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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2025
During the course of our exploration of the history and architecture of central India, Mukhtar Ahmad Khān, a school teacher and local historian, directed our attention towards a collection of unpublished legal documents pertaining to the shrine of Shaykh Kamāl al-Dīn Chishtī in Dhār, Madhya Pradesh.1 As a corpus, these documents are concerned with grants of land, revenue, and legal issues regarding the management of the shrine, but they give, nonetheless, incidental information about the Chishtīs and the religious activities for which they were responsible. The shrine at Dhār—more correctly a dargāh—has enjoyed a continuous history from the fourteenth century to the present and is preeminent among the many Sufi places of pilgrimage in central India. Despite its manifest importance, the institutional, religious, and social histories of this dargāh await scholarly attention. The present article takes a first step in this direction by focusing on one crucial document that dates to the late seventeenth century.
1 In addition to pointing us to these documents, we were also provided with Mukhtar Ahmad Khān, Purāne charāg: Bujurgānadīn-ē Mālavā [The Old Lamps: Men of Religion in Mālwā] (Dhār, 1994) and other invaluable material in his library. The authors are deeply grateful for his interest in and support of the current research.
2 An early hagiographical account is given in the mid-fourteenth-century biographical compendium of Mīr Khurd, Siyar al-Awliyā’, (ed.) Chiranjī Lāl (Delhi, 1885), pp. 197–198, (Urdu trans.) Ghulām Ahmad Baryān, Siyar-ul-Auliyā': Khvājgān-i Cisht kā mustanad va qadīm tarin taẕkirah (Lahore, 1978), pp. 296–297, discussed by Khān, Purāne Charāg, pp. 23–4. Rizvi, S. A. A., A History of Sufism in India, 2 vols (New Delhi, 1978)Google Scholar, vol. i, p. 149, further cites Maʻarij al-Wilāyat of ʻAbdī Khwīshagī Qaṣurī (d. 1695), fol. 115.
3 al-Faz̤l, Abū, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, (trans.) Jarrett, H. S. (Calcutta, 1894)Google Scholar, vol. 3, p. 365.
4 In one anecdote, Mīr Khurd recounts how Shaykh Kamāl al-Dīn arrived from Dhār to Delhi in the reign of Sultan Muḥammad ibn Tughluq and made the hagiographer a soft dish (harīsah) with some halwa in return for all his grandmother's handmade bread that the Shaykh had savoured; see Mīr Khurd, Siyar al-Awliyā’, (ed.) Lāl, p. 198, (trans.) Baryān, p. 297.
5 The source of the story is ibid, (ed.) Lāl, p. 198, (trans.) Baryān, p. 297, discussed by C. W. Ernst, Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (Albany, NY, 1992), p. 114, who feels that ‘[a]lthough these two brothers may have successfully extended the influence of the Chishtī order by their activities, their migration occurred partly due to their own initiative, and cannot be considered evidence for a Chishtī missionary movement’. This is in contrast to the direct involvement of Niẓām al-Dīn's disciples with Khaljī and Tughluq imperial expansion into Mālwā and Deccan.
6 Muḥammad Ghawthī Shattārī Māndavī, Gulzār-i abrār, (ed.) Muhammad Zaki (Patna, 1994), p. 511, (Urdu trans.) Faẓl Aḥmad Jiyūrī, Azkār al-abrār (Agra, 1908; reprint edn, Lahore, 1975), pp. 581–582, (English trans.) Ishrat Husain Ansari, Ghausi's Persian Gulzar-i-Abrar Biographies of Mystics & Learned Men (Delhi, 2017), pp. 552–553. The work consists of hagiographies of over 500 Chishtī and Shattārī saints in five parts compiled by a disciple of the Shattārī Sufi Shaykh Muḥammad Ghawth of Gwalior (d. 1563); see also Hasan, Syed Bashir, ‘Chishti and Shattari saints of Malwa: relations with the state’, Journal of Business Management & Social Sciences Research 3.3 (2014), pp. 51–54Google Scholar. It is outside the scope of the present article to chart the manuscript copies, as some are still in Mālwā and not generally known.
