Excerpts from ‘The Shade of Swords’ by M. J. Akbar
The Sufi
“If Islam spread in India it was not because of the sword of
Akbar, but because of the power of his Sufi mentors, mystic-saints like Khwaja
Muinuddin Chishti. An emperor bowed to
the saint. Monarchs could not demand obedience from a Sufi; his, or her,
obedience was only to God.
Sufi derives from ‘saf’, an Arabic word meaning wool; for
the only possession of these inspired men and women was a piece of coarse woolen
cloth.
The first Sufi to reach India was Mansur al Hallaj, a saint
so controversial that he lost his head, literally. Ha crossed the limit of the ‘ulema’s
endurance and stepped into unacceptable blasphemy when he equated himself with
truth. He was executed on 28th March 913. In India he traveled through the lands
conquered by the Arabs, Sind and Punjab, and became the ultimate symbol of love
in the popular poetry of the region. However, the true impact of Sufism began
with Khwaja Muinddin Chishti.
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