12 - Music in Chishti Sufism

Summary

Kushtagan-i khanjar-i taslim ra

Har zaman as ghayb jaan-i digar ast

[The victims of the dagger of submission

Get a new life from the unseen every moment]

Khwaja Qutb-ud-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki, a music aficionado and second in a chain of five great Chishti Sufis who flourished in the Delhi Sultanate in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, died in 1235, after bouts of ecstasy caused by the above couplet recited by the qawwal in a mahfil-i-sama, music assembly, organized by the Khwaja himself. Chishti memory recounts that the Khwaja was in rapture for over three days, and every time he would regain consciousness, he would ask the qawwal to recite the same couplet. Eventually, the Khwaja breathed his last in that state of bliss, ascending to the heaven in anticipation of achieving union with his beloved Allah. He was buried at a site selected by him in advance and the shrine soon became a major centre of pilgrimage. This was a perfect finale to a Muslim mystic's career devoted to God, marked by night-long prayers and meditation, a refined taste for poetry and music, an informed understanding of the classical traditions of Islam and occasional performance of miracles either as an expression of benevolence towards the faithful or to silence the antagonists, especially the aggressive Sunni Hanafi ulama of the Delhi Sultanate, who sought to censor the ways of the Sufis. It was no coincidence that the five great Chishti masters and the later upholders of Chishti traditions shared their love for poetry and music as central to their spiritual activities.