1. Rudi Paul Lindner, Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1983), 24. See also Gerald Clauson, Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth Century Turkish (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 128.

2. Z. A. Desai, “An Early Thirteenth-Century Inscription from West Bengal,” Epigraphia Indica, Arabic and Persian Supplement (1975): 6–12. The inscription was found in the village of Siwan, in Bolpur Thana of Birbhum District.

3. D. C. Sircar, “New Light on the Reign of Nayapala,” Bangladesh Itihas Parishad: Third History Congress, Proceedings (Dacca: Bangladesh Itihas Parishad , 1973): 36–43.

4. Lindner, Nomads and Ottomans, 1–38; R. C. Jennings, “Some Thoughts on the Gazi Thesis,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 76 (1986): 151–61.

5. Lindner, Nomads and Ottomans, 7. See also Rudi Paul Lindner, “Stimulus and Justification in Early Ottoman History,” in Greek Orthodox Theological Review 27, nos. 2–3 (Summer-Fall 1982): 207–24.

6. Maulana Jamali, Siyar al-‘ārifīn (Delhi: Matba‘ Rizvi, 1893), 164–69.

7. Ibid., 171.

8. The account of Shaikh ‘Ali was later reproduced in the well-known hagiography Gulzār-i abrār, compiled ca. 1613, the relevant extracts of which were published by S. M. Ikram, “An Unnoticed Account of Shaikh Jalal of Sylhet,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Pakistan 2 (1957): 63–68. Since Ahmad Yasawi died in 1166, Shah Jalal’s own spiritual master must have been an unidentified intermediary between Yasawi and Shah Jalal.

9. Ibid., 66. Ikram’s translation.

10. The oldest Persian treatise on Sufism, the Kashf al-maḥjūb by ‘Ali Hujwiri (d. ca. 1072), composed in Lahore, had already elaborated Sufi ideas on the two kinds of jihād. See The Kashf al-mahjub, trans. Reynold A. Nicholson, 2d ed. (reprint, London: Luzac, 1970), 201.

11. Ikram, “Unnoticed Account,” 66.

12. The Persian original, compiled in 1613 by Muhammad Ghauthi b. Hasan b. Musa Shattari, reads: “Shaikh Mujarrad hama-rā hiṣṣa sākhtawa har yak-rā dastūrī-yi kadkhudā shudan nīz bar dād .” Gulzār-i abrār (Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta, Persian MS. 259), fol. 41a. The Persian version published by Ikram mistakenly reads: “…wa har yak-rā dastūrī ki khudā shudan nīz bar dād, ” which would mean, “…and he gave an order that each of them also become God”(!) Ikram, “Unnoticed Account,” 65.

13. Lindner argues that “the pastoral Ottomans followed their own economic self-interest, that is, they settled because they made a much better and more secure living as landlords or cultivators in Bithynia.” Moreover, “a given area used for cultivation, if it is as fertile as Bithynia, can support a much larger population than it can if used as pasture alone. The yield, in calories, of a plot of good land used for crops is much higher than the ultimate yield if that land is merely grazed.” Lindner, Nomads and Ottomans, 30. The same arguments would apply to the Bengal delta, where the economic value of a plot of land in rice paddy is considerably greater than if it were used for pasture.

14. Shamsud-Din Ahmed, ed. and trans., Inscriptions, 4: 25. Shah Jalal’s fame at the time of this inscription is evident from its opening lines, which honor “the exalted Shaikh of Shaikhs, the revered Shaikh Jalal, the ascetic, son of Muhammad.” It is not clear to what building in Sylhet the inscription, currently preserved in the Dhaka Museum, was originally affixed.

15. Ibn Battuta, The Rehla of Ibn Battuta, trans. Mahdi Husain (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1953), 238–39.

16. Ibid., 237–38.

17. “The inhabitants of Habanq [near Habiganj] are infidels under protection (dhimma) from whom half of the crops which they produce is taken.” Ibid., 241.

18. Ibid., 237–38.

19. Abu’l-fazl ‘Allami, ā’īn-i Akbarī (Lucknow: Nawal Kishor, 1869), 2: 74. Vol. 1 trans. H. Blochmann, ed. D. C. Phillott; vols. 2 and 3 trans. H. S. Jarrett, ed. Jadunath Sarkar, 3d ed. (New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corp., 1978), 2: 130.

