This week marks the 723rd Urs of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. On his urs, a look at the saint and his connection to Delhi
This week is the 723rd urs of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. Sufis call a saint’s death anniversary urs, a wedding, because it marks the day he was united with God, so it is celebrated rather than mourned. For five days the Nizamuddin Dargah holds qawwali late into the night, the langar is bigger than usual, chadars are carried to the tomb, and pilgrims arrive from across India.
I often visited the Nizamuddin Dargah in my role as a Municipal Councillor and I treated it as routine . While creating the the Sufi Heritage Festival two years back , I found myself pulled back there again and again. But I only began to understand it through my podcast, A Delhi Love, where I sat down with three people who explained the phenomenon of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya far better than any history book would,
Fareed Nizami is a “Sajjadanashin” and custodian of the Dargah, from one of the families that have looked after it for seven centuries. Yousuf Saeed is a scholar and filmmaker who has spent nearly thirty years researching Amir Khusrau. Dhruv Sangari is one of India’s best-known qawwals, whose journey into Qawwali began at this Dargah when he was twelve. Most of what follows are the stories they told me.
Nizamuddin was born in Badaun in 1238, the grandson of a refugee family that had fled the Mongols in Bukhara. His father died when he was about five, and his mother raised him on almost nothing. Fareed Sahab told me that on days with no food in the house she would say, “Nizamuddin, today we are Allah’s guests.” As a teenager he came with her to Delhi. He was a brilliant student and could have had a career at court. Instead he walked to Ajodhan, today’s Pakpattan, and became the disciple of Baba Farid, who sent him back to Delhi as his successor. He settled in Ghiyaspur, a village on the Yamuna near where Humayun’s Tomb stands today, and never left.
People like to say he lived through the reigns of ten sultans. Fareed Sahab put it the other way round: “We say the opposite. Ten kings saw the era of Nizamuddin Auliya.” Some of these kings ruled for twenty years, some for a few weeks, and several were murdered by the next man in line. The saint’s rule with all of them was the same: a dervish does not go to court, and does not let the court come to him. When one Sultan asked to visit, the message came back that the khanqah had two doors, and if the Sultan came in through one, the saint would leave by the other. Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, uneasy about Nizamuddin Auliyas popularity, told him to leave Delhi. His answer was that this Faqir had as much right to this earth as anyone. He stayed…And while sultans were relegated to history books. …His dargah is still full and alive .
What drew people here was was the Kkhanqah itself. In a time of rigid caste lines, he opened his doors with one rule: do not ask anyone who comes here his religion or his caste. The langar fed everyone, and the food was vegetarian so that no one would feel unable to eat. Whatever gifts came in were given away the same day. Fareed Sahab told me that before eating at night, the saint would walk the neighbourhood to make sure nobody had gone to bed hungry, because he feared God would ask him one day: Nizamuddin, you ate, and your neighbour went without? His teaching was simple: worship God and serve His creation. For those with little to give, he had modest advice: if you can’t feed someone, at least speak to them with a smile. Seven centuries later, the langar has never stopped.
You can’t tell Hazrat Nizamuddin’s story without Amir Khusrau, and pilgrims still visit Khusrau’s grave before his master’s. Khusrau was the son of a Turkish soldier and an Indian mother, a court poet who served around seven kings by Yousuf Sayeed’s count, and a man who moved between the palace and the khanqah all his life. Yousuf and Fareed Sahab both told me how Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya and Khusrau met. Khusrau, still a boy, refused to go in when his father brought him, saying he would choose his own master. He sat outside and composed a verse in his head asking whether he should come in or go away. Before he had said a word of it, a servant came out with the saint’s reply in the same metre that he had composed his question “Come in if you understand, and go back if you don’t”. He went in, and stayed for the rest of his life. Nizamuddin called him Turk-Allah, God’s Turk, and said he grew weary of everyone, even himself, but never of Khusrau.
Khusrau gave Delhi much of its language and its music. He wrote in Persian for the Sultans, but he also sang in Hindavi, the street language that grew into Hindi and Urdu. He trained the musicians whose descendants became the Qawwal Bachche, the Delhi gharana of Qawwali. Dhruv Sangari credits them with shaping khayal and tarana too.
Khusroe also gave this Dargah its colours. Fareed Sahab told me on the podcast that When Hazrat Nizamuddin’s young nephew died , the saint withdrew into grief for months.. Khusrau who was returning from some travels was perturbed and that’s when he saw village women in yellow carrying mustard flowers to a temple for Basant Panchami. He dressed the same way, took mustard flowers and went singing to his own master, who smiled for the first time in months. . The song Delhi associates with those colours is Aaj rang hai…The story of him cheering up his grieving master now belongs to Basant. Every Chishti dargah has celebrated Basant ever since.
When Nizamuddin died in April 1325, Khusrau was away in Bengal. By the time he returned, his master was buried. He said one last doha:
Gori sowe sej par, mukh par dare kes, Chal Khusro ghar aapne, rain bhayi chahu des.
The fair one sleeps on her bed, her hair across her face; come, Khusrau, go home now, night has fallen everywhere. He died six months later and was buried at his master’s feet.No visit to the Durgah is complete without also paying respect at Khusro’s grave .
The Dargah today interestingly holds almost every period of Delhi’s history. There is a mosque built by Alauddin Khalji’s son, a dome from Akbar’s reign, and Humayun’s Tomb next door because the Mughals wanted to lie near the saint. Jahanara, Shah Jahan’s daughter, is buried inside thesame enclosure under nothing but grass, and Ghalib lies a few steps away.
The same three families have looked after the dargah for seven centuries. Visitors come from every community: Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, the rich and the broke, the pious and the those seeking forgiveness . Politicians of every party come, and so do foreign leaders.
The Thursday Qawwali is what makes the Dargah the hub for the seekers . There is no priest in the middle and no scripture. There is poetry in Persian, Hindavi and Punjabi, and a courtyard of strangers, who are as much audience and participants . Dhruv described the qawwal to me as “the sound engineer of the Sufis”, whose job is to take listeners into that state – “Sama” …and bring them safely back. Fareed Sahab put it more simply: hearing Khusrau poetry in a hotel atmosphere cannot be compared to hearing him in the Durgah courtyard …here, both the poet and the one he wrote for are present..and one becomes a part of the Sama.( I have to share here that ive named the main stage of The Sufi Heritage festival ..Sama )
Fareed , Dhruv and Yousouf unanimously worry about what is being lost. Dhruv sees people filming ls, throwing cash because they’ve seen it online, and shouting requests for film songs. Only one or two Qawwal families, he says, still remember the old repertoire. An advice long shared by Fareed Sahab which i have taken to heart is simple: “Don’t send someone to the dargah. Take them”
Nizamuddin had no army and no office. He ran a kitchen, kept his door open, stayed away from the court, and had a disciple who wrote songs. That was enough to outlast every Sultan who wanted him gone, and to shape much of what we still call Dilli ki tehzeeb.
If you’d like to hear these stories as they were told to me, the full conversations are on A Delhi Love on the Culture Plus YouTube channel: