Moinuddin Chishti, also known as Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, was a 12th-century Sufi saint who is one of the most revered spiritual figures in South Asia. He is the founder of the Chishti order of Sufism, which emphasizes love, tolerance, and the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. His shrine in Ajmer, Rajasthan, remains one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in India, attracting millions of devotees every year.
Known for his deep compassion and humanitarianism, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti believed in the power of unconditional love and service to humanity. His teachings focused on devotion to God and living a life of selflessness and humility. He encouraged his followers to renounce worldly attachments and live a life dedicated to the welfare of others.
His famous saying, "Whoever comes to my shrine with sincerity and devotion, I will fulfill his or her wishes," underscores his belief in the transformative power of faith. He taught that love for God is the ultimate path to spiritual realization, and his hymns and teachings continue to resonate with people from all walks of life.
The Dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer is not only a center of spiritual worship but also a symbol of peace, unity, and interfaith harmony. His message of love and kindness transcends religious boundaries, making him a universal symbol of spirituality and compassion.
Mu'in al-Din Hasan Chishti Sijzi, known reverentially as Khawaja Gharib Nawaz, was a Persian Islamic scholar and mystic from Sistan, who eventually ended up settling in the Indian subcontinent in the early 13th-century, where he promulgated the Chishtiyya order of Sunni mysticism. This particular Tariqa (order) became the dominant Islamic spiritual order in medieval India. Most of the Indian Sunni saints are Chishti in their affiliation, including Nizamuddin Awliya (d. 1325) and Amir Khusrow (d. 1325).
Having arrived in the Delhi Sultanate during the reign of the sultan Iltutmish (d. 1236), Muʿīn al-Dīn moved from Delhi to Ajmer shortly thereafter, at which point he became increasingly influenced by the writings of the Sunni Hanbali scholar and mystic ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī (d. 1088), whose work on the lives of the early Islamic saints, the Ṭabāqāt al-ṣūfiyya, may have played a role in shaping Muʿīn al-Dīn's worldview. It was during his time in Ajmer that Muʿīn al-Dīn acquired the reputation of being a charismatic and compassionate spiritual preacher and teacher; and biographical accounts of his life written after his death report that he received the gifts of many "spiritual marvels" (karāmāt), such as miraculous travel, clairvoyance, and visions of angels in these years of his life. Muʿīn al-Dīn seems to have been unanimously regarded as a great saint after his death.
Mu'in al-Din Chishti's legacy rests primarily on his having been "one of the most outstanding figures in the annals of Islamic mysticism." Additionally, Mu'in al-Din Chishti is also notable, according to John Esposito, for having been one of the first major Islamic mystics to formally allow his followers to incorporate the "use of music" in their devotions, liturgies, and hymns to God, which he did in order to make the 'foreign' Arab faith more relatable to the indigenous peoples who had recently entered the religion.
Of Persian descent, Mu'in al-Din Chishti was born in 1143 in Sistan. He was sixteen years old when his father, Sayyid G̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ al-Dīn (d. c. 1155), died, leaving his grinding mill and orchard to his son.
Despite planning to continue his father's business, he developed mystic tendencies in his personal piety and soon entered a life of destitute itineracy. He enrolled at the seminaries of Bukhara and Samarkand, and (probably) visited the shrines of Muhammad al-Bukhari (d. 870) and Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (d. 944), two widely venerated figures in the Islamic world.
While traveling to Iran, in the district of Nishapur, he came across the Sunni mystic Ḵh̲wāj̲a ʿUt̲h̲mān, who initiated him. Accompanying his spiritual guide for over twenty years on the latter's journeys from region to region, Mu'in al-Din also continued his own independent spiritual travels during the time period. It was on his independent wanderings that Muʿīn al-Dīn encountered many of the most notable Sunni mystics of the era, including Abdul-Qadir Gilani (d. 1166) and Najmuddin Kubra (d. 1221), as well as Naj̲īb al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḳāhir Suhrawardī, Abū Saʿīd Tabrīzī, and ʿAbd al-Waḥid G̲h̲aznawī (d. c. 1230), all of whom were destined to become some of the most highly venerated saints in the Sunni tradition.
Arriving in South Asia in the early thirteenth century along with his cousin and spiritual successor Khwaja Syed Fakhr Al-Dīn Gardezi Chishti, Mu'in al-Din first travelled to Lahore to meditate at the tomb-shrine of the Sunni mystic and jurist Ali Hujwiri (d. 1072).
From Lahore, he continued towards Ajmer, where he settled and married the daughter of Saiyad Wajiuddin, whom he married in the year 1209/10. He went on to have three sons—Abū Saʿīd, Fak̲h̲r al-Dīn and Ḥusām al-Dīn — and one daughter, Bībī Jamāl.
Mu'in al-Din Chishti was not the originator or founder of the Chishtiyya order of mysticism as he is often erroneously thought to be. On the contrary, the Chishtiyya was already an established Sufi order prior to his birth, being originally an offshoot of the older Adhamiyya order that traced its spiritual lineage and titular name to the early Islamic saint and mystic Ibrahim ibn Adham (d. 782).
Thus, this particular branch of the Adhamiyya was renamed the Chishtiyya after the 10th-century Sunni mystic Abū Isḥāq al-Shāmī (d. 942) migrated to Chishti Sharif, a town in the present day Herat Province of Afghanistan in around 930, in order to preach Islam in that area about 148 years prior to the birth of the founder of the Qadiriyya sufi order, Shaikh Abdul Qadir Gilani.
The order spread into the Indian subcontinent, however, at the hands of the Persian Mu'in al-Din in the 13th-century, after the saint is believed to have had a dream in which the Islamic prophet Muhammad appeared and told him to be his "representative" or "envoy" in India.
As with every other major Sufi order, the Chishtiyya proposes an unbroken spiritual chain of transmitted knowledge going back to Muhammad through one of his companions, which in the Chishtiyya's case is Ali (d. 661). His spiritual lineage is traditionally given as follows:
The tomb (dargāh) of Mu'in al-Din Chishtī, Ajmer, Rajasthan, India, became a deeply venerated site in the century following the preacher's death in March 1236. Honoured by members of all social classes, the tomb was treated with great respect by many of the era's most important Sunni rulers, including Muhammad bin Tughluq, the Sultan of Delhi from 1324 to 1351, who visited the tomb in 1332 to commemorate the memory of the saint. In a similar way, the later Mughal emperor Akbar (d. 1605) visited the shrine no less than fourteen times during his reign.
In the present day, the tomb of Mu'in al-Din continues to be one of the most popular sites of religious visitation for Sunni Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, with over "hundreds of thousands of people from all over the Indian sub-continent assembling there on the occasion of [the saint's] ʿurs or death anniversary." Additionally, the site also attracts many Hindus, who have also venerated the Islamic saint since the medieval period.
A bomb planted on 11 October 2007 in the Dargah of Sufi Saint Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti at the time of Iftar left three pilgrims dead and 15 injured. A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Jaipur punished with life imprisonment the two convicts in the 2007 Ajmer Dargah bomb blast case.
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