20. Mirza Nathan, Bahāristān-i ghaibī, Persian MS., Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Sup. Pers. 252, fol. 146b; trans. M. I. Borah as Bahāristān-i-ghaybī: A History of the Mughal Wars in Assam, Cooch Behar, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa during the reigns of Jahāngīr and Shāhjahān, by Mīrza Nathan (Gauhati: Government of Assam, 1936), 1: 273.

21. Shihab al-Din Talish, Fatḥiyah-i ‘ibriyah, in H. Blochmann, “Koch Bihar, Koch Hajo, and Assam in the 16th and 17th Centuries, According to the Akbarnamah, the Padshahnamah, and the Fathiyah i ‘Ibriyah,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 41, no. 1 (1872): 79.

22. For notices on Rukn al-Din Samarqandi, see Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 1: 434–35. For a discussion of the problems of identifying the translators of the Amṛtakuṇḍa, see Yusuf Husain, “Haud al-hayat : La Versionarabe de l’Amratkund,” Journal asiatique 113 (October-December 1928): 292–95.

23. Although there are no known copies of the original Sanskrit work, there are many translations in Islamic languages, indicating the enormous influence this work had in and beyond Bengal. Islamic Culture 21 (1947): 191–92 refers to a Persian manuscript version of the text, entitled Baḥr al-ḥayāṭ, preserved in the library of Pir Muhammad Shah in Ahmedabad, Gujarat (No. 223). Another Persian copy of this work is in the India Office Library, London (Persian MS. No. 2002). A third manuscript copy is in the Ganj Bakhsh Library, Rawalpindi (MS. No. 6298). A fourth, dating to the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, and containing twenty-one illustrations of yogic postures, is in the library of A. Chester Beatty in Dublin; see Thomas A. Arnold, The Library of A. Chester Beatty: A Catalogue of the Indian Miniatures, revised and ed. J. V.S. Wilkinson (London: Oxford University Press, 1936), 1: 80–81, 3: 98. According to the Islamic Culture article cited above (p. 192), an edition of the Persian Baḥr al-ḥayāṭ was published in Madras in 1892–93. Arabic translations of the Amṛtakuṇḍa are entitled ḥauẓ al-ḥayāṭ, and five of those preserved in European libraries were compared and analyzed by Yusuf Husain in his article “Haud al-hayat : La Version arabe,” to which the author appended an Arabic version of the text. Carl Ernst, who is now preparing for publication a critical edition of the Arabic text, together with an annotated translation and monographic introduction, has identified forty manuscript copies of Arabic translations, seventeen of which are in Istanbul. Turkish translations began appearing in the mid eighteenth century, and one was published in 1910–11. A nineteenth-century Urdu translation survives in a manuscript in Hyderabad, India. See Carl W. Ernst, trans., The Arabic Version of “The Pool of the Water of Life” (Amṛtakuṇḍa), forthcoming.

24. S. A.A. Rizvi, A History of Sufism in India (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1978), 1: 335.

25. Muhsin Fani, Dabistān-i maẓāhib, ed. Nazir Ashraf and W. B. Bayley (Calcutta, 1809), 224.

26. Husain, “Haud al-hayat : La Version arabe,” 294.

27. The Gulzār al-abrār, compiled around 1613, or just fifty years after the death of Shaikh Muhammad Ghauth, mentions a translation (from the Arabic to Persian) of the Baḥr al-ḥayāṭ as among the written works of the great saint of Gwalior. See Muhammad Ghauthi Shattari Mandawi, Gulzār-i abrār, Urdu trans. by Fazl Ahmad Jiwari (Lahore: Islamic Book Foundation, 1975), 300.

28. Islamic Culture 21 (1947), 191–92. The Persian extract published in Islamic Culture was taken from a manuscript copy of the Baḥr al-ḥayāṭ in the library of Pir Muhammad Shah of Ahmadabad (No. 223). See also the copy in the India Office Library, Persian MS. 2002, fols. 2a-3a, in which the yogi’s name is given as Kanama.

