sultan, his court

the establishment
of the indepen
more than a century before. The end of the reign saw the
the years at Sargadwari,
sultanate in the Deccan. During
the first prolonged
the old capital
from
absences
since
rise of an independent
the famine in Dehli and the upper Doab was in contrast to the surplus agricul
in Awadh. The process of the shifting of the balance of power
tural production
from a single capital city in the northwest
southwards
was
centers
in
not
but
reversed.
varied
pace,
regional
away
and eastwards
to
successor Feroz Shah Tughluq

once more estab
(1351-1388)
in the course of his long
the capital and court at Dehli. There is evidence
in
of cultivation
and increased agricultural
reign for an extension
production
adjacent provinces
subject to the authority of Dehli. Yet the agrarian recovery
Muhammad's
lished
does
seem
not
does
strength
a revival
in its wake
of the military
brought
the first decade of Muhammad
b. Tughluq's
reign
Shah was still capable of mounting
long-range mil
to have
that characterized
(Jackson 1999: 315). Feroz

itary raids beyond the core area of the sultanate, to Thattha, Bengal and Orissa,
some war-elephants
and slaves but no spectacular plunder. After
1370
yielding
it became difficult to ensure the remittances
from provinces
under the adminis
In 1376 a rebellious
the Sultan of Dehli.
governor of Gujarat was
and killed by an army sent from Dehli.
In 1391 it was still possible
for the Sultan to replace the next refractory governor of Gujarat by the success
of a swift raid of cavalry from Dehli, but only to set in his place another who
would behave in a similar fashion, the progenitor of a local dynasty that would
tration of
defeated
endure
for two centuries
Commisariat
side Dehli
1886: 74-8; Sikandar b. Manjhu

1899: 4-5;
(Bayley
1938: vol. 1, 46-50).3 The forces that the Sultan could muster out
com
in 1398 were but a "pale reflection" of what his predecessor
at the beginning
of the century (Jackson
1971: 80,
1999: 314; Digby
of authority emanating
from the ruined capital
1398 the assumption
82). After
of the "provincial
city vanished. The turbulent process of the "state-formation"
manded
3
in
This
1572
tion was
attack
led by
only
is parallel
with
the vicarious
himself.
Effective
emperor
two decades
later.
established
the
success
control
of Akbar's
of
raids on Gujarat
cavalry
his
central
administra
by
two
the area
302
SIMON DIGBY
ensued, which built on the local

that had grown up in the previous century.
sultanates"
strength
of the settler communities
Sufi Diaspora
Mawds,
and dargdhs
qasbas
Parallel
with
the campaigns
of the Sultan recorded by metropolitan
histori
a
ans,
largely unrecorded
presence mainly
growth of the Muslim
and easuvards beyond Dehli by the settling of immigrant groups.
southwards
There are no surviving
cen
local chronicles
of the thirteenth and fourteenth
there was
at work has survived, mostly

in local
turies, but some evidence of the processes
Sufi hagiographical
works. To this may be added the insights found in such
sources as the fourteenthto sixteenth-century
"eastern Hindi" premakhyans
written
by Muslims
or narrative poem
in Awadh
from
and a solitary surviving fifteenth-century

settlers in the Deccan.
mathnavl
the northern
in the thirteenth century the role of the growing

settled Muslim
Already
pop
in aiding the maintenance
ulations
and expansion
of the Sultan's
is
authority
in Barani's
shown
of Sultan Balaban's
the
description
surprise raid against
in their impene
refractory non-Muslim
population of Katehr (later Rohilkhand)
trable mawas
(Barani 1860-2: 59).4 The Sultan had concealed his intentions, but
intimation
the Muslim
of Badaon
(a large settle
previous
population
ment established more than half a century earlier) was able to provide a body
of armed followers
(hasham), and in particular woodcutters
i.e.,
(tabarzanan,
axes
a
to
cut
small
with
to
the
the
stock
/
tabar)
way through
"pioneers"
jungle
without
ade of the rebellious
chief.5
Barani
seldom mentions
in his narrative
its place
but from
this punitive
dates,
expedi
tion probably
took place
in the opening
of Balaban's
1266.
years
reign from
5
Ten
in Barani's
account
lines above
there appears
the ill-attested
tir-zan
compound
1862: 58-9),
translated
vol. 3, 106) and by myself
(Barani
(1867-77:
conjecturally
by Elliot
This
1971: 21) as "archer."
to support
has subsequently
been
used by A. Wink
the
(Digby
currently
n.
93-4,
thesis
Raj,
zan
in this
had
departed
sense.
from
5,000
pathcutters
in thick jungle.
Sultan
of
the universal
horse-archer
1997:
(Wink
utility of the "Turkish"
a copyist's
error for the better-attested
is clearly
tabarzan
attested
Persian
woodcutter,
appropriately
by a verse of the Dehli
occurs
ten lines below
in Barani's
cf. Farhang-i
Anand
narrative;
of the Indo-Persian
not recognize
tir
which
does
dictionaries,
tir-zan
axe,"
which
Khusraw,
the most
comprehensive
("wielder
Amir
poet
fashionable
86). However
of the small
Balaban's
have
attack
could
been kept
surprise
hardly
on a putative
with
archers
5,000
hunting
expedition
use than 5,000
have been of more
in such
archers
the capital
would
also
secret
if he
in his train;
a campaign
the time of this punitive raid by Sultan Balaban,

the
as
a
man
al-Din
of
of
young
great Shaykh
age
twenty years
appears to have set out from the settlement of Badaon. An attractive and com
in the household
of
tells of a woman
story in his conversations
passionate
Not many
years
before
Nizam
future
near
in Badaon, who had been taken from "a mawds
an
She was a slave (naw banda) evidently
in
captured
earlier raid on the mawas,
but she pined for her little son. Her master decided
to release her. At this event she was taken by the Mawlana
to the tank a kos
cAla3 al-Din
Mawlana
Badaon
called Katehr."
"It is on the road to Katehr, and from there you know

away from settlement.
the road to your home" (Amir Hasan Dihlavi
1966: 278-9). Nizam
al-Din com
criticize
this behavior
mented
culamd'" would
that the "external
(Amir Hasan
1966: 254). Here we have the germs
of the settlers with their Indian environment.
Dihlavi
of the process
of self-identification
of Nizam al-Din shows that relations were

story in the conversations
of
between
the
settlers
the
developing
qasba and those who had refuge in the
mawas nearly three decades earlier, in the reign of Sultan Iltutmish (d. 1235).
to Bengal,
Jalal al-Din Tabrizi,
from Dehli
had reached
Shaykh
travelling
Another
on his migration
eastwards. He was sitting by the entrance of his lodg
a
on his
when
curd-seller
ing
(jughrat-firosh)
passed with a pot of milk-curds
narrator
of
head. The man was from the mawas
Katehr.
The
(forest refuge)
remarks that there used to be brigands
there and the curd-seller was one of
Badaon
of the curd-seller, who also offered

them. The encounter
led to the conversion
to the Shaykh a large sum of money
(100,000 billon coins), which one thinks
he could only have amassed by brigandage
1966: 227-8).
(Amir Hasan Dihlavi
Another
al-Din describes
anecdote of Nizam
how in his youth in the mid
on the highroad from Badaon
to
century he set out with a companion
At night there was fear not only of dacoits, but of beasts of prey (sher)
1966: 254). From this it is clear that in the middle of the
(Amir Hasan Dihlavi
thirteenth century, on the main eastern route from the great capital city, which
thirteenth
Dehli.
had come
into being half a century before, the forest abutted the highroad on
the first stage to the major qasba-settlement
of Badaon.
is of forest clearance
and extension
The subsequent
of cultivation
picture
of the fourteenth
the
century,
radiating from the capital city. By the middle
was
an
route
to
to
extent
the
it
Deccan
from
Dehli
cleared
that
ap
strategic
peared
tained.
to the Arab
Ibn Battuta
remarked
Ibn Battuta
to be exceptionally
open and well main
bordered by willows
(?), and one
that the road was
through a garden. At
passed along it that one was walking
was
the traveller needed
the
there
all
that
(set
Sultan)
up by
every staging-post
Battuta
1958-94:
vol.
Fussman
2003:
I, 1, 94).
3, 664;
(Ibn
would
say as one
traveller
SIMON DIGBY
304
to provide for the needs of the large population

of the capital city
in the Gangetic
led to extensive
clearances
Doab,
although areas of
in which
the peasantry
could take refuge from the enhanced
remained,
Cultivation
had
also
jungle
taxes of Muhammad
in the
b. Tughluq
1860-62: 479). To the west
(Barani
areas
were
Panjab many formerly barren
being brought under cultivation with
the aid of the "Persian wheel"
1860-2: 566-70).
(Eaton 1982: 335-56; Barani
in a conversation
We may note an assumption
from
1400 that forest
dating
cover
1936:
tion
could be cleared by hired labor paid in cash (Digby 2000: 226-7; Husayni
even in the early Mughal
145-6). However
period the extent of cultiva
in the whole
of northern India barely approached half of what had been
of the twentieth century (Mooswi

brought under the plough by the beginning
in
1993: 6-12). This represented a greater area than had been under cultivation
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
of many of the provincial
communities
about which we
sources of the Dehli sultanate that,
have detailed information in the Indo-Persian
while
their location is often along distant and ancient trade routes, they are pop
It is characteristic
and they largely rep

often immigrants from the north-west,
of settlement and cultivation,
rather than the subjugation of
urban population or of a settled peasantry. This course of extend
ulated
by migrants,
resent an extension
a pre-existing
was often marked by and centered upon the establishment

of
ing development
a tomb-cult with the appurtenances
of a Sufi shrine and servitors. A paradigm
for it is given in the humorous
tale of the tomb of the travellers' dog, as told
a
Sufi
of
the
Shaykh
period in the course of a long journey.
prominent
by
when he was a fugitive from the invasion of
Gesudaraz,
Sayyid Muhammad
Amir Timur, was
from Dehli
with a body of
towards the Deccan
travelling
an
a
a humorous
in
He
is
variant
1400.
related
anecdote
that
of
tale
companions
current throughout the lands of Islam (Husayni
1936: 245).6 The value for us of
this particular
narration
lies
Indian
the
through
countryside
ing sentence
Sufi Shaykh,
There
of
his
ass, which
this course
of
sympathy
current
of
in the fourteenth
is one of the most
is a still
of his
in its evocation
the developing
trade-routes
In
the
dramatic
open
century.
traits in the character

sympathetic
for
animals:
liking
and
and more
structured
the offerings
procured
action
by his murid.
this
of the wandering
Sufi and the tomb
and the unknowing
survived,
repetition
I have heard
current
oral versions
noted
anecdote
on which
Of
he
tale
in Anatolia
and in the Gangetic

by Dr. Margaret
Bainbridge,
ornate
An
version
of the tale for an anglophone
"orientalist"
Brown
1927: 308-22.
in distant
Such
tales recurrring
locations
dering
darvishes
(Bruinessen
1991:
21-3;
Digby
of this great
1994b:
102).
Doab
Khan.
by Iqtidar Alam
in John P.
is given
readership
were
possibly
spread by wan
were
There
four men
on
expired
us. Let
who
were
of water.7
the bank
us bury him here and

that this is the place where
ber
a dog. The dog

and the fifth of them was
travellers,
a companion
to
The men
said: "This poor creature was
remem
leave a sign, so that when we come back we may
a mound
our dog (is buried)."
Before
they left they made
of a grave.
earth that had the appearance
It happened
that a caravan
arrived
had heard
that the road was
(there), who
danger
a tree. They
saw the form of a grave
there was
ous.8 They
the grave
there, and above
was
of some holy man
who
that this was
the grave
buried
under
(buzurge),
thought
a vow
the tree beside
the water.
To
that burial-place
of a tenth of
(nadhr)
they made
in the caravan,9
the goods
of those
that "if we
travel safely, we will
bring a tithe of the
of
in the caravan
for that holy
of those
goods
shaykh."
It befell
that there was
dissension
the brigands
and the road was
clear. The
among
a dome
caravan
to the place.
and they returned
and came
built
passed
safely
They
a hospice
a mosque,
and a stopping
[domed mausoleum],
(khdnaqdh)
(maqame).
place
a reputation
A city was
then populated
This attained
there and there was
among
people.
a ruler (bddshdhe,
"a king").
Some
time
and
passed,
saw
They
here."
They
this holy personage
Their
talk became
to them.
(The
out!"
come
the four men
a populous
the tree
recognized
waterside.
(buzurgwdr)
public
travellers)
They
dug just
convinced.
They
was
the case.
as
told
city,
and
was
knowledge
said: "Give
in the course
and
of
the water
and the
not a man.
It was
us
their
to themselves:
said
came
travels
was
"There
they were
site, and
a dog!
in the city, and people

wanted
us if the bones
a spade! Kill
they said and the bones

their story and were
to that
back
no
settlement
certain
that
to do
of
something
a dog do not
came
were
out, and the people
(of a dog)
and the people
believed
that this
released;
Saket and Yusuf Gada

in Sultan
the role played by the population
of Badaon
A
the
similar
of
role
Muslim
campaign
auxiliary
diaspora
in their qasbas is implied in Yusuf Gada's
in
ethical manual Tuhfat al-Nasd'ih,
on the one hand never to enter the
is exhorted
which
the Muslim
believer
of the Sultan (a common Chishti exhortation,
employment
ignored in
frequently
We
have
examined
in Katehr.
Balaban's
practice)10 but also to practice

moment
to take up arms against
and to be
riding and archery,
an attack by the infidels (Digby
7
the colloquial
of the anecdote
does
"Abe";
style and vocabulary
a lake, a river, or possibly
a ferry or ford. The
last meaning
makes
text of the narrative.
the old northern
usage:
English
Compare
I wouldna
that wan water
ha' crost
8
For
a'
The
recorder
9
The gift
the numerous
the gowd
2001:
76-80,
84-9,
96,
10
See also the links
examined
below,
pp.
good
between
distinguish
sense
in the con
o' Christendie.
writes
for kdravdn.
kdrabdn
persistently
is to be implemented
when
they have achieved
anecdotes
not
ready at any
1984).
of
the
98).
between
304-6.
implementation
Shaykh
Nizam
of
nadhr
al-Din
made
in Dehli
success
in their
to Baba
and
object.
Palangposh
the garrison
See
also
(Digby
of Chanderi,
306
SIMON DIGBY
The case of Yusuf Gada also illustrates the close and continuing
connection
as
as
the
of the provincial
with
the
distant
well
growing provin
qasbas
capital,
of power that was
of the fourteenth
cialization
taking place after the middle
in his treatise can be seen as a reflec
century. Much of the social information
in the capital city of Dehli, where he was clearly resident
as
a
al-Din "Chiragh-i Dehli"
and
his
murid of Shaykh Nasir
during
period
seems
aware
to
In
of
the
disastrous
decades
later.
he
be
probably many
particular
conflict
slave-household
and
impending between Sultan Feroz Shah's extended
tion of the conditions
the free
like Shaykh Nasir al-Din Mahmud,

(asil) urban population. However,
Gada had maintained
his connection
with his kin in Awadh/Ayodhya,
where he had been born. Shaykh Yusuf himself, despite his pen-name of "Gada"
at
of a Sufi lineage settled to the north of Awadh
("Beggar"), was a member
Yusuf
Saket.11
some of the precepts

to the conditions
that Yusuf Gada provides for his young son obvi

a large urban and mercantile
of
center, others of
ously
com
his dicta are more apt for a small, distant and beleaguered
rural Muslim
on
in farming. Reflection
the moral superiority of earning one's
munity engaged
of
of the soil is immediately
followed
by consideration
living from cultivation
While
relate
to defend
how
one's
want
If you
possessions
that such
know
Truly
from alien groups:
holding
and
gold
sow a field and it provides

If you
bear away
Cultivate
and you will
The
of
benefit
Cultivation
At
no
Learn
time get
to swim
Gada,
(Yusuf
Buy
this
benefits
a bow
out
for honour
will
posessions
be
and
prestige,
in hell
like
burning
a living,
abundant
fruit.
in the world,
toil is not counted
a whole
its profit
is not
world,
limited.
with
bow and arrow,
practice
ride a horse,
also a camel.
in Digby
translation
al-Nasd'ih;
Tuhfat
and
a spark.
of
and
(an archer's)
thumb-ring
(and)
1984:
honour
your
116).
father
and mother!
(Digby 1984: 101)

The
space,
engage
11
The
descendant
identical
preach
enemies
of
are their non-Muslim

the community
for living
competitors
a realistic calculation
one should
of the odds at which
and he makes
in battle:
mother
of
with
of
a sixteenth-century
to the gods.
of
sajjdda-nishin
Yusuf
Shaykh
(Chishtiyya
Bihishtiyya
site
the ancient
Sravasti,
legendary
cited
of
of
the Chishti
by Sherani
the Buddha's
at Rapri was
lineage
1927:
54). Saket
ascent
celestial
a
is
to
war
Make
At
such
are
If there
Know
that
ten believers
and
time
they
the
that
this war
that
the Kafirs;
know
upon
time as you can see that
the Kafirs
have
of
twenty-one
show
their
faces
is a duty
been making
the enemy
is a lawful
a general
one
. . .
disturbance
(to fight),
O my son! (Digby 1984: 121)

Gada's
attitudes towards the Sultan and his authority not only accord
activist tone better
of Chishti
the pronouncements
sufis, but his distinctly
suits the situations of precarious
communities
of rural settlers, who were not
averse to embarking on campaigns
against their non-Muslim
competitors. As a
Yusuf
with
of such a community,
the Sultan's authority:
one
member
Never
come
Even
if they
out
against
do wrong,?a
should not participate
nor
monarchs
hundred
draw
kinds
the
of
sword
in local revolts
against
them,
against
and oppression.
violence
(Digby 1984: 102)

settlers to aid the Sultan in local campaigns
also a duty of the Muslim
against rebels from his authority. This recalls the levee en masse of the Muslims
to aid the Sultan to punish the troublesome
of Badaon
rebels in the mawas of
It was
in Barani's
Katehr
Make
war
When
you
anecdote
cited above:
rebels under
against
see anyone
who
has
the
standard
of
a rebel,
become
the Sultan,
kill him as quickly
as possible.
(Digby 1984: 118)

Yusuf
Gada
lays down
or his officers:
the Sultan
go near the Sultan,

yourself
the King's
follow
employment;
from Mirs
and Maliks;12
away
Do
not
Do
not
Keep
the principle
that one
should
avoid
employment
by
is such a one . . .
that the Sultan
know
that there is continuous
in it. . .
misfortune
. . .
to them
know
that nearness
is deadly
poison
know
(Digby 1984: 118-9)

Khatu
and Shaykh Ahmad
We
have
groups
of
another
settlers
of the military
organization
glimpse
in the mid-fourteenth
century?in
of
remote Muslim
case
this
in central
12
In fourteenth-century
Dehli
the term malik
stood
for a military
of
commandant
usage
or malik
it was
1961: 24, 26). Clearly
often
the muqtac
1,000 horses
(Al-cUmari
(nominal)
of a district who
who were
in these rural
furnished
aid to immigrants
themselves
establishing
over an archery
the cases,
cited below,
of the maliks
settlements.
who
(1) presided
Compare
at Khatu,
to found
at Kichhauchha.
and (2) invited Ashraf
the khdnaqdh
competition
Jahangir
See
also
the direct
the garrison-settlement
see below.
of Malik
appeal
that he was
Timur
about
to Shaykh
to establish
Nizam
(Kirmani
al-Din
1885:
a disciple
to guide
1978: 296-7);
286-7;
for
308
SIMON DIGBY
the life story of Shaykh Ahmad of Khatu. He was allegedly born

elite family of Dehli"
from whom he was separated in infancy
Rajasthan?in
in "a princely
by a dust-storm. The child was brought by a caravan of traders to Didwana.13

He was cared for by a weaver,
and at the age of four or five years was passed
a
on to
Sufi who had settled at Khatu. Khatu is a settlement on and beneath a
fortified
and Ajmer
1993: 105-41).
rocky outcrop between Didwana
(Shokoohy
on an ancient east-west
It is a crossroads
trade-route
between Nagaur
and
east
south
of
Dehli
and
Sind
and
Multan
with
the
connecting
Bayana, passing
ern Gangetic
grew up
plain and central India. At the time that Shaykh Ahmad
at Khatu an expert archer called Shaykh
is said to have come
cAli Qayrawani
to train the local youth.14 A competition
in archery, organized by
from Didwana
the local malik, was won by the future Sufi Shaykh, who in later life sometimes
dressed as an archer. From the detail that the boys were
trained in a pair of
as foot
to the ground,
it is evident
that they practiced
clay shoes fastened
archers
1991: 17-8).
in this settlement
is that of a local volunteer mili
here
described
training
or
tia
"home guard." By contrast, Ibn Battuta described how those who sought
in the armies of the Dehli had their salaries fixed by a display
to be enrolled
(Desai
The
the governor of Multan. Foot-archers were tested for the strength

in
archers for success
that they could draw, and lancers and mounted
1958-94: vol. 3, 607-8).
(Ibn Battuta
targets while galloping
of skills before
of bow
hitting
and Mawlana
Chanderi
Yusuf
The garrison town of Chanderi guarded the forested easterly route from Dehli
route
to the westerly
to Gujarat and the Deccan, which
served as an alternative
on the farther side of the Aravalli Hills and through Nagaur. The comparatively
13
Then
as now
source
major
of
the
of salt at Didwana
deposits
In Dehli
the capital
city of Dehli.
lacustrine
supply
for
(former
state)
Jodhpur
the price of Didwana
were
the
salt was
by Sultan cAla5al-Din Khalji (Barani 1862: 310).

regulated
14
The
African
nisba
town
of
the archer
Ahmad,
Shaykh
a possible
local
at Khatu?Qayrawani?is
the boys
from the North
trained
near Algiers.
Sufi at Khatu,
who
The
mosque
up
brought
This
(North African).
suggests
Ishaq, also had the nisba Maghribi
in the Indian
connection
of immigrants
from
this distant
and,
who
a celebrated
with
one
Babu
migratory
not militarily
area of the Islamic
world.
Ibn Battuta
vol. 4,
context,
(1958-94:
significant
in the lands of the Dehli
other Maghribis
them one Jamil
Sultanate,
among
793) mentions
a physician
In Dehli
around
later Sayyid
al-Din Maghribi,
from Granada.
years
twenty-five
as
of a Sayyid
al-Din Maghribi,
Muhamad
Gesudaraz
married
the daughter
Jamil
described
a prominent
man
in the two settle
n.d.:
found
(cAbd al-cAziz
groups
13-4). Among
military
ments
Sheranis
of Khatu
in
of Mandasaur
the
fourteenth
and Tonk
century
(Sherani
were
1966:
the
vol.
"Afghan"
1, 19-21).
Sheranis,
ancestors
of
the
state of
this surviving Sultanate-period

settlement,
investigated
with the resources of the French Archaeological
Mission
directed by Fussman,
has facilitated
the survey of the extent of a medieval Muslim
garrison town at
unmodernized
southwest of Dehli
(Fussman et al. 2003: I, 1,
penetration
the
evidence
reexamined
90-5).
sug
archaeological
by Fussman,
and fortified settlement
gests that the present town of Chanderi was a walled
founded or refounded by a military
from Dehli at the end of the first
expedition
the front of Muslim
The
bulk
of
century (Fussman et al. 2003: I, 1, 65-81).

extensive
at the
of
Jain monuments
of preceding
centuries
presence
a
as
deserted site of Buri Chanderi
few
miles
well as
["Old Chanderi"]
away,
the itineraries
of three medieval
Muslim
that part of the
travellers,
suggest
decade
of the fourteenth
The
was
that it lay on a route between Gwalior

and Gujarat
not
This
served
travellers
I, 1, 70-5, 90-5).
(Fussman
only from
Dehli and the northwest, but also from Awadh
and the east of India via Kalpi.
The final stages of the route from Gwalior
skirting the Betwa river lay under
of Chanderi
importance
et al. 2003:
thick forest
Ibn Battuta
medieval
cover, only recently destroyed. Among

and Gesudaraz
travelled
from Dehli
Muslim
via Gwalior
travellers
and Chanderi
see below).
toward Gujarat
1958-94: vol. 4, 791; for Gesudaraz
(Ibn Battuta
to Chanderi
"Mahdi" Jawnpuri came from Jawnpur
via
Sayyid Muhammad
Kalpi in 1482 (Digby 2003b: 263-5). The very narrow agricultural base revealed
by modern
suggests
evidence
surveying
mid-fourteenth-century
ishing trade-route. The Arab
that foodstuffs
must
of Ibn Battuta
suggests
Chanderi
traveller
describes
have
been imported. The

that this was a flour
as "a large town with
bazaars" (Ibn Battuta

1958-94: vol. 4, 791).
magnificent
a Chishti hagiographical
source
In the case of Chanderi,
on
the
of
initial
settlement
and
the
establishment
pattern
light
sheds
exceptional
of enduring links
between
the settlement and the capital city in the first quarter of the fourteenth
creation of a distinct
with
the simultaneous
local Muslim
century,
identity. In
a
was
a
this distant region where
established
and perpetuated,
military presence
link was maintained
to
of the soldiers of the campaign
by the Sufi allegiance
the great Chishti
15
Dehli
This
connection
Sultanate
of
which
lineage,
recalled
that Amir
2002.
Sultan
For
a critique
an anecdote
cAla5
al-Din
Nizam
al-Din.15
successes
with
the military
of
Shaykhs
the
of
the
aloof
great
image
Shaykhs
independence
some modern
writers
from
the medieval
derive
hagiographers.
was
a soldier
on duty when
Hasan
he recorded
the Fawd'id
the barakat
is at odds
the Chishti
be
may
For
Fu'dd.
of Dehli,
Shaykh
with
the
of
the Chishti
the
of
of
sources
Sufi hagiographical
and
of Nizam
told by Muhammad
al-Din,
own
to the Shaykh,
request
Khalji's
of
their
studied
Gesudaraz,
to organize
omissions,
of Nizam
men
of
see
Islam
al-Din
piety
It
al
at
at his
SIMON DIGBY
310
in Siyar al-Awliyd'
al-Din
begins his notice of Shaykh Wajih
was
one
Yusuf by stating that he
of the earliest figures to whom Nizam
al-Din
had entrusted authority
Yusuf
(az khulafa'-yi
grew
sabiq). Mawlana
evidently
close to the Jamuna a few
the southeastern
suburb of Dehli
up in Kilokhri,
Mir
Khwurd
al-Din's
residence at Ghiyathpur.
Yusuf himself
away from Nizam
in the Saray-i Dhari, which was perhaps a settlement for incomers into
area. This perhaps provides an indication
the capital city from the Dhar/Malwa
as to why he should have been chosen by the Shaykh to accompany
an expe
kilometers
resided
ditionary force sent into the same area. His main act of youthful
was remembered when Amir Khwurd wrote four or five decades
piety, which
later, was his
to visit his Shaykh upon his head (i.e., perform

ability to traverse the distance
a
This
indicates
that as a young man he had the physical
"handstand").16
ing
stamina characteristic
of so many Sufi Shaykhs. Such stamina is also demon
in later life.
strated by his repeated journeys between Chanderi and Dehli
Two
anecdotes
Chanderi.
One
of Mir
Khwurd
of these does
to the conquest
of
and settlement
Timur by name, but states that
came to Shaykh Nizam
of Chanderi
al-Din
relate
not mention
the leader
Malik
(wall) for the conquest

that the Sultan had nominated
him for a front-line post, and if Nizam

to
select
and his
them, the commander
accompany
be under his protection;
hence victory would
be certain. Shaykh
army would
sent off Mawlana
Nizam
al-Din accordingly
Yusuf to the "domain" (wildyat) of
saying
al-Din would
"a friend"
1885: 287).17 The other statement that Mir Khwurd makes

(Kirmani
is that most of the military
the expedition
force (beshtari az hasham) of
were
Timur and the governor
of
Chanderi
(wall)
(murldan) of Nizam
disciples
and Nizam
al-Din nominated
Mawlana
Yusuf
for their protection/
al-Din,
instruction
However
"this Timur"
stirred up a rebellion
(shore
(tarbiyat).
areas
went
to
all
and
the
(Kirmani
angekht)
disciples
(atrctf)
neighboring
Chanderi
about
1885: 286).
Mir Khwurd's
had disturbed
Khwurd's
brief
account
version of the events that

provides a syncopated
and their appointed
spiritual guardian. Taking Mir
notice
the settlers
in conjunction
with
the surviving
evidence
from an epigraph
see Husayni
to pray for victory
over
the Mongols
in 1299,
1936:
160. This
jamacat-khana
was
as the Mongols
to the Shaykh
from the Sultan
message
evidently
by a previous
preceded
were
to gather
the city-walls
all his followers
in the countryside
inside
then
approaching
(Hamid Qalandar 1959: 259-60).
16
as flying
he is also described
extension,
By a characteristic
hagiographical
to Ghiyathpur.
air on such visits
from Kilokhri
17
sense
W Hay at has here
to
and the area allotted
the double
of a region
see Digby
of a particular
Sufi Shaykh;
1986: 62-3.
guardianship
through
the
the
spiritual
and
sultanate
chronicles
the course
of events
can be conjecturally
left Dehli
in the first years
restored
as
follows.
Malik
Timur's
soldiers must
have
of the thirteenth
around 1305 as part of a larger expedition

century, possibly
against Dhar and
a
Mandu.
the
of
the
when
fine
1312,
year
mosque
By
beginning
inscription
attests Malik Timur's authority, the walls of the new settlement beneath the hills
it evidently had been constructed. At some time between
and a mosque within
title to the iqtaf was abrogated by the reigning
Sultan of Dehli, Qutb al-Din Mubarak and assigned to the Sultan's favorite Khusraw
were driven out of the fortification,
Khan.18 Malik
Timur and his followers
1316 and
1320 Malik
Timur's
a warband
in the area.19 Following
the
in 1321, we find Malik
the
with
soldier
Timur,
and Mawlana
Yusuf, back inside the walls of Chanderi.
but?on
this reconstruction?remained
nemesis
of Khusraw
murids
We
of the Chishtis
Khan
are told that if after Mawlana
Yusuf became resident there anyone from

that country came to profess discipleship
before Nizam
the Shaykh
al-Din,
to Mawlana
in Chanderi. However,
would
tell him to profess discipleship
Yusuf
not accept such
Yusuf would
al-Din, Mawlana
during the lifetime of Nizam
professions
garments
should
you
made to himself,
that had been worn
consider
but would
give spiritual instruction in front of the

Nizam
al-Din
and bestowed upon him.20 "Thus
by
that the noble essence of the Sultan of Shaykhs
is present"
1885: 287). This practice accounts

for the naming of the fine Sufi
(Kirmani
al-Din down to the present day.
dargdh of Chanderi as the dargdh of Nizam
in the period of dispersal from the settlement in the reign of
It was evidently
Sultan Qutb al-Din Mubarak
that a well-disposed
friend approached Mawlana
that in this country no pleasure
remained. The friend had
Yusuf,
remarking
to an iqtdc in Lakhnavati
been appointed
and he would provide for
(Bengal),
Mawlana Yusuf's
expenses of travel there (Kirmani 1885: 287). Yusuf remarked
that he had not come into this country (Chanderi) of his own accord but had
been
sent by Shaykh
Nizam
al-Din.
He would
consult
the Shaykh
as to what
to do.
18
It is possible
in the manuscript
tran
that the latter's
PRWR/BRVW/BRDW
epithet
of Barani,
that historian's
obscene
customary
scriptions
despite
represents
disparagements,
in Malwa,
Paramar a/Paw ar, a ruling
clan
which
would
the assignment
of Chanderi
explain
to him.
Ibn Battuta
calls him "brave
and goodlooking"
and states that he had "conquered
the
land of Chanderi"
1958-94:
vol. 3, 646).
(Ibn Battuta
19
of their behavior
than that of Z. Desai
appears more
(1987:
My
interpretation
logical
erratic
in their temperament."
there was
remarks:
7), who
"Very
likely
something
20
to Mawlana
This
that garments
had been given
Yusuf
with
the earlier bestowal
implies
as well
as subsequently
on the latter's deathbed.
of authority
of Nizam
al-Din,
(ijdzat-i
sabiq)
312
SIMON DIGBY
was
s first return journey
to Dehli.
the occasion
of Mawlana
Yusuf
or went
him
in
Nizam
al-Din
told
"whether
he
remained
Chanderi
that,
Shaykh
wherever
he wished,"
he was under the protection
of God. Mawlana
Yusuf
decided
that since the Shaykh had mentioned
the name of Chanderi he would
This
remain
there.
Mir Khwurd
Nizam
while
demise
two further journeys of Mawlana

to visit Dehli
Yusuf
still alive. These were prompted by the prospect of the
This anxiety was
al-Din.
shared by the Shaykh's
other
mentions
al-Din was
of Nizam
"in the provinces

and Awadh."
On the first
(atrdf) such as Badaon
the Shaykh was suffering from a septic or gangrenous knee. According
to Mir Khwurd
this was cured by Mawlana
Yusuf requesting a recital of fatiha
and breathing upon it.
deputies
occasion
Mawlana
Yusuf
s third return
was
at the approaching
demise
of
more
the senior disciples

(ydrdn-i acld) had gath
or insignia of succession
A
tunic and cap that had
ered for documents
(khildfat).
been worn by Nizam
al-Din were produced
and were donned by Mawlana
Nizam
al-Din
in 1325. Once
to Dehli
to the previous
in the presence of the Shaykh. Alluding
licence (ijdzat-i
al-Din remarked that this was "light upon light."21 Mir Khwurd
sabiq) Nizam
al-Din Yusuf by remarking
his notice of Mawlana Wajih
that "most
concludes
Yusuf
(beshtari-i khalq) of Chanderi were

there (Kirmani 1885: 288; 1978: 298).
Chanderi
remained constantly
under Muslim
to the late seventeenth
the fourteenth
century,
of the folk"
his disciples,
and his grave was
control from the beginning

of
apart from a few years at the
of the sixteenth century, when factional strife led to its occupation
by
beginning
the Mewar
ruler Rana Sanga/Sangram
Singh. The agricultural base and the liv
to
structures suggest that the garrison necessary
the medieval
ing-space within
no
more
a
route
of
this
few
consisted
than
hun
important
guard
strategically
dred heavily armed warriors
supported by light cavalry.22
or literary composi
the dearth of surviving historical
By comparison with
Chan
tions, the architectural
heritage of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century
deri is impressive,
and testifies to the survival of a strong local tradition. The
inside the walled
architectural ornament of the most striking monument
city, the
foundation
of Mawlana Wajih
al-Din
Nizam
al-Din dargdh at Chanderi?the
21
22
From
the Qur'an.
comments
on the 600 cavalry

at Gwalior,
to fight
of the garrison
"who have
as this place
from
Fussman
this
is surrounded
I, 1, 96) argues
(2003:
by infidels."
always,
en 1340 n'abritait
trente ans
si Gwalior
reference:
"Mais
Chanderi,
chavaliers,
que six cents
en compter
il faut ajouter
trois ou qua
tot, ne devait
guere plus de deux cents,
auxquels
plus
tre fois plus de fantassins."
Ibn Battuta

its severely
controlled
lattices in such forms as the everlasting
in its present form may date from around 1400 or possibly earlier. It owes
Yusuf?with
knot,
no obvious
styles of Dehli or Gujarat and is not par

at
from
but may derive something
Mandu,
by any
the contemporary Mamluk
craftsmen of Syria and Egypt. This local vocabulary
in vigour but obstinately
of ornament survived at Chanderi, diminishing
imper
debt
alleled
vious
to the metropolitan
surviving ornament
to outside
Maratha
down
influences,
rulers
to the time
of
the Bundela
or even
the
observation,
2002).
(personal
citizens given in the account of the travels
Besides
the names of prominent
to the settlement pattern in
of Gesudaraz, we have two other literary references
to the hagiographers
of Sayyid Muhammad
medieval
Chanderi.
According
Jawnpuri, one dominant group of the inhabitants of the town were the
of Sufi settlers, traditionally
the descendants
who were
divided
Shaykhzadas,
into eighteen families
2003b:
held
of
the
265). They
assignments
agri
(Digby
to
cultural land around the walled
town, which yielded harvests that contributed
Mahdi
sustain
the local
urban
(1993: 179-85) suggests

communities
of Muslims,
supply of horses.23 The
whose
constitution
current military
the process of
must
Further evidence
population.
provided
by Mushtaqi
like other rural qasba
that the Chanderi Shaykhzadas,
were
trained in the use of arms and had their own
second
have
the soldiery of the garrison,

group comprised
to the recruiting pattern of the
varied according
or from Dehli.
whether
In
appointed from Mandu
commander,
state formation
in Muslim
India after Timur, Chanderi
passed
of
the
Sultanate
of
Malwa
with its capital at Mandu. This
entity
elite of warrior
sultanate had a mixed
adventurers,
among whom?to
judge
from the two successive
from
the
of
ruling dynasties?groups
region
Afgha
under
the new
nistan may have predominated,

Ghuris and Khaljis.24
In 1482 Sayyid Muhammad
Jawnpuri
passed
through Chanderi.
Sayyid
Muhammad
had been a commander
of the army of Sultan Husayn
Sharqi. He
and his band of followers
had evidently
been displaced when Sultan Buhlul
Lodi
of Dehli
the capital of Jawnpur (Digby 2003a:
175). Arriving
conquered
an armed and doubtless hungry retinue, and with charismatic
claims that
as the expected Mahdi
in a few years time,
would
lead to his proclamation
was not welcomed
or the garri
Sayyid Muhammad
by either the Shaykhzadas
with
son. According
to his hagiographers,
that night, when
23
states
that the Chanderi
Mushtaqi
Shaykhzadas
most
statistics
is probably
of Mushtaqi's
this figure
from Fussmann's
of the numbers
that
calculations
agricultural
24
Neither
production.
the inhabitants
of Ghur
nor
the Khaljis
"were
12,000
grossly
could
be
were
he
looked with
sawdr
exaggerated,
supported
originally
on
Pakhtu
(horsemen)."
and differs
the basis
speakers.
wrath
Like
greatly
of local
314
from his camp (da'ira) towards
to ascend
to the sky. This was
SIMON DIGBY
the town
that had
rejected him, flames began

and
of an evening
of drunkenness
and the garrison had participated,
cul
the result
in which both Shaykhzadas

in
insults, stabbings, rapes and arson (Digby 2003b: 265).
minating
religious back
Thirty years later the Farmulis
(despite their own previous
as
a
on
shrine
the route of the horse
ground
alleged Sayyids and keepers of
the Shaykhzadas
of Chanderi
than the
qafilas) were no more popular with
debauchery
to Mushtaqi
had been. According
179-85), who
(1993:
garrison from Mandu
was a young man at this time and was probably himself
in Chanderi
in the ser
to
vice of the Farmulis, Sultan Ibrahim Lodi seized the opportunity
persuade the
of Chanderi to assassinate
the principal Farmuli Amir, Miyan Husayn.
Shaykhzadas
The subsequent collapse of confederate
support for Sultan Ibrahim
Indo-Afghan
of Chanderi, when?
Lodi led among other events to Rana Sanga's occupation
in Mushtaqi's
for their
view?the
received
Shaykhzadas
condign punishment
to invade the
treachery. A few years later similar factors led to the invitation
was
to the
other
Amirs
of
the
that
extended
Afghan
confederacy
Panjab
by
Babur.
Mughal
Kara
and Khwaja
Gurg
of the community
of this
evidence
tadhkira provides
Sufi biographical
plain, an intersection of riverine and overland
important qasba of the Gangetic
on the far
routes (Digby 1994a). Kara, with the facing settlement of Manikpur
from
for
directed
ther bank of the Ganga was a gathering
point
enterprises
into
into Awadh
and Bengal or southwards
Dehli and the northwest eastwards
as local governor
cAla al-Din?Khalji
the plateaus of central India. From Kara,
One
and
of Devgir;
(muqtac) set out on his great raid of the treasure of the Yadavas
more
than two and a half centuries
later another governor,
by the
appointed
emperor Akbar, Asaf Khan organized a similar raid that secured the treasure of
1902-39: vol. 2,
(Gommans 2002: 35; Abu'1-Fazl
rajas of Chauragarh
cases
of
rebellion
Both
similar
Khan
1977:
324-33;
133).
against
provoked
thoughts
In the late fourteenth century, Kara was a gathering point
the rulers of Dehli.
to the Sultan of
from Bengal and Orissa
for the tribute of elephants dispatched
the Gond
Dehli.
lecting
annually from Orissa after 1359 were sent from a col

dispatched
at
via Bihar to Kara (Mahru 1965: 32). The way
Banaras
Katak
point
of the Sultans
of these tribute-missions
of
by the nascent
dynasty
Those
laying
Jawnpur marked
a stage
in the decline
of
the authority
of
the Dehli
Sultans
(Digby 1971: 76; Sihrindi 1931: 156-7).

