A number of works written by the prince have the Sufis and Sufism as
their subject:
Safinat ul Auliya
(‘The Ship of Saints’ – a biographical dictionary
of the saints, both dead and living),
Sakinat ul Auliya
(‘The Peace of the
Saints’ – an account of Miyan Mir, his saintly sister Bibi Jamal Khatun and
the Miyan’s disciples),
Risala-i Haqq-numa
(‘TheTreatise of theTrue Guide’
– an exposition of Sufism),
Hasanat ul Arifin
(‘The Beauty of the Gnostics’ -
a compilation of mystical utterances and sayings of the Sufis). He had also,
with the assistance of Sanskrit pandits, translated about 50 Upanishads into
Persian and compiled them in a text known as
Sirr-i Akbar
(‘The Greatest
Secret’). In his introduction to it, he claimed that the Upanishads
represented the ‘hidden books’ mentioned in the Qur’an. He saw in them
an explanation of the concept of
wahdat al wujud
. It was through Dara Shikoh’s
Persian Upanishads that these texts first became known in the West. His
other important work is
Majma ul Bahrain
(‘The Meeting Place of Two
Oceans’) known in Sanskrit as
Samudara Sangam
, in which he expressed his
discovery of significant parallels between Hinduism and Islam. He said that
there were no fundamental differences between the two religions, making
detailed comparisons of related concepts. He also composed verses with
mystical themes in Persian and Hindi.
Practices of the Qadri Order
Some of the rituals and litanies of theQadri Order,which came into evidence
particularly after it spread throughout Turkey, Egypt, India, and Africa, have
been attributed to Shaykh Abdul Qadir, while others are clearly subsequent
additions.
Particular features of the order in different regions have, at times,
been represented symbolically. TheTurkish Qadris adopted as their symbol