29. Baḥr al-ḥayāṭ (India Office Library, London, Persian MS. 2002), fols. 3a-6b.

30. In particular, they recall the classic statement of the Sufi path, The Conference of the Birds, or Manṭiq al-ṭayr, composed by Farid al-Din ‘Attar (d. 1220). In fact, since both ‘Attar and Shaikh Rukn al-Din Samarqandi, perhaps the first translator of the Amṛtakuṇḍa, were contemporaries in Khurasan toward the end of the twelfth century, it is possible that the latter was familiar with ‘Attar’s mystical philosophy. Certainly, both were steeped in the same Perso-Islamic literary and religious culture. On the other hand, it is possible that this second prologue was written not by Samarqandi but by Muhammad Ghauth three centuries later, since we know that the latter retranslated the work into Persian. Carl Ernst, following the views of Henry Corbin, has argued that the frame story was ultimately derived from the “Hymn of the Pearl,” found in the gnostic Acts of Thomas. See Ernst, Arabic Version (forthcoming), and Henry Corbin, “Pour une morphologie de la spiritualité Shī‘ite,” Eranos-Jahrbuch 1960 (Zurich: Rhein-Verlag, 1961), 29: 102–7.

31. Yusuf Husain, among others, has argued for the work’s syncretic nature. See Husain, “Haud al-hayat : La Version arabe,” 292.

32. For example, in a passage in which proper breathing technique is compared with the way a foetus breathes in its mother’s womb, the foetus is identified with al-Khiẓr, a popular saint in Islamic lore, associated with water and eternal life. Again, where such techniques are compared with the way a fish breathes in water without swallowing it, the fish is identified with the one that swallowed the Prophet Jonah. And the seven Sanskrit mantras associated with the seven spinal nerve centers are all identified with Arabic names of God, so that, for example, hūm is translated as Yā rabb (“O Lord”), and aum is translated Yā qadīm (“O Ancient One”). These were not so much “translations” as they were attempts at finding functional equivalents between yogic words of spiritual power and the names of God as used by the Sufis. See Yusuf Husain, “Haud al-hayat : La Version arabe,” 300, and Ernst, Arabic Version (forthcoming).

33. While in Bengal, Shah ‘Abd Allah made a spiritual disciple of Shaikh Muhammad ‘Ala, who enthusiastically propagated the Shattari order in the delta, and whose own spiritual successor, Shaikh Zuhur Baba Haji Hamid (d. 1524), was the spiritual master of Shaikh Muhammad Ghauth. Rizvi, History of Sufism in India, 2: 153–55. Muhammad Ghauth’s elder brother, Shaikh Bahlul, also resided in Bengal after having arrived with the first Mughal invasion in 1538. Jahangir, Tūzuk-i Jahāngīrī 2: 63.

34. Around 1414 the Chishti shaikh Ashraf Jahangir Simnani stated that seventy disciples of Shaikh Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi (d. 1144) had been buried in Devgaon (site not identified), and that other Sufis of the Suhrawardi order, together with followers of Shaikh Jalal al-Din Tabrizi (see above), were buried in Mahisantosh and Deotala, both near Pandua. “In short,” he noted, “in the country of Bengal, not to speak of the cities, there is no town and no village where holy saints did not come and settle down.” Shaikh Ashraf Jahangir Simnani, Maktūbāt-i ashrafī, Aligarh Muslim University History Department, Aligarh, Persian MS. no. 27, letter 45, fols. 139b–140a. See also S. H. Askari, “New Light on Rajah Ganesh and Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi of Jaunpur from Contemporary Correspondence of Two Muslim Saints,” Bengal Past and Present 57 (1948): 35.

35. Shams-i Siraj ‘Afif, Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, ed. Maulavi Vilayat Husain. (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1891), 27–28.

36. Since Sultan Ghiyath al-Din ‘Iwaz had died only seventeen years before Minhaj’s visit, it is probable that this story had been in circulation in the Bengali capital soon after, and perhaps during, the king’s reign.

37. Minhaj-ud-Din ‘Usman, ṭabakāt-i-Nāṣirī, 1: 581.

38. Simon Digby, “The Sufi Shaikh as a Source of Authority in Mediaeval India,” in Puruṣārtha, vol. 9: Islam et société en Asie du sud, ed. Marc Gaborieau (Paris: Ecole des Hautes études en sciences sociales, 1986), 68–69. Even when Bengal was independent of Delhi, prominent shaikhs of this order maintained close institutional links with North India—a circumstance that led A. B.M. Habibullah to describe the Chishtis of Bengal as a sort of “fifth column” for the Delhi sultanate. A. B.M. Habibullah, review of Abdul Karim, Social History of the Muslims in Bengal, in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Pakistan 5 (1960): 216–17.

