Jalaluddin objected strongly to transplanting Hindu practices into Islamic
tradition and spoke against exploding crackers at festivals, referring to
Allah by Hindu names such as
Thakur
(Lord) or
Kartar
(Creator), and the
whitewashing of graves and placing lamps on them at night on the occasion
of
Shab-i Barat
. Like other Suhrawardis, he believed that the Sufis should
maintain a relationship with the rulers and the officials, so that they could
better serve humanity at large. His disciples compiled his sayings in a work
known as
Khulasatul Alfaz Jamiul
-
Ulum
.
Besides Sadruddin Arif and Jalaludin Surkhi, Bahauddin Zakariya had a
number of other prominent disciples, of which the most famous were Shaykh
Fakhruddin Ibrahim Iraqi and Hasan Afghan.
Hasan Afghan was illiterate but the Shaykh was very proud of him. He
would often say that if God asked him what he had brought with him, he
would present Hasan as a gift. There is a story that illustrates the spiritual
values that form the basis of this reverence. Once Hasan Afghan went to a
mosque to perform
namaz
and took his place in the row behind the Imam.
When the
namaz
was over, Hasan went up to the Imam and said: “Khwaja!
You began the
namaz
and I followed you. In your thoughts you travelled
from here to Delhi , did some shopping, then went to Khurasan and Multan
and then back to the mosque.What sort of
namaz
is this?”
About another
khalifah
of Bahauddin, Annemarie Schimmel writes: ‘It
may be that Bahauddin Zakariya would not have been so well known if a
noted poet had not lived in his entourage for nearly 25 years.’
1
Shaykh
Fakhruddin Ibrahim (d.1289), who wrote under the pen name of Iraqi, was
the poet in question. He came from the neighbourhood of Hamadan where
he lectured in a
madrasa
. He fell in love with a handsome youth and followed
[1]
Schimmel, A.,
Mystical Dimensions of Islam
, 1975, p..352