7 Khusrau, Amir, Khazā’in al-Futūḥ (circa 1312), (trans.) Habib, Mohammad (Bombay, 1931), pp. 44–46Google Scholar. The date 704 is given in Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui, ‘ʿAyn al-Mulk Multānī’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn, (eds.) P. Bearman et al. (Leiden), http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_8372 (accessed December 2023).
8 For the date of his transfer to Daulatābād, see Siddiqui, ‘ʿAyn al-Mulk Multānī’. The wider context is explored by P. Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political History (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 198–199, 202. The territory of Mālwā centred on Dhār and was governed separately from that of Chanderi, as noted by Z. A. Desai, ‘The Chanderi inscription of ‘Ala'u-din Khalji’, Epigraphia Indica, Arabic and Persian Supplement (1968), pp. 4–10; M. Willis, Inscriptions of Gopakṣetra (London, 1996), p. 84, with further context provided by Digby, S., ‘Before Timur came: provincialization of the Delhi Sultanate through the fourteenth century’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 47.3 (2004), pp. 308–314CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Khān, Bujurgānadīn-ē Mālavā, p. 27, with careful reservations, from which the date has hardened into a stated fact in Hasan Kashani, Dargah Sharif in India (n.p., 2022), p. 161, with the latter available online at archive.org (accessed December 2023).
10 Willis, M., ‘Dhār, Bhoja and Sarasvatī: from Indology to political mythology and back’, JRAS 22.1 (2012), p. 133Google Scholar.
11 Z. Hasan, ‘The inscriptions of Dhār and Māṇḍū’, Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (1910–1911), (ed.) J. Horovitz (Calcutta, 1912), pp. 14–15.
12 EAP1416-24 recto. Document pertaining to the Chishtī shrine at Dhār. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7016846.
13 Documents in the Sufi Shrine at Dhar (EAP1416), archived by the British Library under the digital identifier http://dx.doi.org/10.15130/EAP1416 and by the IFP in the Zenodo repository under https://zenodo.org/communities/documents/.
14 We are grateful to Dr Blandine Ripert at the IFP and Dr Alison Ohta at the RAS for their unwavering support. It is also our pleasant duty to thank the team at the Endangered Archive Programme at the British Library for their patience and support in the management of the project, and for the publication of the project's digital assets on the Programme's website.
15 The authors wish to thank the ASI, especially Dr Praveen Kumar Mishra (Director Epigraphy in charge), who kindly approved the proposal for the training and Dr Muntazir Ali for arranging the facilities.
16 For the year, we have used this table: Regnal years of Aurangzeb with Hijrī and Gregorian equivalents [data set], Zenodo, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6627242.
17 The literature on the institution of financial aid (madad-i ma‘āsh) is extensive. An early contribution and useful point of departure is S. A. Rashid, ‘Madad-i Ma‘āsh grants under the Mughals’, Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 9.2 (1961), pp. 90–108, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7762693. A recent and authoritative survey is available in I. Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India 1556 – 1707, 3rd edn (New Delhi, 2014), all of chapter VIII is relevant.
18 P. Saran, Persian Documents: Being Letters, Newsletters, and Kindred Documents Pertaining to the Several States Existing in India in the Last Quarter of the 18th Century, from the Oriental Collection of the National Archives of India, Part 1 (Bombay, 1966), pp. 55, 246–247. A somewhat comparable case is found in the Pindori documents where the grant came from Mahārāja Ranjit Singh, who was referred to with the same honorific title, the usage indicative of how regional princes in the declining days of the Mughals ‘assumed royal airs’, to borrow a phrase from P. Saran, The Provincial Government of the Mughals, 1526-1658 (Allahabad, 1941), p. 188.