This
local hagiography,
of the Muslim
the origin
Asrdr
suggestive
al-Majdhubin,
provides
immigrants of the settlement. The leading
evidence
family
of
bears
the nisba Lahauri, and they had a connection,

and com
perhaps both devotional
mercial, with the Suhrawardi Sufi Shaykhs of Multan, who were major capital
of trading (Nizami
ists though we do not have evidence
1961: 226-7;
Islam
2002:
105, 172, 226, 350). In the settlement of Kara they do not themselves
where wandering
appear in the role of Shaykhs. They built a lodging-house
was
could stay. This
rather disrespectfully
called
holy men, Sufi and Qalandars
the sufi-khana
that this family held any
("sufi house").25 There is no mention
that a source of their wealth was
post, and so it is not unlikely
governmental
from
trade. This
long-distance
a local inspired madman
Gurg,
the settlement.
family of the qasba promoted Khwaja

(majdhub) in his role as spiritual protector of
himself was a poor orphan boy, the fact that he is
leading
Though Gurg
to as Khwaja
referred
invariably
status.
ashraf
perhaps
indicates
that his parents
were
of
Khwaja Gurg died in 1301. The author of this collection of anecdotes, which
was written seventy years later, was also a member
of the family. He still bore
the nisba Lahawri and shows a familiarity with conditions
in Multan. Khwaja
a
in
to
to write.
him
and
had
dream
commanded
him
Gurg
appeared
Gurg when he was a youth had been initiated in the Sufi path by a
he calls Mawlana
Ismacil. This was while he was on an expedition
at some distance from Kara. Additional
light is shed on this figure and his asso
Khwaja
Pir whom
ciation with
the Suhrawardis
tury Awadhi
Chishti
at Kara
and Khwaja Gurg by the seventeenth-cen

cAbd al-Rahman
1997:
(cAbd al-Rahman Chishti
Shaykh
cAbd al-Rahman
had visited
the grave of Mawlana
Ismacil,
919-21).
Shaykh
called by him Shaykh
Ismacil Qurayshi,
and that of Khwaja
Gurg himself.
at Shaykh Ismacil's tomb and residents (mujdwirdn) at
There were descendants
that of Khwaja Gurg, which
cAbd al-Rahman had visited in 1637-38.26 cAbd al
states that Shaykh Ismacil was the "brother or brother's son" of Shaykh
Rahman
in
(first of the lineage of great Suhrawardi
Zakariya
Shaykhs
was
a
at
died around 1267-8). Shaykh Ismacil
buried
Multan,
place four kos (15
to the west of Ilahabad (Prayag).27 Mascud
cAli, Khwaja Gurg's
kilometers?)
in
Baha3 al-Din
principal patron in Kara itself, was also a murid of Khwaja
Baha5
al-Din
Multan.
25
Such
Qalandar-khanas
were
characteristic
of Central
1998: 154 and n. 114).

26
It is well
27
The
name
maintained
is corrupted
by
representatives
sources.
in both
today
Likely
(visited
forms
Asian
Sufi
establishments
in 1995).
by the author
are Nahroli
or Bharoli.
(Digby
316
SIMON DIGBY
The Lahori and Multani

connections
of the settlers?like
the youthful activi
ties of Shaykh Ahmad of Khatu surveyed above?seem
evidence of the endur
trade-route from the Indus to the Gangetic
ing importance of a west-east
plain,
which passed through Rajasthan via Nagaur, Khatu and Bay ana. Travellers between
Multan
and Karra are more frequently mentioned
than those from Dehli,
again
route. There are also references
to
the importance of this east-west
emphasizing
visitors from the town of Awadh/Ayodhya
and from Bengal.
In Kara the authority of the capital city of Dehli was not always favorably
a cloak (khirqa)?
to this source, Khwaja Gurg consigned
regarded. According
a form of
of spiritual authority from the capital city?sent

legitimation
by the
a
oven
to
Chishti
Nizam
al-Din
1994a:
(bhati) (Digby
great
Shaykh
distilling
104). The cloak is said to have been brought to Kara by Akhi Siraj al-Din (for
see below). Here also Shaykh Nizam
the tradition of
whom,
al-Din, despite
aloofness,
appears in the role of propagator of the authority of the cap
ital city. On chronological
grounds this improbable anecdote can be rejected as
account
A
is given of the murder of Sultan Feroz Shah
mendacious
spurious.
seeks to absolve his
Khalji of Dehli on a boat in the river near the town, which
Chishti
the local governor,

cAla3 al-Din Khalji from all blame. The latter's rise
nephew
to the throne is predictably
attributed to the barakat of Khwaja Gurg
(Digby
1994a: 105; cIsami 1948: 229).
Khwaja Gurg's role is that of a protector of the settlement against nuisances
from evil spirits, snakes and scorpions and troublesome
visitors
and dangers,
occa
on
a
suitable
One
of
recited
1994a:
104-7).
Khwaja Gurg's poems,
(Digby
sion at a local boys' school, testifies to the growth of local sentiment:
I am content with
and vegetables;
dry bread
is not for roast meat
and lamb.
appetite
My
Dehli
and Samarqand
and Bukhara
and cIraq,
can take them all and leave me Kara
You
(Digby
1994a:
103).
In contrast to the major and far-ranging military

raid on Devgir which
cAla3
al-Din Khalji mounted
from Kara, the Asrdr al-Majdhubln
evidence
of
provides
two small-scale
of
inhabitants
Kara
the
local
pop
against
by
raiding expeditions
ulation west of the junction of the rivers Ganga and Jamuna.
According
to an account
of
that is told in his own words, Khwaja Gurg as an

years took part in a raiding party from
some distance away. In this territory he
or eighteen
at a settlement
sixteen
orphaned youth
Kara against the Kafirs
a sahib wilayat
encountered
(a Sufi Pir with claims of territorial authority)

called Mawlana
Ismacil. The latter then directed him towards his task in life
it is to be." This was revealed by an appearance
"whatever
of the legendary
Khwaja Khizr in a cave on a nearby hill. He was instructed to go back to Kara

and drink "the wine
that is reprobated by people" while
serving as a spiritual
in
adds that he was engaged
protector of the qasba.28 The Asrdr al-Majdhubln
these tasks until the day of his death.
The second raid was upon the same locality (Bharoli/Nahroli)
and was evi
some
in 1295 from
cAla3 al-Din's
decades
later, after Sultan
progress
dently
It is related that Khwaja Gurg
the throne of Dehli.
governing Kara to ascending
was seated when
a man came and told him that the feoffee of Kara (called
cAbd Allah had sent his respects
shiqqddr and muqtac in the text), called Malik
Mhauwa(?).
resistance.
a request. For nearly ten days he had been entangled at Bharoli and
There was no decisive
put up a stiff
victory and the population
"On our own side" twenty or thirty men had been killed and others
wounded.
Sultan
and made
to Khwaja
resort
acknowledging
and tell Malik
had been
to
cAbd Allah
(we are told) had advised Malik
cases
in
of
The
after
and
Gurg
Khwaja,
difficulty.
weeping
that the burden was upon himself,
bade the messenger
go
cAbd Allah
that there was a victory and two thousand captives
cAla3 al-Din
taken. This
before the messenger

had reached the Malik,
name
terror
at
in
Ismacil
(Muhammad
Khwaja Gurg's
having
most
account
f. 21r). Perhaps the
of
Lahawri,
interesting detail of this inflated
a rural razzia is the mention
of 2,000 prisoners being taken. This item of infor
mation
and
occurred
fled
the enemy
term used?barda?suggest
that a portion of the mer
based on slave-raiding, which would
supply the
of Dehli or of the lands of Islam beyond
the frontiers of
the Persian
of Karra was
cantile
prosperity
of the capital
the subcontinent.
needs
of the inhabitants of Kara into territories evidently

expeditions
over a long period. Early in the sixteenth century, the emperor Babur
of "thirty or forty villages
noted that the population
of Kara and Manikpur"
were employed
in elephant trapping. The context of Babur's
it
remarks makes
south of the Ganges
and Jamuna, near Kalpi
likely that this was in expeditions
and farther east (Babur 1922: 488).
Kara was a frontier town and, besides
the details we have quoted, the signs
Such
armed
continued
of a rowdiness
of behavior of its inhabitants are apparent. Liquor shops in the
names of their own
town are mentioned
in the anecdotes with the non-Muslim
ers Bhola and Bande
1994a: 104). Their premises had other
(Pande?) (Digby
the Khwaja himself. A practicing ground for archery at the out
patrons besides
is the setting for one anecdote. As I have argued else
skirts of the settlement
are disposed
to choose wilder holy
and
where,
rough
"marginal" communities
28
cAbd al-Rahman
but
Ismacil,
the legendary
the
earlier
Khwaja
maintains
source
Khizr.
received
from Shaykh
that Khwaja
education
(tarbiyai)
Gurg
a single
brief
marked
of
by the presence
epiphany,
suggests
SIMON DIGBY
318
men, with whom
tectors to whom
Lakhnavati
they perhaps
they profess
feel
temperamental
affinity,
devotion
(Digby 1998: 151).
as the spiritual
pro
and Akhi Siraj al-Din
is mainly beyond the limits set to this essay, but the development
of
Bengal
a sultanate of Bengal had an effect upon the evolution
of society on the east
ern frontiers of the territories of the Sultans of Dehli. All of the southeastern
territories within
itants of Dehli
and beyond the control of Dehli were thought of by the inhab

as "Hindostan."
is made
In the narrrative below no distinction
areas where
continuous
exercised
and
the Sultan of Dehli
authority,
a
visitation
threat
of
of
that
under
the
merely
lay
punitive
Lakhnavati/Bengal
area
were
an
to
the southeast
the Sultan. In the fourteenth
century the lands
in relative
settlers and their dependants
importance, where Muslim
growing
were clearing some of the great area of forest cover and extending
cultivation,
and were deriving profit from the extension of trade routes between Bengal and
between
northwest
period,
invaders
example of the evolution of society in Bengal during this

in the concessions
is argued?the
class of Muslim
which?it
dominant
India. The
literary
the development
of a new
and in the early emergence
power-groups
on
an
have
exercised
influence
of vernacular
poetry may
to
A
of these traits in Awadh
1994:
(Eaton
50-70).
parallel
to local
made
tradition
in
led to the first startling
literary achievement
exists
in
of Awadh
the Muslim
settler communities
the
(see below)
perhaps
in D.C. Sen's (1920: 61, 66) analysis
older "popular ballads" of Bengal, which
caste exclusive
revivalism"
and neo-Brahmanical
lack traces of "Pauranik
the Ahir
ness.
tale of Lorik
Sen would
that
the origins
date
of these ballads
to the period
before
the sup
pression of Buddhism.
One can see an immediate
to the attempt, in the third

political background
in Dehli
century, to extend the influence of the Chishtis
to Bengal. The survival after 1421 of Mawlana
Yusuf as adviser to the new gar
to some of the more
in Malwa may have suggested
rison town of Chanderi
decade
of the fourteenth
influential
himself
of
frequenters
the possibility
al-Din Tughluq
the jamdcat-khdna
of sending an envoy
al-Din, or to the Shaykh

to Bengal.29 The departure of Sultan
to subdue Lakhnawati may also have
of Nizam
on his expedition
the
the influence
of extending
desirability
suggested
This course of events is suggested by the sequence
Ghiyath
29
al-Din
Iqbal,
Nizam
was
ples
(ydran-i-acld
often
at
this
contrary
in this
time
was
old
to the Shaykh's
account)
probably
and
infirm.
instructions
exercised
The
of the Chishti
dargdh there.
of Mir Khwurd's
narrative,
behavior
(Islam
2002:
demanding
of his
steward,
Khwaja
senior disci
The
116-8).
and competitive
influence.
the notice
where
by
Mir Khwurd's
for
the task?as
suc
is immediately
the envoy to Chanderi,
to
who
is
It
Siraj al-Din,
Bengal.
implicit in
departed
was
not
that
Akhi
selected
though
openly stated,
Siraj
of Mawlana
that of Akhi
ceeded
Yusuf,
account,
was Mawlana
he was
Yusuf?because
an
inhabitant
of
the
and classfellow
at the
region. Mir Khwurd was Akhi Siraj's contemporary
case
in
his
narrative
and
this
lacks
tales
of
miraculous
powers
dargdh,
displayed
by the youthful devotee whom Mir Khwurd had known as a friend.
The
title by which
Siraj al-Din was
known
when
at the dargdh?
status,
socio-religious
this; but it also is an
he arrived
a modest
"Akhi" (Ar. "My brother")?initially

suggests
in Mir Khwurd's
account
and nothing
contradicts
Turkish term for a leader of a guild of young men, and may indicate
Anatolian
to Dehli,
that this boy who had travelled from Lakhnavati
like the Maghribis
territories, was
(Ibn Battuta
in the Dehli
Mediterranean
that he was one

explains
dostan" who joined Nizam
that he was
"a mirror
commentator
to mean
of recent
stock from the lands of the

immigrant
vol. 2, 418-20
and n. 27). Mir Khwurd
the "friends from Awadh
and the land of Hin
1958-94:
of
al-Din's
service, and the Shaykh himself pronounced

This statement has been taken by a recent
that he "thoroughly
associated
himself with
the north
of Hindostan."
Indian Chishti
tradition" (Eaton 1994: 85). But the remark is made

after the
an
not
at
to
then
when
"his
beard
had
age
stranger,
grow," had
begun
arrived at the dargdh in Dehli from Lakhnavati. We have noted above that in
little
Dehli usage "Hindostan" was used as a term for the Gangetic

fourteenth-century
lands to the southeast, Awadh and beyond (cf. Sihrindi 1931: 150-1). The mean
ing of the Shaykh was that the youth was "a real easterner." As seen by Mir
in Dehli, Lakhnavati
Khwurd
little more
than an extension
of
(Bengal) was
Awadh.
in
After professing
his devotion we are told that Akhi Siraj was nourished
the company of the friends who were servants (muldzim) of Nizam al-Din. After
to see his mother and then
this every year Siraj al-Din would go to Lakhnavati
come back. Thus alone and free of cares (farighu'l-bdl)
he passed his life in a
corner of the jamdcat-khdna
no
had
He
but his
(common
hall).
possessions
he
in
and
the
which
hall.
book(s)
paper,
kept
So when some "friends of high rank" (ydrdn-i acld) drew up a list for khildfat
for the Shaykh whose end was approaching,
they included the name of Siraj al
in this work was learn
Din.30 The Shaykh remarked that the first qualification
not
al-Din
did
and
The aged Mawlana
much
that.
of
possess
ing (cilm)
Siraj
30
One
formed
may
menial
note
tasks
the contrast
about
between
the dargdh.
these
ydrdn-i
acld
and
the ydrdn-i
muldzim
who
per
320
Fakhr
SIMON DIGBY
he would make
replied that in two terms of six months
of learning (ddnishmand).31
this senior figure at the dargdh, who had written a treatise on the law
al-Din
Zarradi
into a man
him
So
to teaching Akhi Siraj the set books

an abridgement
in one case preparing
of
students,
he named after his pupil. The course was also attended by the future
which
Mir Khwurd. When Akhi
standard,
hagiographer
Siraj reached a competent
to
his
Nizam
al-Din
the
(document
khilafat-nama
sign-manual
Shaykh
appended
of listening to singing,
the instruction of Muslim
fulness
settled down
set out for "Hindostan," Akhi Siraj sent off the doc
to Shaykh Nasir al-Din in Awadh?perhaps
another indi
that was taking place (see below).
cation of the process of "provincialization"
al-Din "strolled to the head of paradise" (i.e., he died),
When
Shaykh Nizam
of succession).
Before
ument for safekeeping
Akhi
Siraj
population
"by good
disputation
he
the urban
stayed three more years in the dargdh at Dehli, but when
was being dispatched
to Devgir,
(by Sultan Muhammad
Tughluq)
to Lakhnavati.
For purposes of study and
fortune" Akhi Siraj went
he took with him various trustworthy books that were waqf (a reli
that Nizam
the library of Nizam
al-Din, and the garments
on him for special occasions.
Siraj al-Din "adorned that
country (Lakhnavati) with his beauty, and began to give his hand for profession
so that the kings of the country came into his discipleship."
At
of allegiance,
gious bequest) from

al-Din had bestowed
the end of his
life he
sent as a remembrance
some
silver
tankas
to a former
in the old town of

teacher and to the author.32 He made a grave for himself
and in it he interred with all honor some of the garments of Nizam
Lakhnavati,
a cenotaph over them. When he was
al-Din that he had taken with him, making
that he should be buried at their foot (Kirmani 1885: 288-9).
dying he willed
centuries with clear historical
and
of the sixteenth and seventeenth
Writers
cAbd al-Haqq of Dehli and cAbd al-Rahman Chishti
perspectives,
geographical
the
of Awadh,
suggest that Nasir al-Din Chiragh-i Dehli and Akhi Siraj were
two most important khalifas or heirs of the authority of Nizam
al-Din, as it was
in later
from these two that the major Chishti Nizami
lineages had descended
times. For this symbolic
al-Din and Akhi
Nasir
reason, cAbd al-Rahman

suggests, down to his own day
were
first
and last in the recollection
mentioned
Siraj
al-Din's
(dhikr) of Nizam
khalifas
Rahman Chishti
1997: 888-9).
31
fact
The
that
32
For
northern
(cAbd
al-Haqq
1309/1892:
86;
cAbd al
two terms
into consideration
that the speaker was
suggests
taking
on foot from Dehli
to Lakhnavati
take several months.
would
journey
and the dependence
in Dehli
the mid-fourteenth
of
the scarcity
of silver
century,
see above.
from Lakhnavati,
remittances
upon
capital
mention
of
the
the annual
the

