Hamduddin Nagauri
Hamduddin Nagauri was born in Delhi some time after its conquest in
1192. It is said that his father, Ahmad, came from Lahore and settled in
Delhi soon after Muslim rule was established in India. His education was
traditional and included Arabic, Persian and the religious sciences. Later on
he acquired a good command over the Hindavi dialect used in Rajasthan.
He became a disciple of Muinuddin Chishti and stayed with him in Ajmer.
Shaykh Hamiduddin was of a highly spiritual disposition and lived a very
simple and austere life. Although the Chishti saints were allowed to receive
unsolicited gifts (
futuh
) to support themselves, he preferred to work for
his living. He had a small plot of land in a village called Suwali near Nagaur.
He supported himself solely on the income from this land and did not
accept any offerings.
He followed the principle that no harm should be done to any form of
life. His keen sensitivity is evident in the fact that he himself was a
vegetarian, and he asked his followers too to follow the same path.
The Sufis were, indeed, humanitarians par excellence. They did not
restrict the ambit of their love to Muslims alone, but embraced all human
beings for the simple reason that they were all God’s creatures, and one
who loved God in the true sense could never despise any of His creatures.
These noble values, cherished by the Sufis, were in fact so contagious that
Islam spread among the masses like wildfire.
Shaykh Hamiduddin was a religious scholar with a good grasp of Islamic
3
Surur us Sudur, p.124
Th e Ch i s h t i Or d e r 70