19 For different classes of official documents in the Mughal empire, see Sarkar, Jadunath, Mughal Administration, 3rd edn (Calcutta, 1935), pp. 233–234Google Scholar. A comprehensive survey is given by M. Mohiuddin, The Chancellery and Persian Epistolography under the Mughals, From Bábur to Sháh Jahán (1526-1658): A Study on Inshá', Dár al-Inshá' and Munshís, based on Original Documents (Calcutta, 1971), pp. 45–145, esp. 60–61 on subsistence grants such as the madad-i ma‘āsh mentioned here.
20 See Mohiuddin, Chancellery and Persian Epistolography, p. 101 on the process and officials involved in issuing a taṣdīq.
21 On the office of dīwān, see Saran, Provincial Government of the Mughals, pp. 189–197; and Jadunath Sarkar, Mughal Administration, pp. 32–34; see also first and sixth seals in the listing below.
22 Muntazir Ali, Seal [EAP1416-24] عبدالرحمن , Zenodo (2022), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7396102.
23 T. Beale and H. G. Keene, An Oriental Biographical Dictionary: Founded on Materials Collected by the Late Thomas William Beale (London, 1894), p. 108, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3342520; and Ma'āthir-ul-Umarā, (trans.) H. Beveridge and Baini Prashad, 2 vols (Calcutta, 1941), vol. i, p. 13, which gives the pen name correctly as Girāmī. For manuscripts of the Dīwān-i Girāmī, see H. Ethé, Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the India Office Library (Oxford, 1903), p. 889, cat. no. 1625; and W. Ivanow, Concise Descriptive Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the Collection of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Calcutta, 1924), p. 365, no. 804.
24 As noted above, we have used this table: Regnal years of Aurangzeb with Hijrī and Gregorian equivalents (data set), Zenodo, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6627242.
25 Muntazir Ali, Seal [EAP1416-24] Servant of عالم گیر بادشاه, Zenodo (2022), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7401564.
26 See Ma'āthir-ul-Umarā, i, pp. 607–08.
27 Muntazir Ali, Seal [EAP1416-24] جعفر بیگ, Zenodo (2022), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7401621.
28 Muntazir Ali, Seal [EAP1416-24] Aphorism, Zenodo (2022), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7402295.
29 L. Kalus, A Catalogue of Islamic Seals and Talismans (Oxford, 1986), p. 89, no. 1. 82.
30 Muntazir Ali, Seal [EAP1416-24] عنایت الله, Zenodo, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7402322.
31 Ma'āthir-ul-Umarā, vol. i, pp. 680–682.
32 ‘Ināyatullah Khān is mentioned in N. Chatterjee, Negotiating Mughal Law: A Family of Landlords across Three Indian Empires (Cambridge, 2020), p. 98, n. 85; for Ināyat Khān and the Qur’ān, see Muntazir Ali et al., ‘The oldest manuscripts from India and their histories: a re-assessment of IO Loth 4 in the British Library’, Cracow Indological Studies 24.2 (2022), pp. 59–89, https://doi.org/10.12797/CIS.24.2022.02.03. His seal appears separately online: Muntazir Ali, Seal [IO Loth 4] ‘Ināyat Khān عنایت خان, Zenodo, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6106319.
33 Muntazir Ali, Seal [EAP1416-24] عبد الصمد خاک مصطفی, Zenodo, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7404601.
34 See Ma'āthir-ul-Umarā, vol. i, pp. 71–73 for Saif al-Daula ‘Abd al-Ṣamad Khān Bahādur Diler Jung (d. 1737), who served as governor of Lahore, and for another ‘Abd al-Ṣamad Khān, Sāqī Musta'id Khān, Ma'āthir-i Ālamgīrī (Calcutta, 1871), p. 384, (trans.) Jadunath Sarkar (Calcutta, 1947), p. 234.