Akhi Siraj was not an exceptionally
Sufi Shaykh. The date of his
long-lived
Sarwar
death has been given as 758/1357
1914: vol. 1, 358).33 At his
(Ghulam
to a senior Chishti Shaykh,
death his authority passed
cAla5 al-Haqq "Ganj-i
Nabat" Lahori, who had been in the territory of Lakhnavati
before Akhi Siraj
was despatched
from Dehli
(Ghulam Sarwar 1914: vol. 1, 368-9). From the son
of
the latter the "Khurasani"
the
immigrant Sayyid Ashraf
Jahangir, received
at
was
of
It
the
Sultans.
the
Pandwah,
khirqa (cloak)
Bengal
capital city
fourteenth and last investiture of the cloak of a Sufi lineage that he received.
to a stately reversal of Ashraf
the prelude
This was
direction
of
Jahangir's
Chishti
travel, back west with a train of many horses and camels to the newly emerging
influential khdnaqdh
capital of Jawnpur; and to his setting up of a historically
on a suitable site in eastern Awadh.
Kichhauchha
and Ashraf
Jahangir
at the end of the fourteenth century, of an appro

The process of acquisition,
priate territorial base on the southeastern route through Awadh by a Sufi Shaykh
is vividly described
in Latd'if-i Ashrafi,
and his migrant
followers
the hagiog
of
the
Ashraf
Sufi
1970).34 Sayyid
raphy
peripatetic
Shaykh
Jahangir (Digby
Ashraf Jahangir shared with Sayyid Jalal al-Din "Makhdum-i
Jahanian" Bukhari
of Ucch
the distinction
of being
a Sufi with
a base
in the Indian
environment
to travel very widely

in other lands of Islam.
In the second half of the fourteenth century, before Ashraf Jahangir took his
final leave of his Pir, Shaykh
cAla3 al-Din Ganj-i Nabat Chishti at Pandwa
in
who
continued
Bengal,
Ashraf
the latter showed

saw was
Jahangir
told that he would
Ashraf
Ashraf
Jahangir
Jahangir
him
in a vision
a circular
where
lake with
his
tomb would
a small hill within
lie.35 What
it, and he was
be buried
upon the hill.

then left Pandwa and came
travelled
to Jawnpur. With his followers

but he did not find the
through Awadh,
northwest
33
him
the nisba
which
is incorrect.
Ghulam
Sarwar
cAbd al
Badauni,
gives
plainly
in general
in his notices
who
cleanses
of behavior,
that
Rahman,
patterns
suggests
irregular
in the jamdcat-khdna
Akhi
of Nizam
al-Din.
This
years
goes
spent many
Siraj had
clearly
the sense of Mir Khwurd's
narrative
of the arrival
of the youth
from Lakhnavati
and
against
the
his classfellow.
fact that the latter was
34
For a sketch
of the life and some
and Lawrence
2002:
78-81.
35
The Siyar al-Aqtdb
has a similar
its hills.
al-Din
the city of Ajmer
amid
of
the
account
Each
travels
of
vision
of
Sayyid
Ashraf
at Medina
the Prophet
is a notable
evocation
Jahangir,
see Ernst
to Mu'in
displaying
of the Indian
land
scape, sanctified for local Muslims by the Sufi presence (Ilah-diya Chishti 1877: 124; Digby
1986: 73).
322
SIMON DIGBY
place that he sought until he came to Bhadod. At Bhadod one Malik Mahmud
was the local landholder.36 This man waited upon Ashraf Jahangir and showed
him much kindness,
the Shaykh in his search for the place
and he accompanied
that he had
seen
in his vision.
there came
Then
into view
a circular
said that this was
tank. When
the place that his

that though the situation
suggested
all four sides of it, there was a difficulty.
Ashraf Jahangir could only settle there if he
Jahangir
Mahmud
Ashraf
he
saw
it, the Ashraf

to him. Malik
Shaykh had revealed

as it had water
was agreeable,
on
in the place, and

Jogi
had the power to confront this Jogi.
truth came and falsehood
perished! Lo!
A
resided
"The
pronounced:
is difficult about driving out a body of unbelievers?"
Falsehood
perished! What
He then ordered a servant to tell the Jogi to depart from there. The Jogi sent
back a reply that he had five hundred disciples with him. If any man could oust
him
by
Jahangir
spiritual
power,
so be
it! But
to make
him
leave would
be no easy
matter.
there was
Now
He was
one man who
on that very day had become a disciple of the

Jamal al-Din Rawat.37 The Shaykh told Jamal al-Din to
an answer to the Jogi's display of powers. When
Jamal al
called
Shaykh.
go forth and give
to do this, the Shaykh
Din hesitated
and with his hand
his own mouth
called
and took some pan out of

it in Jamal al-Din's mouth. When
him close
placed
ate the pan he was overcome
by a strange exaltation. Bravely he
set out for battle. He came to the Jogi, and he said: "We do not think it becom
we will give an
of miracles
(karamat). Nevertheless
ing to give a display
answer to each of the powers
(istidraj) that you display!"
Jamal
al-Din
The first trick that the Jogi showed was that columns of black ants advanced
direction
towards Jamal al-Din: but they vanished when Jamal al
towards them. After this an army of tigers appeared, but
resolutely
from every
Din looked
said: "What harm can a tiger do to me?" At this all the tigers fled.
this the Jogi threw his staff into the air. Jamal al-Din then asked for the
staff of Shaykh Ashraf
staff
Jahangir, and threw it into the air. The Shaykh's
Jamal al-Din
After
36
This
The
account
in depicting
of
description
unusual
at Kichhauchha
is
establishment
of a khdnaqdh
Jahangir's
in the area.
the helpful
collaboration
of the local Muslim
powerholder
was
in a lake on which
the island
the tomb of Ashraf
subse
Jahangir
of Ashraf
no doubt
built
leaves
that the site is identical.
quently
37
a claim
The epithet Rawat
conveys
(>Rajaputra)
a member
of a former
dominant
"autochthonous"
cating
of
local
ethnicity
kinship-group
or "belonging,"
indi
has usu
power
anecdote
group. This
whose
recent
of a more
invading
ally been overlaid
by the conquest
"Rajput"
to Indian Muslims
is also an early
instance
of especial
claims
allotted
being
rather
than immigrant
descent.
of
indigenous
to the ground that of the Jogi.38 When

the Jogi had exhausted his
a believer."
me
to
I
will
he
said:
become
"Take
the
tricks,
Shaykh!
Jamal al-Din took the Jogi's hand and brought him and made him prostrate
himself at the feet of the Shaykh; and the Shaykh instructed him in the words
beat down
of faith in Islam. At the same time all the Jogi's disciples

and they made a bonfire of their religious books. The Shaykh
gave the converted Jogis a place upon the banks of the lake, and he prescribed
to his own path.
austerities and spiritual exercises
for them according
to bring their baggage.
After this Ashraf Jahangir commanded
the Darvishes
of the profession
became Muslims
so that each could build his separate cell

places to all his followers
a
In
the
of
few
Malik
Mahmud
built a khdnaqdh for the
space
days
(hujra).39
own
servants
and
he
his
made
children
and
themselves
disci
Shaykh,
profess
He
allotted
of the Shaykh. The Sayyids of the neighborhood

also came to visit
three years the bare ground was transformed
gave their allegiance. Within
a bed of roses.
ples
and
into
(Abode of the Spirit), and

Shaykh gave the place the name of Ruhabad
he gave to the khdnaqdh the name of Kathratabad
He
(Abode of Multiplicity).40
a
in
that
the
would
be
future
and
that
ages,
great
place
light
great
prophesied
men of their day, "Men of the Unseen"
and many saints of God
(rijdl al-ghayb),
The
would
visit
there and acquire merit.41 The tomb of the Shaykh is in the middle
of the lake (Yamani Lata'if: 23, Ms Lindesiana:
ff. 369-70;
679, Manchester:
tr. Karachi
1962: vol. 1, 45-7; Kichhauchha
1997:
543-5; Urdu
private MS:
V,
26-31).
account we see how a suitable site of previous
From this hagiographical
local
was
a
was
with
the
aid
of
local Muslim
who
sanctity
acquired,
apparently a
grantholder of the Sultan, by a display of superior charisma and an accommo
dation with the group of Jogis who were previous
inhabitants of the site. The
38
Chishti
Compare
1877:
the
role
"missile."
39
In a number
of
Here
130).
of
in the anecdote
the slipper
however
is a
the contest
other
tadhkiras
of
descriptions
are to be found (Digby 2001: 127-8).

khdnaqdh
40
The
the
description
settlement
numerous
followers
and
area
tomb
41
usually
of
of
the expanse
is now
stands
The
"Men
identified
the island
of
corresponds
of the waters
connected
the Unseen
with
(Digby 1986: 62).
in a lake
to dry
World"
the abddls,
on which
the
al-Din
one,
communal
at Ajmer
(Ilah-Diya
"missile"
against
of
effort
of
building
now
tomb of Ashraf
stands
Jahangir
there were
for his
lake, where
lodgings
to the present
Sharif
The
(in 2004).
layout of Kichhauchha
of the lake has diminished
and the rocky hill on which
the
on
of Kathratabad
of Mu'in
symmetrical
the bank
of
the
the
land.
in Indian
Sufi anecdotes.
frequently
figure
of an invisible
who
members
govern
hierarchy
are
They
the world
SIMON DIGBY
324
establishment
of this territorial
at Kichhauchha
base
in eastern Awadh
did not
extensive
travels through the lands of Islam. The
put an end to the Shaykh's
now
name
of Kamal,
leader of the Jogis,
the Shaykh on
given the
accompanied
some of his travels, and the Shaykh felt a sympathetic
transfer of pain from the
on
a
to
is
winter
at
north of the Caspian
the
recorded
Shirvan
Jogi
Shaykh
night
Sea, when Kamal Jogi was in danger of freezing to death (Yamani, Lindesiana
Ms: f. 89v; Karachi
1962: vol. 1, 81-2).42
Malik Mahmud,
the local magnate
who had aided and encouraged
Ashraf
was not forgotten by
Jahangir in the founding of the khdnaqdh at Kichhauchha
in the course of his travels. On his return to Kichhauchha,
the Shaykh
Ashraf
a
a
stone
him
with
suitable
that
relieved
rarity,
glittering
Jahangir presented
thirst and weariness
Hazrat
(Ashraf
a band
across
and
for
called
thirty
One
he
set
this manner
to
satisfy
he
him
[Kichawchha],
this, and
regarding
6, 36):
reached
related
accepted
many
the
it in his waist,
bound
however
far
it in his mouth
If he placed
when
he
he hungered,
when
he would
be
Likewise
such properties
of the stone. Hazrat
(Ashraf
stone
it to Malik
he
gave
he
replied
that
on
foot
was
that if any
not grow
the road, he would
he would
be refreshed
with water.
on
travelled
Jahangir)
Ruhabad
him
AbuT-Ghayth,
we
1997: vol.
we
came
the mountain
of al-Fath,
the path of trust in God
(tawakkul),
an elder
constant
in this path. Among
them was
the glitter
who was
their leader. He gave
of
(me) a stone,
its countless
and he related
qualities.
any jewel,
surpassed
of its particularities
thirsted,
In
sated.
37; Kichhauchha
Lata'if:
related: When
Jahangir)
of darvishes,
who
had
years
they had remained
Shaykh
which
(Yamani
it was
traveller
tired.
from
him.43
Mahmud.44
suitable
to
returned
(Hazrat)
of his companions
asked
the Malik.
When
Some
for
both in India and in other areas of the

there are many parallels,
Though
non
to this anecdote
contest with previous
of a miraculous
Muslim
world
of a Sufi khdnaqdh,
the later
Muslim
incumbents resulting in the establishment
date and the setting in Awadh,
fourteenth-century
together with the emphasis on
a
with
of Nathapanthi
the successful
accommodation
community
Jogis are per
the next few decades
that took place within
haps indicative of a development
in this area, hundreds of kilometers
away from metropolitan
capital of Dehli.
an
is the development
of a new genus of literature that has exercised
influence on north Indian sensibilities
and perceptions
that endures to the pre
sent day.
This
42
43
An
The
anecdote
of
phrase
recalls
this
Jogi's
similar
cat
to Sufi Shaykhs, usually by Yogis

44
The
Uttar
original
Pradesh.
Muslim
patron
is translated
anecdotes
of
in Digby
2000:
"the Philosopher's
227-9.
stone"
(sang-i
paras)
offered
(Digby 2000: 230-1).

of Ashraf
Jahangir's
settlement
at Kichawchha
in eastern
be of no
surprise to students of the location of rural Sufi khdnaqdhs

was located along the eastern
that Sayyid Ashraf Jahangir's new establishment
or prdcya
route that connected Bengal
to northwestern
India and beyond
(cf.
Gommans
2002: 17).45 Ashraf Jahangir, probably some decades
later but before
It will
the close
of
the fourteenth
in Khurasan
of Chisht
Shaykhs
included
Indian
an extensive
to the
present
despatched
north of Herat)
that
(modern west Afghanistan
as
and
vessels
described
of
manufacture
lamps
century
textiles,
golden
and eunuchs evidently obtained there.46
(famal-i Bangdla)
Bengal
It is possible
that further stages of the route to "Khurasan" passed south of
to the authority of Dehli
Dehli. One may detect a growing
among
hostility
now
we
in
eastern
India.
As
established
have
Ashraf
seen,
Shaykhs
Jahangir
had gained his Chishti khildfat in Bengal. The khdnaqdh had also been founded
on the Shaykh's
return from travels in Bengal.
of rural Sufi Shaykhs who were established
in Awadh
biographies
the end of the fourteenth century reveal a variety of not strictly religious
connected with Shah Mina of Lakhnau,
among them
preoccupations.
Lineages
the Shaykhs of Qidwa?ancestors
in twentieth-century
of a family
influential
Collective
before
Indian Congress
politics?were
extension of their agricultural
(Kamal
often
holdings,
with
the development
and
preoccupied
often at the expense of their neighbors
1995).
The Deccan
and Sayyid Muhammad
Gesudaraz
than is the case
More
in the previous century, one

of behavior
of fourteenth-century
and resourcefulness
some
assumed
of the characteristics
associated.
they
Gesudaraz was
Sayyid Muhammad
of
the soldiers
is struck by the elasticity

Sufi Shaykhs, who had
and armed
citizenry
with
whom
taken from Dehli

Gesudaraz
from Dehli
sending
to Dawlatabad
born on 4 Rajab 723/8 July 1323. He was

when he was five years old.
in the Deccan
stated that his

subsequently
on 20 Ramazan
728/13 July
qafila
after qafila
to Dawlatabad.47
father with
his whole
family
set out
Tughluq was
lasted more
than four
1328. Sultan Muhammad

The
journey
45For the
importance of older khdnaqdhs like that of Shaykh Farid at Ajudhan as staging
posts,
46
see Digby
Inventories
1986:
171-5.
in Maktubat-i
Ms Or. 267, Letters

BM/BL
120r, 121r.
64, 64, folios
see Polo
1921: vol. 2, 115.
Bengal,
47
seem
The precise
to preclude
dates given
that Gesudaraz
any possibility
by Gesudaraz
his own age. This mention
of the continuing
of dispatch
process
by Gesudaraz
exaggerated
of the urban
to the Deccan
is confirmed
recension
of Barani,
population
by the variant
Bodleian
ff. 191r-192r;
f. 160r-v.
Ms,
private Ms,
For
the
trade
in eunuchs
from
Ashrafr,
SIMON DIGBY
326
are told that in old age Gesudaraz

encampments.
They arrived at Dawlatabad
We
months.
and
could
the stages
17 Muharram
still describe
on Thursday,
1328 (cAbd al-cAziz

729/26 November
1367/1948).
Gesudaraz
returned to Dehli shortly before his sixteenth birthday. At this time
he appears to have survived an attack of an epidemic, brought by Muhammad
on the Andhra coast (Husayni 1936: 293-4).48
b. Tughluq's
army from Motupille
as
to gain recognition
For many decades Gesudaraz
resided at Dehli, attempting
a major Chishti Shaykh. His reminiscences
reveal that this pursuit of holiness
a horse from an acquaintance
in the
him from borrowing
an
to
the
the
of
for
north
of
Dehli.
In the
outing
triple city
paegah
was
course of the day he
pursued by dacoits, but he outrode them and came
the city walls
back safely within
1936: 188-9).
(Husayni
not
did
prevent
Sultan's
This
swiftness
Mahmud
did not
response
and his wazir Mallu
of
Tughluq
plain west of the triple-city,
tidings
battle was going against them. Then
in old
desert
him
Khan
confronted
age. When
Amir Timur
Sultan
on
the
inside the city that the

aged 77 solar years, Gesudaraz
gathered a
not counting the women
and children) and
reached Gesudaraz
party about seventy strong (probably

left by the Bhilsa
(southern) Gate of the city some hours before Sultan Mahmud
and Mallu Khan fled.49 The aged Shaykh had the foresight and powers of orga
to leave the city before the roads were blocked by other fugitives. This
nization
was
on Tuesday
17 December
1398.
at the first vil
The party led by Gesudaraz
regrouped and acquired provisions
the
Mathura
of
the
Jamuna
bank
the
road, and then
along
right
lages along
was
a
to
the
senior disciple of
headed for Gwalior, where
established,
Shaykh
was sent. Some ten days of travel on the route to
whom an advance messenger
the
the Jamuna passed without
incident; but when
they reached
as
in
in
medieval
modern
of
the
river?a
renowned
Chambal
place
deep ghat
times for the robbery of travellers?the
party was shadowed by a hostile group
the south of
48
The
demic
of
appearance
in the Kathmandu
the Black
valley
Death
in India
has recently
been
in the Gopalarajavamsavali,
and 449,
years 448
suggesting
from China
(Gopdlardjavamshdvali
is mentioned
ten years
in the Nepal
earlier
Samvat
route
taken a different
have
overland
49
is 7 Rabi?
The
date
by the biographer
given
commences
and
December
1398. The Muslim
day
A similar
epi
nine and
occurring
that the epidemic
may
doubted.
1985).
to Tuesday
II 801,
17
corresponding
at nightfall.
ends
The
record
official
and his commander
that Mahmud
Shah Tughluq
in India mentions
of Timur's
campaign
of daylight
after defeat
took refuge
inside
the city wall
Mallu
Khan
(in the hours
a western
the city during
of
the hours
fled from
Khass).
gate facing Hauz-i
They
of Chahar-Shamba/Tuesday
5,
118).
night intoWednesday
(18th December)
through
darkness
(Yazdi 1379/2001: 114
of unbelievers.50
However
from Gesudaraz
the message
in Gwalior,
commandant
there
and the military
to escort the fugitives
from Dehli,
and
Muslims
had reached
his disciple
sent out an armed force of
to put the
these proceeded
to flight.
and his party upon his Chishti disciple and
The demands made by Gesudaraz
were
for immediate board and lodging, and for cash and
other resident Muslims
to
continue
their
journey. There must also have been other distin
provisions
"unbelievers"
provision had to be made out of local

rendered
of Gesudaraz,
by the disciple
exceptional
cAla5 al-Din Gwaliyari,
led to his investiture with the first khilafat or grant of
two sons were
succession
before even the Shaykh's
invested.52
by Gesudaraz,
guished fugitives
resources.51 The
from Dehli
for whom
services
The pressure on local resources probably led the party to move on to enjoy the
hospitality of several small qasbas in the area. Their location suggests that Gesudaraz
in which
had not yet decided
names
the local
biographer
direction
notables
he should move.
who
met
with
In these settlements
Gesudaraz.
there were
This detail suggests the planting of

all Afghans.
of the Dehli Sultans as a garrison, a pattern that we know
the small settlements
south of the capital city
immediately
The subsequent movement
of Gesudaraz
and his party
the
In one
place
a community by one
took place in some of
(cf. Barani 1862: 57).

