Chishti Silsila And The Delhi SULTANATE pdf download

Chishti Silsila And The Delhi Sultanate – Their relationship during the 13th and 14th century

By Tanvir Anjum 

Chishti Silsila And The Delhi Sultanate

This humble research tries to explore the dynamics of and identify a possible pattern to, the relationship between the ChishtI Sufi Silsilah and the Sultanate of Delhi in India during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 

The available literature studying the relationship between the ChishtI Silsilah and the Sultanate of Delhi deals primarily with the relationship between the individual ChishtI Sufis and their contemporary Sultans. 

In such studies, however, the institutional landscape of the Silsilah and the Sultanate is missing. 

On the contrary, if a study focuses merely on the interaction between the two institutions, the role of the personalities and the significance of the personal factors are overlooked. 

The present study, therefore, tries to concurrently address the roles of ChishtI Sufis and the Sultans of Delhi in their individual as well as institutional contexts. 

Soon after the inception of the ChishtI Silsilah in India in the last decade of the twelfth century, Khwajah MuTn al-DTn ChishtI of Ajmer, along with his contemporary ChishtI Shaykhs, laid down the principles of the Silsilah. 

They also carved out a space, an environment for independent action and practice of ChishtI principles, free from the interference of the state, for their Silsilah in the Sultanate of Delhi. 

In fact, from the very beginning, the Chishtls made it a definite policy to keep a distance from the rulers for which the Chishtis practiced the following principles:

 first, not accepting services under the Sultans; secondly, not accepting lands or jagirs from the Sultans, the ruling elite and other influential people;

 thirdly, not agreeing to visit of their khanqahs by the Sultans; and lastly, not visiting the court of the Sultans of Delhi. 

In addition, the ChishtI Shaykhs used their individual judgment in regard to three things: first, the acceptance or rejection