35 Muntazir Ali, [EAP1416-24] میر جعفر, Zenodo, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7404660.
36 See Sarkar, Jagdish Narayan, ‘Newswriters of Mughal India’, in The Indian Press, (ed.) Sen, S. P. (Calcutta, 1967), pp. 110–145Google Scholar; and Fisher, M. H., ‘The office of Akhbār Nawīs: the transition from Mughal to British forms’, Modern Asian Studies 27.1 (1993), pp. 45–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Among other studies, mention can be made of Shafqat, A., ‘Conduct of provincial government under imperial Mughals: a study of Akhbarat of Prince Azam's headquarters in Gujarat, 1702-04’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 65 (2004), pp. 402–407Google Scholar; and Khan, Y. H., Akhbārāt: 1181-1213 Hijrī/1767-1799 (Hyderabad, 1955)Google Scholar.
37 J. Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 5 vols (Calcutta, 1912–1924), and his Persian Records of Maratha History, vol. I: Delhi Affairs (1761-1788) (Newsletters from Parasnis Collection) (Bombay, 1953). The Akhbārāt have subsequently been harnessed by several historians, including B. P. Ambasthya, ‘Some letters from Akhbārāt-i Darbār-i Mu'alla on the rebellion of Zain-ul-Abidin, the son of Prince Shuja, in Bihar’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 29.1 (1967), pp. 158–162; and M. D. Faruqui, The Princes of the Mughal Empire 1504-1719 (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 22–23.
38 A. Truschke, Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King (Stanford, CA, 2017), p. 168. The rivalry among researchers’ access to official documents is discussed by D. Chakrabarty, ‘Hunters and gatherers of historical documents’, in The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth (Chicago, 2015), pp. 103–132.
39 The project was completed with support from the Bharat Itihas Sansodhak Mandal (Pune) and Professor Rajeev Kinra (Northwestern University). For an account, see the online report at https://royalasiaticsociety.org/digitization-of-akhbarat/.
40 The volume can be found by following this link: https://royalasiaticcollections.org/aurangzib_39-40_42-43/.
41 To date, we know only that the Society's Akhbārāt may have come from James Tod. Henry Beveridge noted that Tod left no account of how or where he acquired the Akhbārāt, but ‘from the Nagari endorsements on them it would appear that they had belonged to a Hindu Serishta [i.e. a court record keeper], and presumably to one in Rajputana. Apparently, they are notes by the court agent of some Rajputana prince of the daily occurrences of the Moghul Court’; H. Beveridge, ‘Colonel Tod's newsletters of the Delhi court’, JRAS (October, 1908), pp. 1121–1124.
42 E. B. Eastwick (ed.), Autobiography of Lutfullah, a Mohamedan Gentleman and His Transactions with His Fellow-Creatures (London, 1858), p. viii; and Anon., Kursīnāmah Hazrat Maulānā Shāh Kamāluddīn Mālvī, tārīkh 6 māh-i sitambar 1902 īsvī (Dhār, 1942).
43 Gulzār-i Abrār, (ed.) Zaki, p. 511, (trans.) Jiyūrī, pp. 581–582.
44 See the genealogical chart given in Autobiography of Lutfullah, p. viii.
45 See EAP1416-44, a Chaknāmah record of a change in the boundaries of the land granted as financial aid to Shaykh Kāley, dated 15 Jumādā II 1074 (14 January 1664 CE), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7589379.
46 As shown by EAP1416-43, a Qismatnāmah or a deed of partition recording the division of the land inherited by Nūrullāh and Jūhī between Shaykh 'Abd al Qādir, Shaykh Fatḥullāh, Shaykh Muḥammad Raushan, and Shaykh Fayz̤ullāh (datable to between 1708 and 1712 CE), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7585163.
47 As noted above, these are visible online at Documents from the Sufi shrines at Dhār, https://zenodo.org/communities/documents/about. Mālīwārah also features in a grant of five bīghā of land to the important Chaudharī family of Dhār, according to a parvānā of 1669 CE, noted by Chatterjee, Negotiating Mughal Law, p. 52, no. 94.