to Chanderi
suggests
that the Shaykh had made up his mind that he would go to the southeast or the
courts and capitals
in Gujarat or the
that had emerged
south, to the Muslim
Deccan.
first exploration was in Gujarat. The Shaykh spent many months

himself
there were frustrated by the
but his prospects of establishing
between
factions
that already divided
the high
that had emerged
His
in Gujarat,
rivalries
of the newly established

dynasty of the Tak Sultans of Gujarat.
In the first stages of the journey the itinerary of the Shaykh and his party
This was resolved
perhaps indicates indecision about their ultimate destination.
officers
to Jhatara. The next moves were westwards,

the party turned southward
over
greater distances,
passing
through the old-established
by longer marches
center of
Muslim
settlements
of Chanderi
and Dhar towards a greater Muslim
when
50
and
The
several
of Chambal
Ghat
brigandage
of the Indo-Afghan
histories
a likely
in Mushtaqi
for a tale found
setting
cou
the rescue
from dacoits
of a humble married
is also
of
ple 51by Sultan Sikandor Lodi as "the Veiled Rider" (Digby forthcoming).
Evidence
the collection
for
this
of Prince
survives
Sadr
now
in the great khatt-i
in
bihdri
illuminated
Qufdn
script
its comple
which
has a colophon
mention
Khan,
Agha
al-Din
tion at Gwalior in 801/1399 (Welch andWelch
1982: 141-4). For khatt-i bihdri, see Arberry
"Bihari
dated
and early example."
1939, PI. 18: Qufdn
857/1453,
script, a good
52
to be acknowledged
in mod
investiture
of Shaykh
cAla5 al-Din's
continued
The primacy
ern times, when
the descendents
of the Gwalior
would
attend
the curs or commem
Shaykh
oration
of
the death
of Gesudaraz
celebrated
at Gulbarga;
attended
by
the author
in 1963.
328
in Gujarat.
power
elapsed
before
After Gesudaraz
he reached
Baroda
SIMON DIGBY
had
left Gwalior,
three months
and ten days
6 June 1399. In the following month
around
(Dhu'l-Qacda,
July 1399), Gesudaraz went from Baroda to Cambay
(Khambayat).
in the narrative. This move was at the summons
This is the last date mentioned
[or "humble
carzaddsht"] of Zafar Khan, who was at this time consolidating
his authority as founder of the dynasty of Sultans of Gujarat. Zafar Khan came
to wel
out of the town to a distance of 5 or 6 kos [perhaps 20-25 kilometers]
come the Shaykh. The Siyar-i Muhammadi
at this point very briefly records a
conversation
significant
between
the Sultan,
his courtiers
and the Shaykh.
to you about your

who will
faults and
still with
anyone
you nowadays,
speak
one of the Zafar Khan's
who was
said:
courtiers,
you of them?" Qazi
Sulayman,
in anything
does not indulge
forbidden."
Hazrat Makhdum
said: "I did
"My Lord Khan
not say that. He can seek
to satisfy
in all ways."
Zafar Khan
and all his friends who
"Is
there
inform
were
present
bent
their
heads.
of this reported diplomatic

The brevity and circumlocution
exchange of words
on
is
The
the political
of
the
deal
that
offer.
opening words
importance
was
suggest that Gesudaraz
already well acquainted with Zafar Khan, probably
masks
father Wajih
al-Mulk was a favorite of the court
in the metropolis.
As a young man Zafar Khan
at the Chishti dargdhs. Gesudaraz
offered himself as Pir or
from the days when the latter's

Feroz Shah Tughluq
of Sultan
may
Sufi
have
attended
and protection
the new
guide under whose
spiritual authority
(wildyat)
realm that Zafar Khan was establishing would flourish. It is not surprising that
in the
the proposal provoked resistance from those who were already established
mem
was
a
nor
a
remonstrance
of
this
voiced
that
chieftain,
entourage
by
rising
the family
the links between
this entourage who was a Qazi. Moreover
Sufi Shaykh Jalal al-Din "Makhdum-i
al-Mulk
and the prominent
at least three
in Dehli,
of Uchh had already been made
probably
and the
the Sultans of Gujarat
decades
earlier, and close relations between
ber of
of Wajih
Jahanian"
of "Makhdum-i
Jahanian" endured through the rule of the dynasty
1886: 70).
b.
1956:
10-11; 1899: 3, 27, 134, 177; Bayley
(Sikandar
Manjhu
"From this it is manifest
that with the fulfilment of the prayer (ducd) of Hazrat
Makhdum-i
Jahanian the tribe of the Taks were rulers in Gujarat for fourteen
descendants
1997: 1208).
(cAbd al-Rahman Chishti
generations"
to the polit
Like other incidents of the journey, this exchange bears witness
ical astuteness and powers of organization
of the octogenarian
Sufi Shaykh. The
route taken may once again indicate that he was keeping his options open. He
had first gone to Baroda,
Zafar Khan at Cambay?he
Deccan.
from where?if
could have
no
invitation
gone on more
had
reached
expeditiously
him
towards
from
the
Gesudaraz
familiar
from his childhood.
the Deccan
had known
he was
the route between
From
his adolescence
and the Deccan,

where
near Dawlatabad
already possessed
with
Dehli
already
his father was a Sufi Shaykh whose
grave
this geographical
charisma. Apart from his own reputation as a major Shaykh,
a
reason
the
of
his
for
have
been
acceptance
leadership by the
knowledge may
That
this
ultimate
destination.
from
Dehli
towards
they did accept
party fleeing
of
leadership is evident from the narrative of the journey. From the moment
their hasty flights from Dehli Gesudaraz must have thought of the court of the
as a likely destination,
sultan of the Deccan
though the route via Eracch might
or
of
either
consideration
suggest
Jawnpur
Kalpi, which were both at this time
his
emerging
as centers
as possible
state-formations,
places
link in devotion."
others with "a previous
of new
of refuge. In
He had been
the Shaykh met

joined by a servitor (khadim) with a connection with the Sufi shrine of Aland
some forty kilometers
in the Deccan,
away from the new Bahmani
capital of
in
recent
conditions
the
Information
about
well-established
Bahmani
Gulbarga.
Cambay
resolve to go.
realm may have strengthened Gesudaraz's
in Gujarat," Gesudaraz
set out towards Daw
After his "stay for a while
when Gesudaraz
and his party moved back
latabad. The date is not mentioned
to Baroda. From Baroda his party must have crossed the Narmada River. The
a northerly
is Sultanpur, which
lies by the Gomai,
tributary of the Tapti. From there the party's route ran south by southeast to
In the hills above Dawlatabad,
visited the grave of his
Gesudaraz
Dawlatabad.
or
father Sayyid Yusuf
("the battler"). At that place a
"Raja") Qattal
("Raju"
came
from the Bahmani
ruler of the Deccan,
Sultan Feroz Shah, to
message
next
settlement
mentioned
in the vicinity of his capital of Gulbarga, which

lay at a considerable
farther south by southeast.
This was the last stage of the Shaykh's
journey. He still had more than two
decades of life ahead of him at Gulbarga, where he had a considerable
politi
meet
him
distance
to play, and the traditions of his spiritual authority, his teachings and
his literary works were preserved down to the present day.
In contrast to the situation in Gujarat,
the Bahmani
Sultans of the Deccan
from Dehli for half a century. Chishti Sufi links
had enjoyed their independence
cal role
with
Dehli
the Deccan
had been
to Dawlatabad,
established
in which
Gesudaraz
by
the forced migration

had travelled
himself
had been sanctified

The vicinity of Dawlatabad
Burhan
al-Din Gharib,
al-Din Awliya's
khalifa
came from
invitation
An
Shaykh Raju Qattal.
to Gesudaraz,
accordingly
to establish
himself
set out from Gujarat
in the new
of
1328
from
as a little boy.
there of Nizam
by the presence
and of Gesudaraz's
own
father
the Bahmani
Firuz
Shah
Sultan
Gesudaraz
capital of Gulbarga.
and spent the last two decades of his long life
330
in Gulbarga.
successors
He
came
and his family

to
SIMON DIGBY
exercised
an influence
there
that the Sultan's
regret.
LINGUISTIC INDIGINIZATION
Dehli
the course of four
patterns of Sufi diaspora,
can
in
be
of linguis
followed
processes
teenth-century
provincialization
neatly
tic indiginization.
One may note that some of those who have worked
during
on "modern
centuries
the nineteenth
and twentieth
vernaculars"
Indo-Aryan
as in the settlement
As much
Sir Ralph Turner) have sometimes

S.K. Chatterjee,
Grierson,
that dominant forms of speech reflect the structures of histor
of the politically
authority. Today this is a fact of which members
can hardly fail to be conscious.
classes of the subcontinent
By
(e.g., Sir George

lacked awareness
ical political
sophisticated
contrast Hafiz Mahmud
was a scholar trained in Oriental

(1880-1947)
in London. His views
Lahore
and by Sir Thomas Arnold
reflect a
College,
sense
of
the
of
and
influence
"state-formation"
upon lan
strong
political power
are
in
not
times.
extensive
his
avail
guage
writings
pre-modern
Unfortunately
a
able in English. No scholar of the twentieth century had
clearer idea than
Sherani
to the speech of the Dehli sultanate and its

background
views
his
he
draw upon the large manuscript
could
collection
support
that he had amassed.
some reason, objected
to the term "Western Hindi"
for the
Sherani, with
Sherani
of the historical
heirs. To
In the termi
of the urban population
of the capital city of Dehli.
proto-Urdu
Survey of India, Dehli was at the
Linguistic
nology and analysis of Grierson's
end of "Western Hindi."53 Sherani argued that the definition of the
far western
was
revival of Hindi
rooted in the nineteenth-century
spearheaded
relationship
inKashi/Varanasi
(with a distinct element of "Hindu"
by Bharatendu Harishchandra
was
of
This
revivalism).
impulse
strengthened
by the scholarly
publications
the Nagari Pracarini Sabha ("The Society for promoting Nagari
script") in the
same city, whose name itself reveals some ideological bias. This factor certainly
had
an influence
on
the historical
and Sanskritists.
Indologists
between Lahnda
53
Hindi
shown
The
matter
(Siraiki),
is confused
and HindawilHinduyi
to stand for any
perceptions
of Grierson
and other western
strong continuum
argued for an equally
in urban Dehli
and the language that evolved
Sherani
Panjabi
controversialists
by the quotation
by modern
in sources
of the period
of the Dehli
Sultanate.
Indian
Sanskrit.
language,
including
of
The
references
term
can
to
be
of the new
in
capital (Sherani 1930: 67-9, 80). Such elements
reflected a late twelfth-century
shift?a
the language of the capital probably
of the new capital and
large initial transfer of population with the establishment
after the creation
a subsequent
inflow under the political pressures of the thirteenth century into
in the Panjab and Sind. Another
Dehli
from older settlements
less
influence,
considered by Sherani, that may have affected the speech of the urban popula
number of captives taken and swept into the service or
from nearby regions in the first half of the thirteenth century?
northern Rajasthan
and the upper Gangetic Doab.
tion is the considerable

slave population
the west Panjab,
south: Rajasthan
Going
From
the southern diaspora of fourteenth-century

and the east Panjab, literary evidence
survives
form of speech that had been current in the capital
Dehli
from Dehli
as well
daksindpatha
of
from
settlements
city. On
that reflects
the southern
the
road
as the eastern
Doab?the
Panjab and the Ganga-Jamuna
routes (Gommans
of Gommans'
of military
2002:
17
analysis
were
a
Muslim
from
Dehli
left
kind
of
behind,
garrisons
"proto
20)?wherever
Urdu" or "coarse Hindostani"
survives
Muslim
of dialects
from
such material
the Muslim
from
to be spoken in later centuries. What

en route appears to be less than the corpus
nuclei of military
of
power and concentrations
continued
enclaves
the new
of the Deccan
itself. The roads
immigrant groups in the forts and settlements
to
extend
and
Chanderi
and
through Nagaur
through northwestern
Gujarat,
as
in
Maharashtra
such
settlements
local
where,
sixteenth-century
Burhanpur,
in the proto-Urdu
Sufi Shaykhs composed
that they called Gujari (Sherani 1930:
1966: vol. 1, 159-200).
53-108;
The case of the Muslim
settlements
of Rajasthan
is of particular
interest, as
were
in the
that bound them to Muslim
weakened
government
at
fifteenth century. We can follow the fortunes of the insecure state established
a
was
line
the
collateral
of
of
around
which
Sultans
1400,
Nagaur by
Gujarat
in the
put to an end by the growing strength of the Rathor Mai Dev of Marwar
the structures
1993: 7-20). Mai Dev's

destruction
of the
century (Shokoohy
of
the
Khans
of
1993:
and
20)
public buildings
(Shokoohy
Nagaur
Mushtaqi's
at the gate of Sultan
testimony regarding refugees from Nagaur demonstrating
early
sixteenth
in Dehli
(d.1526)
(Mushtaqi
of the old urban population
of Nagaur may
centers at this time.
Ibrahim
Lodi
in such cities
of Muslims
percentage
with
communities
settler
established
continuity
The
1993:
have
156) suggest
fled or been
that members
taken
as Jodhpur suggests
in Rajasthan
before
in the armies
found places
period. These armed populations
and other growing Rajput polities. The "Afghan"
Sheranis,
a historical
the Mughal
of Marwar,
previously
to other
Mewar
settled
at
SIMON DIGBY
332
armies in Mughal
times (Sherani 1966: vol. 1, 19-21,
M.M.
Sherani).
introductory
by
Communities
of native Muslim
soldiers who fought on the side of the Rana
accounts
in
of Mewar
the
of the siege of Chitaur by the
figure prominently
in the winter
of 1567. The commander
of the Rathors who
emperor Akbar
Khatu,
in Rathor
served
memoir
assisted
the defenders
was
a Muslim
called
His
Shihab Khan.
house was
of the
two places where

in the jauhar
the women were immolated
1902
(Abu'1-Fazl
on the Rajput
39: vol. 2, 472). The principal marksman
side was a Muslim
a man standing beside the emperor, but the emperor
called Ismacil. He wounded
it was found that the royal
took aim at the embrasure, and "afterwards
the wretch"
(Abu'l Fazl 1902-39: vol. 2, 470).
gun had finished
case is that of the contingent
A more remarkable
of hand-gunners,
said to
number one thousand, who also fought for the Rana Udai Singh at the same
siege. They come from Kalpi, far to the northeast and a ferry-point on the south
himself
side of the river Jamuna. They en masse

escaped by a bold stratagem from the
massacre
of
of
the
defenders
Chitaur.
After the fall of the fortress their
general
to be part of the Mughal
and
forces, and led their followers
if they were captives
to
about
be executed.
Having
escaped
to
at
the
back
their
marched
homes
lines,
through
imperial
they
leaders
claimed
families
off as
unchallenged
1902-39: vol. 2, 475-6 and 476n.).
(Abu'1-Fazl
Kalpi
There can be little doubt that these men were
the descendants
of Kalpi.
After
of
the four
Timur's
invasion, Kalpi had emerged

teenth-century
population
as the capital of a dynasty descending
of Feroz Shah
from the local commander
of the Khans
1972: 54-89). The independence
reign (Bihamad Khani
Tughluq's
of Kalpi lasted for less than half a century, and was ended by a division of their
territories
2003a:
between
the Sultan
Shihab Hakim
of Jawnpur and the Sultan of Malwa

(Digby
1968: 59; Nizam
al-Din Ahmad
1927-40: vol. 3,
an important stage on the route from Awadh
and
177-8;
453-6, 515-9). Kalpi remained
to Gwalior
eastern India through Kalpi
and Chanderi
(see above), and also via
to central Rajasthan.
It could also serve as a homestead
to a wide-roam
Bayana
ing and mercenary
specialist war-band.
Evidence
of place-names
and the Hindu
was
Mihrabi's
castes mentioned
suggest that cUmar

rescue
to
from
Muslims
a work
Hujjat al-Hind, which

designed
the corruptions of a local Hindu rural environment, may have been written
on
of large groups of Muslims
fifteenth-century
Rajasthan.54 The presence
54
The ascription
vol.
1, 28-9;
(1879:
tion of a manuscript
of Mihrabi's
cf. Hardy
in Tipu
al-Hind
Hujjat
1958: 367-529),
Sultan's
library,
to a date
of
1645,
derives
ultimately
described
loosely
found
from
in Rieu's
the date
in that catalogue
in
the
catalogue
of
transcrip
by Charles
border appears to be pre-Mughal. Not many years later

south Rajasthan/Gujarat
of the mature
identified
by name in the earliest examples
painters,
Mewar
al-Din
and
to
Sahibdin/Shihab
style?Nisaradi/Nasir
al-Din?appear
a
came
local style before they
have been trained in
vigorous and highly-colored
Muslim
under
"popular Mughal"
example of his assimilation
tradition
pictorial
233).
At
a humbler
influence.
Sahibdin's
of his evident
he was
in which
Rdgamdld
stands
as a classic
to the native
training
popular Mughal
rooted (Topsfield
temperamentally
1981:
there is evidence of the preoccupa

level of artistic production,
in
of these groups of south Rajasthani Muslims
tions and the spoken language

leaves of Sdkundvall
surviving
see Digby
1995: 342
(Books of Omens;
on
texts
I
have
(as
60).
argued
palaeographic
Indian Jaina apabhramsa
grounds) proceeds from western
through Perso-Arabic
in Devanagari
the basmala
script versions to local "proto-Urdu"
script, in which
The
line of descent
is also written
The
texts
these
script as incipit.
are of greater importance
than the unpretentious
In the form of questions
text
and answers,
the
furnishes examples
in Devanagari
texts of
illustrations.
of
these
leaves
of strictly pragmatic
The questions
asked
speech devoid of literary pretensions.
are answered according
to the birds seen at break of day. These questions
show
the preoccupations
of members
of a moderately
settled
prosperous
community
in agricul
had a tightly knit Muslim
family structure, and were engaged
"Cultivation. Don't cultivate! Be patient."
ture, trade and voluntary partnerships.
"Wife. Don't take a wife. She is bad, even if she appears good. And don't decide
till some days later." "Lost object. It is safe. You will get double" (Digby 1995:
who
357). For an estimated date of transcription early in the seventeenth

century the
is a forward-looking
An
Hindostani.
language
variety of "proto-Urdu"/coarse
in under
illiterate man from northern India today would have little difficulty
and answers.
standing most of the questions
Going
south: The Deccan
and Nizami
Dakani
"If we
are to see an example of the kind of language

that was spoken in
in the age of the Tughluqs,"
Hafiz Mahmud
Sherani
(1930: 72) wrote,
look in old Dakani
literature." Since Sherani wrote
"we must
the corpus of
Dehli
Stewart.
who
Apart
from
castes mentioned,
which
of Sultans
of Gujarat,
dynasty
an Ismacili
influenced
cult-center
the Hindu
the ruling
provided
the shrine of Mallinath,
in the fifteenth
century
(Khan
1997,
120-1
and passim).
include
there
the Taks
south Panjab
to
to pilgrimages
that gained
adherents
is a reference
in Rajasthan
from
SIMON DIGBY
334
old Dakani
literature has been expanded,
and some of this literature
published
can be firmly dated to the fifteenth century.
In discussing
the language of the southern settlers, we must
leave aside the
works
vernacular
to Gesudaraz,
attributed
since
there are elements
of doubt
con
such as Micrdj al-cAshiqin

bear
cerning their date and redaction. Prose works
the marks of the Shaykh's powerful
and curious imagination,
but they may be
in Persian.
In ghazals,
from originals
the
posthumous
adaptations by followers
name may have
takhallus of "Shahbaz" or the incorporation
of the Shaykh's
like the chhap of Bhakti
compositions
(e.g., those
posthumously
to Kabir) or the spurious diwdns of earlier Indian Chishti Shaykhs.
a Sufi poet of
Sherani (1960: 72) noted that the language of Shah Miranji,
set
was
to
in
close
that
of
the
born
1496,
fourteenth-century
Bijapur
probably
been
used
attributed
tlers from Delhi.
works
whose
poets
Attention
since been
has
survive.
From
drawn
their mention
to a number
of
individual
of other Dakani
Sultans
or Sufi
these poets flourished before the end of

they were attached,
was
Ashraf
the
author
of a mathnavi
dated to 1503. Other
century.
to whom
Shaykhs
the fifteenth
were Mushtaq
and Lutfi (who both wrote
contemporaries
mad Shah Lashkari,
and Feroz, who was
1463-1482)
Muhammad
Ibrahim
(died 1503) (Zor 1960: 16-21).
of a few unfamiliar
the presence
Despite
some
traces of the
and
(e.g.,
postpositions)
these limpid ghazals
could be readily understood
and
audiences
and singers.55
Urduphone
Dakani
influence of Marathi,
appreciated by modern
With
regard to Nizami
agreement
with
thought, between
in the Urdu
"composition
6). The poem may have

away from the court of
"Matter"
of
words
Dakani's
the editor's
viously
grammatical
its language
in the reign of Muham

a devotee
of Shaykh
mathnavi
of about
dating
1430 and
(examined below), we may be in

four decades earlier than was pre
it the earliest extant
thus making
1435,
1973: introduction, 7, 11
language" (Nizami Dakani
an
in
environment
of a rural settlement
been written
the ruling Bahmani

Sultan located at Bidar. Enough
remain to place it within
the "Dehlavi"
tradition, but
is confusing
it draws on the linguistic
tradition of the
because
the Natha-Siddhas.
This is a problem
similar to that of "the lan
indications
1993: 109-28).
guage and languages of Kabir"(Vaudeville
This poem survives in a single manuscript,
lacking many
features (Nizami
and with curious and difficult orthographic
55
In a
recorded
before
text
of
similar
case
a well-known
a rapturous
the ghazal,
and
the vigorous
of
ghazal
and
the
demonstrative
see Matthews
and
popular
Multani
eighteenth-century
audience
immigrant
Shackle
1972:
34-6.
folios,
Dakani
ill-written
1973).
It
Parvin
has sung and
singer Abida
Dakani
poet
Siraj Awrangabadi
in the United
For
the
Kingdom.
even than
that are much worse
of editorial
presents problems
interpretation
those of the Canddyan.56 The language of Nizami Dakani's
poem is obscure
to
of
and
of
that
the
ghazals
qasidas
poets associ
compared
fifteenth-century
court
at
Bidar. A feature that Kadam
ated with the Bahmani
Sultans and their
is its predominantly
the Awadhi
premdkhydns
items
of
lexical
noted
12,000
indigenous vocabulary.
by its editor only 125
a
are of Perso-Arabic
While
few
of
these
words
have
origin.
indigenized
pho
are also characteristic
netic spellings, which
of the Dakani
tradition,
ghazal
there is no evidence of intentional concealment
of non-indigenous
identity in the
Rao
Padam
Rao
shares with
Out
spellings of Muslim
matical
forms and
personal
names
or items of court
conform
ceremonial.
to the western
The
gram
forms
syntax mainly
"proto-Urdu"
south by the armies and settlers of the Dehli
sultanate. However,
the
in the mutaqdrib meter
the poem being written
prosody follows Persian models,
often used in Persian mathnavls
(Gladwin 1798: 138).57 The poem takes its sub
tradition?"'Matter'
of a partic
ject matter and idioms from local pre-Muslim
brought
ular area or locality" (Chatterjee

1982: 10),58 but the poem does not display an
a
with
intentional
and concealment
of for
indigenization
"linguistic
cleansing"
eign traits.
The first folio of the manuscript
the incipit of the poem, which
like
preserves
retains the formal progression
of Persian mathnavls
the Canddyan
from hamd
to mddh
through nact (praise of the Prophet)
(praise of the
(praise of God)
in the panegyric
of the Sultan, the poem appears
ruler). From the information
to have been written between
1430, when Sultan Ahmad Shah assumed the title
to Bidar, and 1439, the date
his capital from Gulbarga
1973:
(Nizami
15-6).
is missing.
The opening part of the narrative
One may guess that it was a
similar to that
story of the ruler being brought proof of his queen's
infidelity,
of Wall
and transferred
of his death
Dakani
from lover to lover, till it came

of the fruit of immortality
to the original donor, the king. The ruler, Kadam Rao, was in a state of
in long dialogues with his minister
Padam
rage and grief, which he expressed
Rao and with his queen.
of
the circulation
back
After this, when

the King obeyed Padam Rao's
injunction to anoint the lat
ter's forehead with musk, a lotus appeared on it and Padam Rao raised his head
56
a facsimile
tran
of each page of the manuscript
Jalibi's
edition
his own
presents
facing
can be com
into a more
This meticulous
Urdu
scription
acceptable
orthography.
approach
to future editors
of premdkhydns
from manuscripts
in Arabo-Persian
mended
script.
57
is in contrast
to the Awadhi
narrative
This
that we
shall examine
below
poems
58
uses
in the sense of medieval
"Matter"
"Matter
Chatterjee
European
storytellers?e.g.,
of Britain"?the
stories
of tales regarding
"Matter
of France"?similar
Arthur;
corpus
King
regarding
Charlemagne.
336
SIMON DIGBY
the height of the palace roof. Padam Rao therefore was not a mere min
of the great snake Vasuki,
of the Nagas
ister, but had the attributes
King
(cobras) and he begins to look like a supernatural guardian of the realm. With
above
this we can confidently

of a
identify Kadam Rao as a folktale personification
as
tute
ruler of the Kadamba
of
Karnataka
who
the
dynasty
Naga
worshipped
lary deity and putative ancestor (Moraes 1931: 247-8). The last effective rulers
of the dynasty had been displaced
less than a century before in the territory of
and
elsewhere
Muslims,
(Moraes
by
by the rising state of Vijayanagar
1931: 212-6). Yet the popular stereotype of the poem was very different from
as revealed by their
the courtly and "Sanskritized"
behavior of the Kadambas,
Goa
at the time when

of Dwarasa
they were rivals of the Hoysalas
inscriptions,
in the poem may have been handed down from
mudra. However,
the stereotype
of a
centuries
like the Awadhi
lacks mention
earlier. The poem,
Canddyan
or
the
of
Hinduism.
Brahmanical
priesthood
high gods
of his intention to fast, and to this the minister
Kadam Rao told the minister
strongly saying that if the king fasted even one day out of vexation,
objected
his kingdom
would
be ruined. The capital of Hiranagar
("Diamond
City")
and the king's enemy would benefit.59 The king then said
would be desolated
that he was deprived of the chance of meeting
foreigners. This was a custom
that had been followed
by the ancient Persian kings, Sasan and Jam(shed).60
for the king to serve and bestow
should bring a foreigner (pardesi)
minister
the king to summon foreigners
The
forbade
him.
initially
gifts upon
not
their
who raised hopes that they did
fulfil, and
ways were evil. The king
Padam Rao raised his head high as
grew angry and repeated his demand.
of the night.61 The
the roof and the king argued with him through a watch
Padam
Rao
minister
that he should not summon a Jogi since all Jogis consumed

For an hour of pleasure Kadam Rao would pay with a heavy
told him
and meat.
wine
hangover.
gave way, and the king was glad and distributed pre
to summon a stranger for
sents of costly garments. He then told his attendants
son of
him to entertain and honor. His courtiers
told him that Aghor Nath,
The minister
Matsyendra
59
The
minister.
60
A
king's
perforce
Nath
had come
enemy
is a single
from foreign
formal
character
parts. We
in expositions
then enter
of
into the second
statecraft,
like
the king's
in the text to a Persian

and to cus
reference
Firdawsi's
classic,
Shdhndma,
solitary
toms outside
India.
61
in the women's
at night
the king would
been
Late
have
His
detail
recalls
quarters.
with
For reasons
these men were
of propriety,
nocturnal
discussions
Akbar's
religious
figures.
in a basket
outside
his window.
suspended
to "Matter of Jogis." For

turns from "Matter of Kings"
half of the poem, which
the "Matter of Jogis" tidings of
Indian listener familiar with
the medieval
son
were
of
and such
Nath"
and
"the
inauspicious,
Matsyendra"
wholly
"Aghor
for Nathapanthi
listeners would expect disaster. Celibacy was prescribed
Jogis;
en
but Matsyendra,
Guru of Gorakh Nath, had fallen into deep forgetfulness,
the
in
of
of
the
Land
Women
chanted by the Queen
160-75)
(Digby 2000:
Plantain Forest (kadali ban). Their ill-begotten
offspring, the boy called Binduk
Nath or Mina Nath was said to have been "split" by Gorakh Nath to liberate
to the Yogic
from obstacles
his Guru Matsyendra
"path" (Digby 2000: 178-9).
That he was alive and well was not good news, nor that his name was Aghor
addicted to eating
Nath, which
suggests a particularly malevolent
Nathapanthi
and Lai 1916: vol 2, 13).62
(Briggs 1938: 71, 244; Russell
to the royal presence, Kadam Rao inquired what lands the
summoned
Jogi had visited. Aghor Nath gave a boastful account of his travels and magi
iron into gold and the higher
cal powers. He possessed
the art of transmuting
art of amar ved ("immortality,"
but in practice the art of "shape-shifting").
First
corpses
When
in Kadam Rao's presence

the art of transmuting
iron
Aghor Nath demonstrated
into gold, and then he instructed him in this secret, so that Kadam Rao could
the operation himself. He then offered to teach him the
successfully
perform
amar
ved. At the behest of Aghor Nath, the king wrung the neck of his pet par
rot. Aghor Nath
into the corpse and talked to the king. He then
then passed
the
of
the
this art as well. The king's vital force passed
mystery
taught
king
in
into the body of a parrot and?predictably?Aghor
Nath took up residence
the vacated corpse of the king.
quarters of the palace lest he should

Aghor Nath feared to enter the women's
a
its ways, and the minister was
lack
of
with
himself
away by
give
familiarity
into a parrot,
behavior.
Kadam
struck by the king's
Rao, transformed
strange
flew off to distant lands, but after a while he found himself flying over his old
palace. The parrot saw Padam Rao down below. He flew down and told the
his
tale of woe.
That night the minister

assumed his snake form and
the sleeping
back into the
Jogi on the toe. The soul of the king moved
corpse of his former self. Kadam Rao found that the honor of his queen had
not been violated. At this point the manuscript
breaks off, and we are left to
minister
bit
assume
62
that they "lived happily
class
of Saiva mendicants
who
feed
describes
them as "the most
disreputable
and excrement,
and in past times practised
cannibalism."
A more morally
corpses
source
states
in low esteem
that "they have
because
of their many
been held
always
... not least cannibalism"
1990:
(Feuerstein
12).
practices
Russell
on human
neutral
eccentric
ever after."
SIMON DIGBY
338
we see, the narrative divides

abruptly into two halves. The first is the
of
the
and
of
the
story
protection of the king and of the realm by
king's anger
or
the minister
The second half is drawn from the "Matter" or
snake-guardian.
As
The Natha cult and Natha Jogi presence

legendary cycle of the Natha-Siddhas.
at least from beyond
in the fifteenth century was almost pan-Indian,
extending
to
to Bengal
and the Deccan,
but perhaps it is possible
the Panjab and Dehli
area
two
The
where
the
these
themes.
make a local regional connection
uniting
power of a branch of the Kadamba
dynasty survived into the fourteenth century
was the southern Konkan.
It is also the area where a late (post-tenth century?)
survives. They contain the
and quite recently discovered
group of cave-temples
of the Natha-Siddhas,
Indian group of sculptural representations
Nath riding his
image of superior quality
showing Matsyendra
the fish (Deshpande
1986: 17, 105, Plate 58B). This would
vehicle,
suggest an
cults?that
of the Great Snake and that of
association
of these two dominant
only medieval
an
including
a single
the Natha-Siddhas?in
area, which
is reflected
in the poem
of Nizami
Dakani.
familiar
worker
who
cian
contests
is that of the wonder
among "shape-shifting"
into the body of a king. In these a Jogi is often the magi
11, 20-21). For analysis of the tale of the poem, we must
as is the case when
as a doublet of his father Matsyendra,
the
variant
passes
1990:
(Digby
take Aghor Nath
son is named Mina
In one version
Nath
that is still current, Matsyendra
the pious intention of
body of the King of Prayag with
an heir for him, and he duly abandons
the body of the king when his
begetting
motives
The
of the wonder-worker
2000:
task is accomplished
202-23).
(Digby
in such stories are not invariably malignant
often
so). But the variant
(though
a
in
Hindi
is
recension
the
from
modern
of
Gorakhcaritra
taken
just mentioned
concern
a post-Gandhian
for public benefit has often been introduced
which
passes
into
Nath.
the dead
(Digby 2000: 287-88). The central episode of the cycle is the dalliance of Matsyendra
in the Plantain Forest (kadali ban). Men
with the Queen of the Land of Women
there and even Matsyendra's
have no enduring presence
young son has to be
leave (Digby 2000:
taken away when
the great Jogi and his disciple Gorakh
current in northern India
160-80). This version appears to have been generally
2000:
Maharashtra
and
1949: 213; Digby
Dehli,
(Das
Bengal
including
Gupta
In this version,
into the corpse of a king would have
226-27).63
shape-shifting
no purpose. However,
an improbable variant, in which
is
the Land of Women
63
Dehli
prosaic
and
rationalizing
version
(Digby 2000: 226-27; Husayni
told
by Gesudaraz
1936: 145-46).
on
his
journey
southwards
from

no longer the Land of Women
in a late south Indian source.
alone, is preserved
. . entered the
"In days of yore, a great Yogi named Matsyendra.
body of a
dead king and thereby got access to his palace."64 This is held up as an exam
to emulate,
and the guru does this, thereby achieving
ple for Sankaracarya
of
sex-love"
of
1986: 113-23).
(Madhava-Vidyaranya
"acquirement
knowledge
that a south Indian variant
It is clear therefore
Siddhas
even
which
associated
Matsyendra's
son and doublet Aghor
though his
Dakani's
in the cycle of the Natha

dalliance with an act of shape-shifting,
Nath did not attain his aim in Nizami
existed
poem.
Nizami
tale of Kadam
Dakani's
vernacular
Rao
the form of a sin
and Padam Rao?in
narrative
from
the early southern

the differing inten
poem surviving
a "control,"65 by which
of eastward migrants
from Dehli,
the poets of the
can be judged. These also are narrative poems mod
Awadhi
Sufi premdkhydns
elled on the Persian mathnavi
of the Awadhi
genre. The Canddyan?earliest
a
poems that has survived?is
century older than this Dakani mathnavi.
probably half
gle comparable
from Dehli?has
migrants
tions and achievements
The
remainder
of the surviving
Awadhi
premdkhydns
are all more
than half
later.
century
east: Awadh
Going
furnished
and Mawlana
Da'ud
appears to have been at work before the close of the four

in the qasbas
teenth century along the eastern route from the capital of Dehli,
and Sufi dargdhs of Awadh. On this southeasterly
route, there is less published
from
the
of the capital, but
evidence
of popular
proto-Urdu
speech deriving
A different
process
prominent Sufis settled in Awadh often had strong connections with the capital
of Dehli and prolonged periods of residence
there. Yet the verses quoted in the
a
at Rudawli
Rushd Noma of cAbd al-Quddus,
Persian treatise composed
around
eastern origin (Digby
1975: 44, 56-66).66 Some of the
1480, are of distinctly
verses are also present in the Vajrayana
some centuries
of Bengal
carydpadas
or in nrguna
earlier,
64
bhakti
traditions
associated
with Kabir.
of Nizami
this text states
the belief
that the physical
the poem
Dakani,
well-being
had a "sympathetic"
effect on the material
welfare
of the kingdom.
In the sense used by Clifford
the practice
and
of Islamic Morocco
Geertz,
comparing
Indonesia.
66
in specifically
is no verse quoted
There
but there is one rekhta
Dehlavi/"western
Hindi,"
was
a form popular
common
to
An example
in Dehli.
which
of a dohd
(macaronic)
couplet,
of
Like
the
65
ruler
cAbd al-Quddus
into the well
fell
Weightman's
and
to recensions
of Kabir
describes
the blind
from earlier
1975: 61). This derives
(Digby
is still awaited.
critical
edition
of the verses
Guru
Eastern
and
a blind
Indian
who
disciple
tradition.
S.C.R.
340
SIMON DIGBY
The key text for the development

that was taking place inAwadh is the Canddyan
of Mawlana
Da'ud, which provides us with a date and place of composition,
on the west bank of the
settlement of Dalmau
around 1380-81 at the Muslim
of Kara/Manikpur
downstream
from the important frontier settlements
Ganga,
on either side of the river (Digby 1994a: 99-110). The strategic importance of
set
this site is attested by a fort, which may have existed before the Muslim
a
tlement. This settlement had control both of
trade and of
ferry for overland
river-borne
traffic.67
The
of the Perso-Arabic
of the Can
ambiguities
script of older manuscripts
rise
to
acute
and
later
of
editorial
ddyan
interpre
premdkhydns
give
problems
the consequence
editorial
differ widely
that modern
tation, with
transcriptions
in noticeable
accord with the disciplinary
trainings and ideological
backgrounds
of
the individual
the widespread
and early popularity of
in Perso
five
illustrated
manuscripts
by
fragmentary
early
a
one
in
of
and
unillus
Arabic
illustrations
variety
regional styles)
script (the
a
trated manuscript;
and also
Persian translation by cAbd al-Quddus Gangohi
of
which
only a few verses survived the wars between Buhlul Lodi and Husayn
the work
editors.68 Nevertheless
is attested
Sharqi. A later Devanagari

transcription was
and there is an old translation into Bengali.
The
verse
Awadh
from
probably
undertaken
in Rajasthan,
in the qasbas and dargdhs