39. ‘Abd al-Rahman Chishti, Mirāt al-asrār, fol. 514a.

40. Indeed, Akhi Siraj endeavored to break his more highborn disciples of their aristocratic ways. In the case of ‘Ala al-Haq, whose father was a prominent migrant from Lahore and the treasurer of Bengal’s provincial government, Siraj taught his disciple to humble himself by walking with a hot cauldron on his head through the quarter of Lakhnauti where his family lived. Akhbār al-akhyār, comp. ‘Abd al-Haq Muhaddis Dihlavi (Deoband, U. P.: Kitab Khana-yi Rahimia, 1915–16), 149. In 1357 Akhi Siraj died and was buried in a suburb of Lakhnauti. Alexander Cunningham identified his tomb and shrine with a high mound in “Sadullahpur,” near the northeast corner of the Sagar Dighi tank. Cunningham, “Report of a Tour in Bihar and Bengal in 1879–80 from Patna to Sunargaon,” in Archaeological Survey of India, Report 15 (Calcutta, 1882): 70.

41. Shamsud-Din Ahmed, ed. and trans., Inscriptions, 4: 31–33. The editor himself found the stone with this inscription “while strolling through the eastern suburb of Calcutta, early in 1939.” He was told that around 1900 the stone had been picked up from a ruined mosque in the neighborhood.

42. Ibid., 32.

43. Karim, Corpus, 47.

44. S. H. Askari, Maktub and Malfuz Literature as a Source of Socio-PoliticalHistory (Patna: Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, 1981), 22.

45. Muzaffar Shams Balkhi, Maktūbāt-i Muz̄affar Shams Balkhī (Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, Patna, Persian MS., Acc. no. 1859), letter 148, p. 448. Partially translated by S. H. Askari in Maktub and Malfuz Literature, 16. Askari’s translation.

46. The Sufi then advised the sultan that whenever he was confronted with an important concern, he should notify the Sufi of it by sending either a letter or a messenger to Mecca. Balkhi, Maktūbāt, letter 163, p. 493. See also Askari, Maktub and Malfuz Literature, 19. Askari’s translation.

47. Balkhi, Maktūbāt, letter 163, p. 503. See also Askari, Maktub and Malfuz Literature, 21. Askari’s translation.

48. Also at work here was a keen rivalry between two major Sufi orders for royal patronage—the Chishtis, who were dominant in Delhi, and the Firdausis, who under Shaikh Sharaf al-Din Maneri’s leadership were dominant in Bihar. In this correspondence, the Firdausis were clearly making a bid for patronage from the kings of Bengal. For the Firdausi-Chishti rivalry, see Digby, “Sufi Shaikh as a Source,” 65–67.

49. Balkhi, Maktūbāt, letter 165, p. 495. See also Askari, Maktub and Malfuz Literature, 20.

50. Balkhi, Maktūbāt, letter 165, pp. 508–9. See also Askari, Maktub and Malfuz Literature, 22. Askari’s translation.

51. Balkhi, Maktūbāt, letter 165, p. 502. See also Askari, Maktub and Malfuz Literature, 21. Askari’s translation.

52. The traditional date of Shaikh Nur Qutb-i ‘Alam’s death is 818 A.H. (1415–16 A.D.), as recorded in the Mirāt al-asrār (fol. 603b). But this date conflicts with the same work’s statement that the shaikh was the spiritual teacher of Sultan Ahmad, who ruled in 1432–33 (ibid., fol. 517b). Moreover, an inscription at the kitchen of Nur Qutb-i ‘Alam’s shrine in Pandua honors “Our revered master, the Teacher of Imams, the Proof of the congregation, the Sun of the Faith, the Testimony of Islam and of the Muslims, who bestowed advantages upon the poor and the indigent, the Guide of saints and of such as wish to be guided.” The inscription gives the death of this unnamed saint, who is evidently Nur Qutb-i ‘Alam, as 28 Zi’l-Hajj, 863, or 1459 A.D. (see Dani, “House of Raja Ganesh,” 139–40). The shaikh’s surviving writings attest to the vitality of Chishti thought and traditions in the capital city at this time. A surviving mystical work of his is the Mu’nis al-fuqarā’ (Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta, Persian MS. No. 466). We also have his letters, the Maktūbāt-i Shaikh Nūr Qutb-i ‘ālam (Indian National Archives, New Delhi, Persian MS., Or. MS. No. 332, and Maulana Azad Library, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Subhan Allah No. 297671/18).