48 For a useful account and further references, see J. Gyllenbok, Encyclopaedia of Historical Metrology, Weights, and Measures (Birkhaüser, 2018), 2, pp. 802ff. (Bangladesh), 838 (Bhutan), 1074 (Fiji), 1356–1425 (India); 3: 1795 (Nepal), 1920 (Pakistan), www.birkhauser-science.com.
49 C. E. Luard and Ram Prasad Dube, Indore State Gazetteer, vol. 2, Text and Tables (Calcutta, 1908), p. 189; on p. 321, the end of this system is dated 1867.
50 Habib, Agrarian System, p. 345, repeated on pp. 416, 419.
51 Ibid, p. 415.
52 Ibid, p. 344.
53 Rashid, ‘Madad-i Ma'āsh grants under the Mughals’, p. 102, n. 7.
54 Habib, Agrarian System, pp. 127–128, n. 27, 344.
55 See EAP1416-23, Deed in favour of Shaykh ‘Abd al-Ghanī, dated 11 Rabī’ I in the 10th regnal year of Muḥammad Shāh (17 October 1727 CE), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7215250.
56 See EAP1416-42, Collective attestation of tenant farmers agreeing to pay rents to Shaykh 'Abd al-Ghanī, son of Shaykh 'Abd al-Qādir, dated 2 Rajab 1151 in the Fasli calendar (September 1741 CE), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7584550.
57 Habib, Agrarian System, p. 346.
58 Ibid, p. 357, n. 68. Officially, the largest grant comprised 4,000 bīghā; Rashid, ‘Madad-i Ma'āsh grants under the Mughals’, p. 102.
59 Habib, Agrarian System, p. 358.
60 Ibid, p. 360, n. 80. By consulting more accurate manuscripts, Habib has improved upon the following earlier rendering: ‘The revenue derived from each bīgha varies in the several districts, but is never less than one rupee.’ H. Blochmann and D. C. Phillott, Ā‘īn-i Akbarī (Calcutta, 1927), p. 280.
61 Habib, Agrarian System, pp. 160ff.; see also p. 344, n. 14 for the great authority of the muqaddam over the grantees.
62 Ibid, p. 330, n. 82.
63 Ibid, p. 179; cf. p. 196, n. 115.
64 A. Welch and H. Crane, ‘The Tughluqs: master builders of the Delhi Sultanate’, Muqarnas 1 (1983), p. 146, pl. 13.
65 See E. Barnes, ‘Dhar and Mandu’, Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 21 (1904), illustration facing p. 349, identifying its contents with a Persian verse pertaining to the shrine of Shaykh Kamāl al-Dīn in Gulzār-i Abrār, (ed.) Zaki, p. 511: dar riwāq-i zabarjad niwishta and bazr/ ke juz nikū'ī ahl-i karam nakhwāhad mānd, translated as: ‘On this tomb upon a green stone with golden letters it is written, that in this world nothing remains of good men except their goodness.’
66 Personal communication, Smita Jassal, September 2023, who will publish a article based on her work at the shrine in the near future.
67 See R. Garg, Hazrat Maulānā Kamāluddīn Ciśtī Rah. aur unkā Yug (Bhopal, 2005), pp. 144–147 for an account of the tomb complex.
68 Hasan, ‘Inscriptions of Dhar and Mandu’, pp. 14–5, plate. 5.
69 Noticed in the Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy for 1971-72 (1981), 81, Appendix D, no. 76.
70 For stories of the Aql kā kūāñ, see W. Kincaid, History of Mandu, the Capital of Malwa, by a Bombay Subaltern, 2nd edn (Bombay, 1879), p. 102.
71 See K. Pemberton, Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in India (Columbia, 2010); T. Aftab, Sufi Women of South Asia: Veiled Friends of God (Leiden, 2022); and M. Dallh, Sufi Women and Mystics Models of Sanctity, Erudition, and Political Leadership (London, 2024).