of the region of
produced
is in a different dialect
the end of the fourteenth century onwards
literature
if not a different
of
language from the current speech of the urban population
form of "eastern Hindi," with different termina
It is a fully developed
in the tenses of the verbs, and different forms of the postpositions;69
and
a vocabulary
to
Persian
which
exclude
Arabic
loan
and
appears consciously
words. This conceals?one
obvious source of inspi
may argue deliberately?the
Dehli.
tions
sentiment.
for the new romantic narrative poems with tinges of mystical
is not Sanskritic, but derived from the Persian poetic tradition so greatly
from the romantic mathnavls
of the pattern set
loved by Sufis, and particularly
ration
This
67
in December
Behl
and the present
writer
For a fourteenth-cen
Visited
2003.
by A.K.
one of whose
in Awadh
to sell in Dehli,
of a merchant
cloth woven
tury anecdote
carrying
see Hamid
bales was
lost at a ferry,
1959:
183.
Qalandar
68
with
the rural life and
P.L. Gupta
art-historian
and familiar
(Dalmai
1964), numismatist,
of Awadh
and Bihar;
M.P.
Uni
dialects
Hindi
(Dalmai
1967),
Department,
Gupta
Agra
a preference
at Bikaner;
and M. Ansarullah
with
for the later Nagari
versity,
script Ms
Muslim
who
has provided
(Dalmai
1996), Urdu Department,
Aligarh
University,
in the script
in which
it was
transmitted.
originally
69
a descriptive
in preparing
There would
still be grave
difficulties
interpretative
on Jayasi's
of the Canddyan,
of the language
but for a descriptive
based
grammar
see Dhar
1949:
1-29.
century premdkhydn,
an
edition
grammar
sixteenth
of Ganja and imitated in Dehli by Amir Khusraw. The sophisticated

was adopted by these poets in Awadh was a deliberate bilingual
that
strategy
a climate of sensibility and a theology
to propagate a world-view,
ism designed
in
of the immigrants
that would enhance the influence, power and acceptability
by Nizami
In the celebration
of the beauties
this particular
Indian environment.
of the
its fruits and flowers,
its culinary delicacies
Indian countryside,
and the plea
on the part
sures of its people,
it is also a gesture of loyalty and commitment
of the settlers.
are many aspects of the contents of the Canddyan
and later Muslim
towhich we may briefly call attention here. One aspect is the alliances
premdkhydns
There
poets with groups displaying

and "anti-Brahmanical"
disruptive
of the settler-Muslim
of a socially
similar
kind.
sensibilities,
The earliest
usually
of these
source in the widely

has a "folk-tale"
distributed
oral saga of
premdkhydns
the Ahir hero Lorik (Vaudeville
1996: 262-72).70 "Sanskrit writers describe the
to wine and women,
abhiras [ahirs] as arrogant, violent,
addicted
beef-eaters
a dangerous wild
1996: 262; cf. Russell
tribe unworthy of contact with

and Lai 1916: vol. 2, 18-38).
sellers of curds, who may be iden
and cattle-stealers?altogether
Aryan castes" (Vaudeville
for wandering
cowherds
and
Sympathy
tified as Ahirs, is apparent in the Sufi anecdotal
literature of the Dehli Sultanate
see
Lorik's
is
Hasan
1966:
227-28,
(Amir
above).
flight with a married woman
a high point in the narrative. The visit of the lady with her companions
to the
treated, but one Vidya Dani, who by his name may
temple is sympathetically
tax or alms, has his fingers cut off
be a Brahman
and goes around demanding
ascetic who has been
by Lorik.71 On the other hand the bdjir, the wandering
a
more sympathetically
to
is
Buddhist
represent
Vajrdcdrya,
wandering
thought
treated. He behaves
like a wandering Darvesh
in the Persian Sufi tradition, who
is "a martyr of Love." He falls unconscious
at the sight of Chanda glimpsed at
an upper window
70
Muslim
sellers
hero
Afghan
27).
girl,
and goes
around
about
singing
matter
the subsequent
recalls
subject
love.
poets of tribal oral tales of ill-fated
recurs.
In one of the Indo-Afghan
of curds
use
The
is a herdsman,
commander
it.72
made
by eighteenth-century
Panjabi
and
for wandering
cowherds
sympathy
tales set in the late fifteenth
the
century
of a baqqdl
from
the
daughter
(baniya)
This
who
his
love?the
regains
carried her away
1993: 23-26;
cAbd Allah
1954: 24
(Mushtaqi
into a baniya
In Yadgar's
late version,
the hero
is transformed
of the same caste as the
coins
and he adds
the detail
that he took 250
from
the dead Afghan's
clothes
gold
who
has
1931: 23-26; Digby forthcoming).

(Yadgar
71
In the Miragdvatl
he spurns.
road, which
72
The
identification
strengthened
by
evidence
of Kutban
was
made
of
south
the hero
is subject
by P.L. Gupta
Indian Buddhist
to similar
(Dalmai
vajrdcdryas
demands
1964:
42).
travelling
by
Its
a "Dani"
on
plausibility
in India
widely
the
is
as
SIMON DIGBY
342
at
is that it marks the creation?apparently
The importance of the Canddyan
a specific date in the eighth decade of the fourteenth century and at the exact
a literary genre that was inspired
location of a Muslim
settlement in Awadh?of
strategy of considerable
by an ideological
subtlety.73 An effacement of the signs
and Persianate
of
the
authors of the poems, and of the
of the Muslim
identity
in
is characteris
environment
and
which
khdnaqdh
they were composed,
qasba
to
tic of the Canddyan and later surviving examples of the genre down
the Chltravall
of Usman, which dates from the reign of Jahangir (Usman 1981). This efface
ment
is accompanied
of the Persian
by a purging from the literary vocabulary
so commonly
used in the "proto-Urdu" dialects, and the
and Arabic
loan-words
deliberate
adoption of a "literary" genre in an appropriate dialect refined from
the com
among whom
speech of the people of the countryside
were
of
the
settled.
poems
posers
of these choices of idiom is illustrated by the spelling of
The intentionality
names
Muslim
that occur only in the opening dedicatory
portion. This intro
the common
in turn God,
the
of Persian mathnavls,
praising
is hailed by the "modern
ruler and a patron. The Creator
is not called
terms dhani and sarjanhdr.
The ruling monarch
duction
follows
Prophet,
the current
the order
Indo-Aryan"
the min
Shah but Sah Peroj, described as the "big Raja of Dhilli";
Feroz/Firuz
ister Khan Jahan has lost the foreign guttural fricative of the initial kh; and the
has become
Jainuddi
Sufi guide Shaykh Zaynuddin
(Dalmai
(Zayn al-Din)
of indige
1996: 39-45). This is a process of personal
literary identification,
we
examine
below?
nization. The poet is an educated Muslim,
possibly?as
a
in the
an
and
honored
esteemed
and
social
from
lineage
courtly
background
a
names
in
"correct"
Islamic world. There is no doubt that he could spell these
fashion, but Mawlana
illiterate pronunciation
was himself adapting.
The greater
extent
Da'ud
as
the
sixteenth
In that
82-101).
ters with Mukundarama
1983:
(discussed
century,
mainly
text there are
to do so in a manner
chosen
in the rural environment
and voluntary
an emerging
by comparison with
in the fifteenth
century
late
has
current
that reflects
the
to which
he
of Awadh
can be illustrated
nature of these adaptations
of
vernacular
tradition
poetry in the Deccan
above,
derived
pp.
from
references
328-33)
and
in particular
by a
Taranatha's
dateable
(Templeman
hagiographies
to encoun
sixteenth
century
of Band
Balabhadra
(Virabhadra)
to the
of Katak,
Ramachandra
and
at Varanasi,
and a shadow
artist projecting
of Humayun
Pandit Madhusudan
images
hugarh,
at Mathura.
and Akbar
73
the texts
neither
in the genre
of the Awadhi
If there were
premdkhydn,
predecessors
nor literary mention
the Canddyan
the survival
of them has survived.
themselves
Regarding
none
to the
of them complete)
and the references
of so many
(unfortunately
manuscripts
poem
in Indo-Persian
sources
show
the popularity
that
it enjoyed.
comparison with the choices made in Nizami Dakani's Kadam Rao Padam Rao.
In that poem the few common Perso-Arabic
lexical items that occur are usually
as are Muslim
names
in particular. A
spelled in their "correct" orthography,
more decisive
choice is that of the meter which
follows "the Hindi
system of
and is in a form of stanzas
of four caupdis (more correctly

consisting
a
dohd (Kellogg
followed by
1938: 574-5, paras. 980, 982). We have
dvipada)
seen that Nizami Dakani's
poem is in the mutaqarib meter often used in Persian
in narrative mathnavls
1798: 138). The Canddyan
verse, particularly
(Gladwin
in Awadh, mark
written
and the premdkhydns
that followed
Musalmans
it,
by
prosody"
the emergence
of perhaps
the most
north Indian narrative poetry, above
and enduring genre of modern

prevalent
all represented by the Rdmacaritamdnasa
of Tulsi Das.
The
in which
environment
this striking literary tradi
the provincialization
that occurred in the last decades of the
in the Awadh
Sultanate. The links between
the Muslims
country
immediate
tion emerged
greater Dehli
historical
was
were not yet broken, even though a move

towards
remote
environment
the
local
had
amid
these
integration
appeared
as he acknowledged
in his prologue, was
colonists. Mawlana
Da'ud at Dalmau,
a disciple of Shaykh Zayn al-Din, nephew and inheritor of a large portion of
side and metropolis
a new
of Dehli
with
the authority
of Shaykh Nasir al-Din Mahmud

"the Lamp of Dehli"
Chishti,
connection
The
latter
retained
his
with
the Awadh
(Chirdgh-i Dehli).
country
to visit his home after he had taken up residence
side and continued
in Dehli.
It is likely that Mawlana

Da3ud had passed time in Dehli, and that he had met
the younger Khwaja-i
iden
Jahan, wazir of Firuz Shah Tughluq. A possible
to high courtly and Sufi
that he had access
tification of the author suggests
circles in Dehli,
and was himself
the ancestor of an influential Chishti
lineage
in Awadh.
the Canddyan, M. Ansarulllah
the identity of
proposes
Mawlana
Da'ud with Shaykh Da'ud, who was the grandfather of the important
Chishti Sabiri Shaykh Ahmad
cAbd al-Haqq. Upon Ansarullah's
inquiries this
at
has
found
that
descendants
his tomb in
support among
suggestion
Shaykh's
a late
to Badayuni,
Rudawli. The preacher (waciz) Taqi al-Din, who?according
verses
source
to
1898:
vol.
read
his
1, 333)?"used
sixteenth-century
(Badayuni
The
latest editor
of
from the minbar

then have been another grandson
(pulpit) of a mosque" would
of Shaykh Da'ud, Taqi al-Din who was
the elder brother of Shaykh Ahmad
cAbd al-Haqq (Dalmai 1996: 11-13).
There
are some weak
The proposition
that the
points in this identification.
was the same Da'ud as the grandfather of Ahmad
cAbd
author of the Canddyan

al-Haqq imposes no chronological
quoted
is said to have
in the source
difficulty. But the same Da'ud
fled from Balkh in the time of "Hulagu" (not later than
SIMON DIGBY
344
to have
in the reign of cAla3 al-Din

in
the time of "Hulagu," his age
(r. 1295-1316).
Khalji
the Canddyan.
would
have been not less than 120 years when he composed
or
is
is
Another
that
Dalmau
80
90
kilometers
southwest of
difficulty
perhaps
1265),74 and also
received
lands
in Rudawli
If he fled from Balkh
is also a problem of whence Badayuni, writing a couple of cen

this information about the preacher Taqi al-Din reciting the
There
Rudawli.
turies
later, derived
poem
in
a mosque.
compo
quotes the family tree from a nineteenth-century
Though Ansarullah
a bio
can
to
it
intermediaries
be
traced
sition,
through seventeenth-century
of
Anwar
Ahmad
cAbd
tadhkira regarding Shaykh
Rudawli,
al-Haqq
graphical
a few years before
1491 (Ghulam Sarwar 1914:
al-cUyun, probably composed
cAbd al-Quddus Gangohi
Chishti
1997: 1140-41;
n.
see
and
1975:
9,15-16
120-21;
88). This passage by cAbd
Digby
not
it
the identity of Mawlana
of
while
does
al-Quddus,
provide complete proof
corrects some impossibilities
Da3ud at Dalmau with Shaykh Da'ud of Rudawli,
in the subsequent
transmissions
and provides details which
strengthen the case
vol.
cAbd al-Rahman
1, 386;
1295/1878:
for the identification.

is referred to
cAla al-Din Khalji, who bestowed
the land at Rudawli,
account of the ancestry of the family at Rudawli
reproduced by
cAbd al-Quddus as Sultan cAla3 al-Din Balkhi. This is an easy and obvious error
Sultan
in the earlier
the two words balkhi and khalji being of similar shape. The
transcription,
error must have had an earlier documentary
source, as it has also affected cAbd
of
narration.
al-Quddus's
With
regard
to
he
ancestry
also
mentions
to the realm
of Balkh
of Hindostan.75
"having come forward with mighty honour"?Sultan

"in
for (their) family
made worthy
provision
Awadh."
took up residence
They
(sakunat
of
descent
that "some
the family from the caliph cUmar Faruq, but then mentions
men of the tribe" (chand az mardum-i
in the disaster
qabila)
the honor
attacks?had
eral Indian term for the Mongol
wildyat
the
the
of
of Hulaku?a
gen
to come from the
states that?
cAbd al-Quddus
cAla3 al-Din (Khalji/"Balkhi")
the name
of
ikhtiydr farmudand)
the subadar
of
in the qasba
of
Rudawli.
is susceptible
of fairly precise
passage
interpretation by those familiar
the semiotic gradations of Sufi hagiographical
writings, which are often de
This
with
74
The
conflated
Hulegu
75
The
standing
Ilkhan
Hulegu
or Alughu,
statement
of
in Iran but not in Balkh.

The
reigned
a contemporary
the descendants
among
ruled from Transoxania.
both of whom
Hulegu
with
fled
Da'ud
himself
that Shaykh
by later seventeenth-century
the passage
from
Balkh
transmitters.
tradition
evidently
of Chaghatay,
at
this
time
could
have
either
Qara
is a misunder
the inattentive reader but will also

signed to mislead
often indicate
the actual situation. The word qabila
in a circumlocutary
way
for the immediate
used
as soldiers rather than

of Shaykh Da'ud
their employment
suggests
were
men.
sent
As such they
professional
holy
by the Sultan to the province of
sent to the local governor
Awadh, with notification
(possibly based at the city
a
of Awadh/Ayodhya).
This notification
land-grant for them and their
assigned
ancestors
at Rudawli.76 Given
that Sultan cAla al-Din died in January 1316, if
to identify Shaykh Da'ud of the Rudawli
family as the author of the
we
are
now
relieved of the necessity
of believing
that he completed
Canddyan,
the poem in extreme old age.
households
we wish
cAbd al-Quddus
"mighty man
items of information
also gives
regarding Shaykh Da'ud.
of distinguished
had
(iradat)
lineage"
professed discipleship
to Shaykh Nasir al-Din "Chiragh-i Dehli" and had been taught and educated by
. . hasil namuda); but he had
the Shaykh
(tafllm u tarbiyat.
kept his spiritual
state concealed
in the clothes of worldly people (ahl-i surat). His blessed tomb,
which was extremely modest
(bi-ghdyat gharlbdna), was in the direction
(janib)
That
we may postulate
that Shaykh Da'ud's way
of living and
that of a recognized
Sufi holy man. He had
a
to
in
the
Chishti
great figure
professed
discipleship
lineage of Sufi Shaykhs
see
sent
to
of Dehli
the
soldiers
He
had received miscel
Chanderi,
above).
(cf.
laneous teaching in Shaykh Nasir al-Din's dargah.11 This would
entitle him to
of Rudawli.
From
this description
livelihood was not
A significant omission
is the lack
that he might have received
from the
emblem of spiritual authority. Dalmau was a military
and given the suggested profession
of older members
be called Mawlana.
or
of a mention
tabarrukdt
of khildfat
as an
of Dehli"
"Lamp
checkpost of importance,
of his family, it is likely
was
a
or
that he
soldier
there. This would not have interfered
garrison-official
tenure of lands at Rudawli.
with
the family's
has vigorous
(The Canddyan
of battles, weapons
and military
animals.) There may be a deliber
descriptions
ate ambiguity
in cAbd al-Quddus's
statement that his tomb was "in the direc
to imply it was
tion" of Rudawli?perhaps
in the locality without
intending
a
in
Nasir
Dehli
lie.
al-Din
died
1357. Da'ud followed
telling
Shaykh
Chiragh-i
a
in
in
the practice of the mathnavls
the poem
recalling
living holy man, his
nephew
and heir at the tomb, Shaykh
Zayn
al-Din.
76
is possibly
meant
to suggest
The
scenario
that the passage
to the inattentive
is
reader
came
as holy man
that Shaykh
Da3ud
from Central
received
with
Asia
and was
appropriate
it was
honor by Sultan
cAla5 al-Din Khalji.
This was
how
taken by cAbd al-Rahman
Chishti
and
77
Nizam
later hagiographers.
the general
Compare
al-Din's
dargdh.
instruction
imparted
to the youths
Akhi
Siraj
and Amir
Khwurd
at
SIMON DIGBY
346
suggest the identity of Shaykh Da'ud of Rudawli

is a further correspondence
with Mawlana
There
of names
Da'ud of Dalmao.
that would
suggest that the preacher Taqi al-Din (mentioned by Badayuni) who
These
would
coincidences
in a mosque
the Canddyan
numerous
of
the
example
recited
another
a grandson of the poet. This would be

and
links between
the capital city of Dehli
in the late fourteenth century.
the Awadh
was
countryside
states that the elder grandson of Shaykh Da'ud named Taqi
cAbd al-Quddus
to reside in Dehli.
from Rudawli
al-Din was a (non-Sufi)
cdlim who had moved
he moved
There
mosque
al-Din
in respectable
and may have had charge of a

1295/1878:
11-15). An anecdote depicts Taqi
with his younger brother cAbd al-Haqq mas
Muslim
(cAbd al-Quddus Gangohi

lying down in the mosque,
his legs. At that moment
circles
cAbd al-Haqq's
friend arrived, who
boyhood
of
the
that Ahmad
(Prince, evidently
Tughluq house). Given
was
a
with
of
when
he
cAbd al-Haqq
age
marriageable
stayed
Taqi al-Din
boy
in 833/1429-30,
in Dehli,
and died as an influential Sufi Shaykh
Taqi al-Din
saging
was a shdhzdda
would
have been reciting his grandfather's

poem very shortly after the date of
its completion. Given
of Badayuni
the family background
himself, with numer
ous north Indian calim and Sufi connections,
it is not improbable
that an anec
a
from other
dote of Taqi al-Din reciting Da'ud's
(in Dehli,
poem at
mosque
could have been
evidence)
transmitted
to him from some unidentified
written
or
source.
oral
to strengthen the plausibility

of the identification.
course
in
fifteenth
of
the
The dargdh
the
century was permeated
a
eastern Hindi poetry, exemplified
tradition of Sufi/Yogic
by dohds and
by
cArif (son of Ahmad
cAbd al-Haqq),
Shaykh Piyare and
chaupdis of Shaykh
It is likely that there was also a man
cAbd al-Quddus
(Digby 1975: 8, 59-65).
Further
seem
coincidences
at Rudauli
there from which

cAbd al-Quddus
began to translate
uscript of the Canddyan
the poem into Persian verse, an early example of another literary genre that was
to enjoy popularity
for several centuries (Digby 1975: 55).
In the late fourteenth century, communications
between the settlements inAwadh
and
the capital
city
areas was
remained
There
close
do not
and personal movement

between
the two
to
serious
have
been
of
appear
problems
frequent.
those who spoke (or at any rate wrote in) the new
between
intelligibility
literary language and the speakers of the western
"proto-Urdu" dialects of cap
ital city or the Deccan.
Two of the fragments of illustrated manuscripts
of the
mutual
to Malwa
be assigned
Canddyan may plausibly
an
to
Awadhi
and
speech)
early sixteenth-century
78
The
Bharat
Kala
Bhavan
folios
and
the Berlin
(former
(which is outside
date.78
Tubingen)
Ms
may
the area of
plausibly
be
Around
of
the Canddyan
or "Hindostani"
the date
of the composition
a considerable Awadhi
there was
longer
tal city and in the towns of the Panjab. From
in 1321, the Tughluq dynasty had difficulties
and for a few years

in the capi
presence
the time of their rise to the throne
in getting their authority accepted

in the capital city. Among
the inhabitants of the city were
the ancient elite
are
since the previous
which
called
households
established
century,
by Barani
was
one
of
The
the
factors
that
had led
khaylkhdnahd-yi
buzurg.
problem
to his
ill-judged attempt to transfer the capital to Daw

to
The solution adopted by Feroz Shah Tughluq was
latabad
revive the slave-household
of many
thousands of royal mamluks, which
had
Muhammad,
b. Tughluq
in the Deccan.
disbanded
been
when
the Khalji dynasty

Shah could draw on
tury before. Feroz

tasks as well
administrative
and military
kdrkhdnas. These bandagdn-i
ferozshahl,
(umard'-i
(Bihamad
tanis" by
nance
of
from
the
power more
the services of these
attained
as for profitable
though called
a cen
than half
royal slaves for

activities
in industrial
the "Turkish
Amirs"
of the Tughluq dynasty

atrdk) by one source fond of the ceremonial
are
f.
425v
Khani Ms,
and elsewhere),
the "Hindos
firmly designated
source (Sihrindi 1931: 150). A predomi
the other near-contemporary
these slaves, who had been captured or sold in youth, must have been
vicinity of Awadh. The Sultan Feroz Shah could govern by a dividing
the fruits of office
the slave party against the free (asil) inhab

and by balancing
itants of the city; but the situation degenerated when the Sultan sank into senil
ity. After his death in 1390, there was a contest for the succession.79
A conflict of interest between

and the old inhabitants of
immigrant Awadhis
a
to
led
disastrous
incident. The free popu
the city and of neighboring
qasbas
lation of the city turned against the slaves. Those slaves who did not flee from
in three days of grace given to them were hunted down and massacred.
Dehli
the slaves were great Amirs who had houses in the Sultan's garden city
Among
to Jawnpur;
the center
art-historians
of produc
there is no consensus
about
among
in a "Caurapancasika"
Museum
the Lahore
and Delhi
National
leaves
style. Among
are Motichandra,
who
Mewar
of Barrett
the exclusive
attribution
and Gray,
reject
assigned
tion of
those
Ehnbohm
64-85;
and Topsfield
and Gray
1963: 67-68; Khandalavala
and Motichandra
1969:
(Barrett
on Bhdgavata
Pur ana, University
thesis
of Chicago;
Ehnbohm,
unpublished
in this style as far east as Rohtas.
I have recorded murals
2001:
35-9; Digby
2004).
Daniel
Topsfield
The
study
cate there
All
painting.
bihdri which
a
similar
unique
79
76-7).
a random
of
is no
correlation
of
them
can
be
hand
of
sample
between
are
in a crude
assigned
include
the
Sultanate-period
two sources
The
the
texts
of
these
illustrated
of manuscripts
variant
of naskh
the families
Indian
to the fifteenth
or early
seemed
manuscripts
and the links in the
script
with
some
sixteenth
Jawnpur
anthology,
closely
at Rampur.
of accounting
manual
are not in agreement
as to the exact
Other
century.
to around
dateable
sequence
of
events
to indi
styles
influence
manuscripts
1460
and
(Digby
of
of
in
the
1971:
348
SIMON DIGBY
The massacre was repeated by the free populations

of the qasbas
of the Panjab. It is significant that a linguistic shibboleth was used in this geno
cide of the easterners, who were
identified by their inability to pronounce
the
(Sihrindi 1931: 150-51).
flapped r in the phrase khardkhari
of Firuzabad.
Legacy
We
have
briefly
Mawlana
now
reached
the historical
and
the terminal date of our survey, and can only indicate

in Awadh.
literary legacy of the eastern settlements
a poem which
came into being with no known
Canddyan,
a genre of composition
which flourished
close literary antecedents,
established
a
on North Indian
two
next
centuries
left
mark
the
and
has
permanent
through
Muslim
authors writ
sensibilities.
The series of major narrative premdkhydns
by
Da'ud's
continues with the Miragdvati

of Qutban
(1503), the Padmdvati
ing in Awadhi
of Jayasi (1540),
of Manjhan
of
the Madhumalatl
(1545), and the Citravali
in the
Usman/cUthman
(1613). All these poems appear to have been written
Arabic
seven
script and have

chaupdis followed
a similar metrical
structure
of
stanzas
by a doha (cf. Behl and Weightman

1984: 27). All these poets had allegiances
xlvii; McGregor
were suffused with
between
human
of four, five or
in Manjhan
2000:
to Sufi Pirs,
and divine love.
and all
symbolic parallels
is not absent in Da'ud's Canddyan,
and symbolism
Sufi religious motivation
in
but it attains a greater intensity in the later poems. A change is also visible
the "matter" of the poems. While Da'ud drew upon the heroic oral epic tradi
tion of the marginal
of Ahirs/Abhiras,
the later poets have reverted
community
pool of "folklore" motifs
general (or pan-Indian,
"cosmopolitan")
attain
their
who
lointaine. Jayasi
of adventures of wandering
princesse
princes
in blending
is exceptional
this with a quasi-historical
theme of Rajput chivalry,
the enemy is Sultan cAla3 al-Din Khalji of Dehli.
the siege of Chitawr at which
from Awadh or Bihar.
Of the early poets using this idiom, all were Muslims
to the more
of them, Qutban and Manjhan,

enjoyed
and the latter was a Sufi Pir of some distinction
Two
support at the courts of Sultans,

and political ambitions
(Manjhan
a great center of weaving.
His
Usman was from Ghazipur,

xx-xxiii).
accurate knowledge
of distant areas of India including Gujarat suggests that he
a
was
He was the first north Indian writer to mention
travelling cloth-merchant.
2000:
the ocean-going
and Dutch
(Usman 1981: 101-2).80
ships of the English
is
interest.
The case of Malik Muhammad
of
He was born in 900/1495
Jayasi
at this period probably
(Akhlri kaldm in Jayasi 1962: 644). His title of Malik
a
Da'ud he exhibits
still indicated
officer. Like Mawlana
military /administrative
80
For
balandip,
read
valandij
(i.e.,
"hollanders").
a detailed
familiarity with the panoply of warfare. Tradition records that he had

is close to Jayas
connections with a local Hindu Raja at Amethi, which
as
own
as
tr.
well
local
His
Shirreff
1944:
tradition, suggest
v).
poems,
(Jayasi,
links with the fourteenth-century
pattern of settlement.
significant
social
Jayasi, with the avoidance?characteristic

non-Indian
loan words,
conveys
poets?of
of
this school
of Muslim
Awadhi
a body of Sufi-tinged
Islamic doc
trine regarding
for creating the world and the
the Unity of God, His motives
nur-i Muhammadi.
this is combined a complete acceptance of Nathapanthi
With
and ecstasy. As in the
teachings of the path to mastery
Yogic
physiological
case of the Canddyan
connection
with
and its possible
the settlement
of
evidence
that the literary impulse towards the
suggests
a
of
the
be
direct
inheritance from the strategies of
Canddyan may
composition
at the khanaqah of
when
he
the
settlement
founded
Shaykh Ashraf
Jahangir
Rudawli,
coincidental
Kichhawchha.
Ashraf
Jahangir
is one of the two Pirs
Padmdvati.
by Jayasi in the prologue

who
Pir,
gave light to my path He
like the moon." The poet Jayasi from praise
beloved
"Sayyid Ashraf,
stain
Jahangir Chishti, without
the Shaykh passes on to praise
recalled
of
is
of
of the Shaykh's
"house" (ghar) and remarks:
a spotless jewel, Hajji Shaykh by name. In his house
were two bright lights, whom God created to show the way,?Shaykh
Mubarak
a
in
like
full
and
Kamal
the
world"
moon,
glorious
Shaykh
spotless
(Jayasi
1955: 18; 1944: 15). The poet also invoked Sayyid Jahangir in an earlier short
"In the whole world
the Last Judgement
the
(Akhiri Kaldm):
poem describing
"In his house
there was
In that house (ghar) I am a Murid and he the

placed him as a lamp...
1962:
645).
(Jayasi
The hometown
of the poet Malik Muhammad
retained a connection
with
Ashraf Jahangir. He had been active in Jayas and made 2,000 or 3,000 murids
Creator
Pir"
(Yamani, Lindesiana Ms: f. 321B). The

passing onto Kichhauchha
at
with a stone the Shaykh himself
that
he
founded
embellished
khdnaqd
Jayas,
is still maintained
had brought from Makka,
by khddims and retains its links
there before
with Kichhauchha
(visited by the author in 2004).
As we have seen above, Ashraf Jahangir did not drive the Jogis away from
in the late fourteenth
the site at Kichhauchha
where he founded his khdnaqdh
century. It is also recorded that Ashraf
Jahangir later dispatched Kamal
Jogi,
the companion
of his later Middle Eastern travels, to Jayas in his old age (see
of Shaykh Kamal. Kamal Jogi
below). We have noted above Jayasi's mention
is likely to be identical with Shaykh Kamal who
is buried near Jayas and is
by the poet. He was also called Pandit Kamal by local people of
one of Jaisi's spiritual ancestors,
on the
"The
tomb of Shaikh Kamal,
Jayas:
outskirts of Jais, is locally known as Pandit Kamal's
tomb" (Jayasi 1944: vi).
mentioned
350
SIMON DIGBY
In the Lata'if-i
ashrafi by Nizam Yamani, Kamal Jogi is described with the

epithets jamic-i riydzat-i shadida u sahib-i mucdmala-i
jadida, which
can
as
severe
be
translated
"a
combiner
of
and
of
possessor
perhaps
disciplines
a new business."
These epithets
that
the
suggest
contemporary
hagiographer
unusual
that Kamal
Jogi added progress on the Sufi Path to a previous
acknowledged
of Yogic
mastery
techniques. He tells us that on this account and for his ser
vice
Jahangir during his travels and his sojourns he was granted the
of devotion
is that he was not a
(khirqa-i iradat, the shade of meaning
a
heir of the Shaykh's
license (ijdza, "to depart and act as
authority) and
to Ashraf
cloak
major
a Sufi
He was
then given
Shaykh").
spiritual
charge of the town of Jais
we
source for the tra
an
Lindesiana
f.
Here
have
obvious
Ms:
(Yamani,
301).
dition of the doctrinal fusion of Muslim
faith and Yogic physiological
concepts
that Malik
Muhammad
Jayasi displays.
had come into being with
literary tradition of the Awadhi premdkhydns
as
a
suddenness
of
the
eastward
of Muslim
result
settlers of
startling
migration
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and the establishment
of their settlements
The
in the area. A
time came when

innovative
their unique
to the early
currency and
they attained a wide non-Muslim
had passed. The period from the late sixteenth
quality
of many other genres of pre
century saw a flowering
modern Hindi poetry. The readership
and audience
for the premdkhydns
had
been extended not merely toVaisnava bhaktas, but into the common "cosmopolitan"
milieu
and melange
of north Indian society. Evidence
of this and of conditions
nineteenth
and chanting survives in the verse autobiography

of the
Accord
Das, called Ardhakathdnaka
("Half a Lifetime's
Story").
ing to his own account in his youth Banarasi Das was singularly
incompetent
as a trader. Around
and unsuccessful
1610, Banarasi Das was separated from
his family and found himself
in Agra, where
the last of his resources ran out
for their oral recitation
Jain Banarasi
Das
(Banarasi
Then
[c. 1981]: 249,
I sat
in my
house,
not
dohas
going
335-6):
to
the business
of
the bazaar.
are
There
two
fine
books (called) Madhumalati
and Miragavati which I read aloud at night time (and) ten
or
I would
twenty
men
would
come.
sing
and
I would
talk,
and
always
rise
up
to greet
(people).81
a growing
taste
for these eastern premdkhydns would explain Nagari
of them
script manuscripts
in Rajasthani
and the new popularity
of a similar genre of verse
collections,
Banarasi
81
My
own
Das
had family
translation.
connections
with
Jawnpur. However
narratives
authors
of
of
in Marwari/Gujarati
of princes-errant
centuries
and eighteenth
(Motichandra
the adventures
the seventeenth
by Jaina
and Shah
1975: 35-37, 99-103).

narrative
The language,
Lake
("The Holy
was begun
of which
composition
were
and meter
of the premdkhydns
technique
in the most famous and best beloved of all Hindi
adopted and adapted

the Rdmacaritamanasa
by the poet
settlers in Awadh
initiated by Muslim
expression
Indian Vaisnava
devotionalism.
Sherani, from his own
decline of the premdkhydn
of the Acts
point
pejorative
tradition:
Qutban, Malik Muhammad
of Rama")
in 1575. Thus
into the center of north
passed
of view,
poems,
of Tulsi Das,
a tradition of
found
this a cause
for the
Jayasi and Usman Ghazipuri by writing compositions in the
on the highroad
to universal
taste set Hindi
but it is a mat
poets
popular
acceptance;82
a sectarian
ter of regret
that subsequent
Hindu
imbued
colour.
[the genre] with
poets,
to the narrow
Tulsi Das
and Sur Das
confined
field of religious
belief
and
[the genre]
it to tales of the deeds
of Krishan
appropriated
came
later were mostly
Hindus
The poets who
In criticism
Usman's
of Sherani's
Citrdvali
was
the Rdmacaritamanasa
statement
in fact about
of Tulsi
Das.
and Ramchandar
[Krsna]
[Ramacandra].
and followed
their footsteps.
one may observe that the composition

of
three and a half decades
after to that of
The
Citrdvali
respect stands comparison with those of Usman's

to write
Poets of Muslim
origin have continued
in North
is a poem
Muslim
that in every
Awadhi
predecessors.
to the present day
often permeated with the sen
verse
down
Indian "Hindi" genres and verse-forms,

the dohas of cAbd
of nrguna or saguna bhakti. One need but mention
al-Rahim Khankhanan
and the Braj poems of Ras Khan (R. Snell 1989: 29-37;
to be composed
of note continued
1991: 63, 110-21). Awadhi
premdkhydns
and subsequent centuries (Behl n.d.: 4).
through the seventeenth
Let us end with a more generous view than Sherani's of the influence of the
timents
literary tradition of the Awadhi Muslim

of Muslim
with the eastward migration
82
style),
Sherani
which
knew
of Mawlana
were
then
Da'ud's
in the possession
former Prince of Wales Museum
that had come into being

premdkhydns
settlers of the thirteenth and fourteenth
from
the folios
(illustrated
Canddyan
in Bhopal,
of a family
and are now
in the
(now Chatrapati Sivaji Samgrahalaya) in Bombay/Mumbai
and Motichandra
These
he
1969: pis. 24-5, figs.
(Khandalavala
156-75).
were
in a Jawnpur
at partition
number
of folios
(illustrated
style?) which
at New Delhi
and the Lahore Museum
1947:
National
Museum
(Ashton
A and 82).
in a Mandu?
mostly
confused
divided
no 399,
the
smaller
between
109-10,
the
pis.
SIMON DIGBY
352
in Awadh.
of their settlements
In December
and the establishment
centuries,
2003 at New Delhi, at the close of a seminar on "how bhakti became a move
in
ment" Aditya
Behl gave a response
and absence
concerning
"presence
bhakti."83 Earlier speakers had often alluded to the traditional view that a sem
came
inal influence
from
associated
centuries,
to the "complex
of Tulsi
in the fourteenth
India
and fifteenth
and tradition of Ramananda.
in similar
Das
premdkhydns,
a strand had entered
the common
by the poets of earlier

their
discussed.
From
evocations
we
environment
whose
imagery
to north
south
the name
Behl, alluding
universe" of Indian religions with constant
and multi-layered
in the
showed the immediate ancestry of evocative
descriptions
reformulations,
Rdmacaritamdnasa
Awadhi
with
have
of religious and aesthetic sen

the continuous
tradition,
indigenous
climate
sibility of northern India and merged with

and used the simile of the junction (sahgam) of two sacred rivers. Taking his
cue from the name of the masterpiece
of Tulsi Das and comparing his descrip
tion of the holy lake Mansarovar
with those of his predecessors
Shaykh Qutban
and Shaykh Manjhan,
Behl concluded:
at the heart of this Manasarovara."
"Both
the Ganga
and
flow
the Jamuna
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Simon Digby, Before Timur Came - Provincialization of The Delhi Sultanate Through The Fourteenth Century

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Simon Digby, Before Timur Came - Provincialization of The Delhi Sultanate Through The Fourteenth Century

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BEFORE TIMUR CAME:

PROVINCIALIZATION OF THE DELHI SULTANATE THROUGH

like here particularly

? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2004

BEFORE TIMUR CAME 299

que ces change

the time of its foundation

of the twelfth century, the polity

to the authority of the Dehli Sultans. At

a further heartland area, bounded to the northwest by the

settlers who were bands of Sayyids or Afghans

in lands adjacent to forest cover, scrub or desert, could have been

outcome of defeat would have been the loss of military

the first third of the century, the Sultanate and

the capital city

to provide for the needs

1999: 315). The

1994: 41, 96; Digby

(Eaton 1982: 333-56).

BEFORE TIMUR CAME 301

the end of the fourteenth

(Digby 1980: 129-30).

ern India. These were

of the ruling Sultan, his court

successor Feroz Shah Tughluq

(Jackson 1999: 315). Feroz

for two centuries

1886: 74-8; Sikandar b. Manjhu

ensued, which built on the local

of the settler communities

at work has survived, mostly

and a solitary surviving fifteenth-century

in the thirteenth century the role of the growing

ade of the rebellious

BEFORE TIMUR CAME 303

the time of this punitive raid by Sultan Balaban,

"It is on the road to Katehr, and from there you know

of Nizam al-Din shows that relations were

of the curd-seller, who also offered

that the road was

to provide for the needs of the large population

of the twentieth century (Mooswi

and they largely rep

was often marked by and centered upon the establishment

is one of the most

traits in the character

and in the Gangetic

BEFORE TIMUR CAME 305

us bury him here and

a dog. The dog

the four men

in the city, and people

they said and the bones

Saket and Yusuf Gada

practice)10 but also to practice

like Shaykh Nasir al-Din Mahmud,

some of the precepts

that Yusuf Gada provides for his young son obvi

from alien groups:

sow a field and it provides

(Digby 1984: 101)

are their non-Muslim

BEFORE TIMUR CAME 307