Islamic way of life. This state of affairs needed to be corrected and Islamic
spirituality restored to its pristine position.
Four years after his first visit, Ahmad Sirhindi went again to Delhi to
meet Khwaja Baqi Billah and was received by the Shaykh with great respect
and honour.The Khwaja listened to his account of mystical experience with
great appreciation and treated him as a great mystic in his own right. By the
time he went back to Sirhind his fame had spread far and wide and his
spiritual attainments were recognized even by the Qadria order. He had a
khirqa
bestowed upon him by Sayyid Sikandar Qadri, a descendant of Abd al
Qadir Jilani.This giving of recognition to the spiritual attainment of someone
associated with another order was an extraordinary gesture on the part of
the Qadri order.
In 1603-04, Shaykh Ahmad paid his third visit to his
pir
, Khwaja Baqi
Billah, who on this occasion gave him even greater recognition.The Khwaja
went so far as to say, “Ahmad has guided us to the true interpretation of Sufi
pantheism. In the knowledge of mysticism he is like the sun, while we are
like the planets revolving around him.”
Soon after the death of Khwaja Baqi Billah, the Khwaja’s followers
acknowledged Shaykh Ahmad as the head of the Naqshbandi order in India.
People in general regarded him as a
mujaddid,
a reformer of Islam. That is
why his lineage came to be known as the Naqshbindiya—Mujaddadiya. His
mission, which he perceived as willed by God, was to purge Islam of all sorts
of un-Islamic practices as well as heresies that gained ground with his Muslim
contemporaries. In these he includedAkbar’s man-made religion,
din-i ilahi
.
The budding intellectual movements in Akbar’s court and the freedom
with which such issues as prophethood, miracles, sainthood and the ways of