72 EAP1416-43, Partition of Inheritance recording the division of the land of Nūrullāh and Jūhī between between Shaykh 'Abd al Qādir, Shaykh Fatḥullāh, Shaykh Muḥammad Raushan and Shaykh Fayz̤ullāh (datable between 1708 and 1712 CE), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7585163.
73 As observed during the ‘Urs in December 2018; for the broader tradition documented by the hagiographies of other Chishtī saints, see Ernst, Eternal Garden, p. 132.
74 See Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui, ‘The early Chishti Dargahs’, pp. 1–23; S. A. I. Tirmizi, ‘Mughal documents relating to the Dargah of Khwaja Mu'inuddin Chishtī’, pp. 48–59; Syed Liyaqat Hussain Moini, ‘Rituals and customary practices at the Dargah of Ajmer’, pp. 60–75, all three in Muslim Shrines in India: Their Character, History and Significance, (ed.) C. W. Troll, new hardback edn with an introduction by M. Gaborieau (New Delhi, 2003); P. M. Currie, The Shrine and Cult of Muʻīn Al-Dīn Chishtī of Ajmer (Delhi, 1989), pp. 117–140; Qamar-ul Huda, ‘Khwâja Mu'în ud-Dîn Chishtî's death festival: competing authorities over sacred space’, Journal of Ritual Studies 17.1 (2003), pp. 61–78; and Khaliq Ahmad Nizami, Sheikh Nizamuddin Auliya (Delhi, 2004).
75 See Ernst, Eternal Garden, pp. 118–154.
76 Ibid, pp. 91–92, citing an eighteenth-century chronicle of Aurangābād's shrine festivals by Sabzwārī, Sawāne, MS 285 Persian, Asiatic Society, Calcutta, fol. 23b; Green, N., ‘Stories of saints and sultans: re-membering history at the Sufi shrines of Aurangabad’, Modern Asian Studies 38.2 (2004), pp. 419–446CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Green, N., ‘Auspicious foundations: the patronage of Sufi institutions in the late Mughal and early Asaf Jah Deccan’, South Asian Studies 20.1 (2004), pp. 71–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and N. Green, Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India (Oxford, 2012), pp. 33–64 reconstructs the history of the ‘Urs.
77 See N. Ahmad, ‘Dhār Urs shurū se āj tak’, in Yādgār-i Kamāl (Dhār, 2000), pp. 9–12 for a full account of the recent changes, arrangements, and individuals involved.
78 The earliest known documentation of this term is by K. K. Lele, Summary of the Dramatic Inscription found at the Bhoja Shala (Kamal Maula Mosque), Dhar, C. I., in November 1903, discussed in detail by Willis, ‘Dhār, Bhoja and Sarasvatī’, p. 141.
79 Ahmad, ‘Dhār Urs’, p. 9.
80 On one side are histories highlighting the glories of the Paramāras by Nandkishore Dvivedī, Dhār rājya kā itihās (Bombay, 1916); and B. N. Luṇiyā, Yugayugīn Dhār (Dhār, 1964). On the other side are historical surveys of the Muslim history of Dhār by Sayyid Muhammad Husayn, Dhār kī Masjid ka Fitnā: Jāmi Masjid Dhār ko Pāthshālā banāne kī Manṣūbī (Delhi, 1935), 24 pp.; Muhammad Ismā'īl Khān Badnawarī, Maulānā Kamāl al-Dīn Chishtī (Dhār, 1945); M. W. Khān Dhārwī, Jamāl wa Kamāl: 'Allāma Hazrat Maulānā Kamāluddīn Chishtī rahmatullāh 'alaih kī 611we 'urs mubārak ke muqa' par (Dhār, 1952); and M. W. Khān Dhārwī, Hazrat Maulānā Kamāl al-Dīn Chishtī Dhāravī, Āstāna-ye Pāk: zamīmā silsila no. 1 (Dhār, 1964).