set up a Chishti centre there. He was a prolific writer who knew many
languages, including Sanskrit, and through him the
silsila
spread in theDeccan
and Gujarat.
Two of Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki’s lesser known disciples, Shaykh
Mahmud and Shaykh Hamid-ud-din, introduced the
silsila
into Gujarat. Later
on three disciples of NizamuddinAuliya - Sayyid Hasan, Shaykh Husamuddin
Multani and Shaykh BarakAllah - went there. But it wasAllama Kamaluddin,
a nephew and a
khalifah
of Shaykh Nasiruddin Chiragh, who effectively
organized the order in Gujarat.
In Malwa, the order spread through the agency of three disciples of
Nizamuddin Auliya—Shaykh Wajih-ud-din Yusuf settled in Chanderi while
Shaykh Kamaluddin and Maulana Mughith settled in Mandu.
Thus, after Shaykh Nasiruddin’s death, Delhi no longer remained the
centre of the spiritual empire of the Chishti Sufis. Rather, a number of
provincial centres came into existence with none playing the predominant
role.That is why this phase in the history of the Chishti order is conveniently
labeled as the era of the provincial
khanqah
. Each provincial branch of the
order pursued its own activities and made its own history.
In the long run, the most important of these was the Sabriyyah branch,
founded by Ala al-Din Ali ibn Ahmad Sabir (d. 1291), a
khalifah
of Baba
Farid. He lived and was buried at Kalyar in U.P., in which area a number of
centres were established by his successors. Ahmad Abdul Haq (d. 1434) of
Rudawli and Shaykh Abdul Quddus Gangohi (d. 1537) were the early,
distinguished Sufis of this order. Shaykh Muhibbullah Sadrupuri (d.1648) of
Allahabad was a great religious scholar and an advocate of Ibn ‘Arabi’s
wahdat ul wajud
.