53. ‘Abd al-Rahman Chishti, Mirāt-i asrār, fol. 517a. See also Askari, “New Light,” 37; Abdul Karim, “Nur Qutb Alam’s Letter on the Ascendancy of Ganesa,” in Abdul Karim Sahitya-Visarad Commemoration Volume, ed. Muhammad Enamul Haq (Dacca: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1972), 336–37.

54. Quoted by Shaikh Ashraf Jahangir Simnani in his Maktūbāt-i ashrafī, letter no. 45, fol. 139a.

55. Shaikh Nur Qutb-i ‘Alam, Maktūbāt-i Shaikh Nūr Quṭb-i ‘ālam (Maulana Azad Library, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Persian MS., Subhan Allah No. 297671/18), letter no. 9, p. 60. See also Abdul Karim, “Nur Qutb Alam’s Letter,” 342–43. Karim’s translation. These sentiments, like those found in the correspondence of Muzaffar Shams Balkhi, suggest that the words and actions of Pandua’s shaikhs were motivated by a genuine concern with advancing the cause of Islamic piety in Bengal, and not, as Jadunath Sarkar has suggested, by a narrow desire to safeguard their own economic and political interests. In referring to a “vast horde of unruly and ambitious disciples of the Shaikhs and Muslim monks, whose wealth and power had lately begun to overshadow the civil power,” Sarkar depicts these men as little more than parasites who preyed upon ageing or weak rulers, and compares their position “to that of the Buddhist monks to whom the Emperor Asoka gave away all his State treasure in his dotage.” Sarkar, ed., History of Bengal, 2: 126, 127.

56. ‘Abd al-Rahman Chishti, Mirāt al-asrār, fols. 517a-b.

57. Nizamuddin Ahmad, Tabaqāt-i Akbarī, text, 3: 270; trans. B. De, 3, pt. 1, 443.

58. For a discussion of these issues, see Digby, “Sufi Shaikh as a Source of Authority,” esp. 63–69.

59. The shrine is in the ancient Muslim garrison city of Devikot, located in modern West Dinajpur District some 33 miles northeast of Sikandar’s capital at Pandua. From the language of the inscription, it would appear that Sikandar was patronizing the construction only of the dome and not of the shrine itself, which in turn suggests the existence of a cult focused on a long-deceased saint. Three other inscriptions were fixed to the wall of this shrine, one of which, dated 1297, referred to the construction in that year of a mosque by Sultan Rukn al-Din Kaikaus. Another, dated 1493, stated that “the construction of this mosque was made during the time of the renowned saint, the chief of the holy men, Makhdum Maulana ‘Ata, may Allah make his ashes fragrant and may He make Paradise his resting place.” If the latter inscription refers to the same mosque referred to in the 1297 inscription—and this is not absolutely certain—then Maulana ‘Ata would have been alive about sixty years before Sultan Sikandar ascended the throne. Shamsud-Din Ahmed, ed. and trans., Inscriptions, 4: 15–18, 143–44.

60. Ibid., 34–35. Italicized words are from the Qur’an.

61. Moreover, disciples from throughout the region and beyond came to study at the lodge of Shaikh ‘Ala al-Haq, the most prominent being Ashraf Jahangir Simnani, an immigrant from Central Asia whose letters form a major hagiographical source for this period. Although his Maktūbāt-i ashrāfī has never been published, manuscript copies are available in the Aligarh Muslim University History Department (MS. No. 27) and the British Library (Or. MS. No. 267).

62. ‘Abd al-Rahman Chishti, Mirāt al-asrār, fols. 515b-516a. ‘Ala al-Haq’s exile lasted for only several years, after which he was allowed to return to the capital, where he outlived the sultan by nine years. His experience compares with that of Maulana Ashraf al-Din Tawwama, a scholar and Sufi who had migrated from Bukhara to Delhi in the early fourteenth century, and who was exiled to Sonargaon by the Delhi court after having acquired an immense following among the city’s masses. See Shaikh Shu‘aib Firdausi, comp., Manāqib al-asfiyā (Calcutta: Nur al-Afaq, 1895), 131.