Londoni

Like many other saints of the Bengal region, Shah Jalal is attributed with conquering the lands and introducing Islam to the people of Sylhet, northeast of Bangladesh. Legend has it that he arrived in Sylhet around 1300 possibly from Turkey or Yemen in order to help the Muslim to fight against the oppression of Hindu king Raja Gur Govind. He came with 360 awliyas (disciples), including his nephew Shah Poran, and defeated the 100,000 strong army of Gur Govind - mainly through their mystical power. Afterward he settled in the Choukidikhi area of Sylhet since it matched the handful of earth which his uncle had given to him. His awliyas spread throughout Bangladesh preaching Islam and establishing masjid (mosque) and madrasahs (schools).

Shah Jalal died unmarried and was buried in present day Amberkhana area of Sylhet. A mazar (shrine) has been built around his grave and is visited by 100s of Muslim and non-Muslims alike to pay their respect for his noble deeds.

Many of Bangladesh's prominent landmark are named after him, including the main international airport (Shah Jalal Antorjatik Airport in Dhaka) and a renowned university (Shah Jalal University of Science and Technology, SUST, in Sylhet).

Birthplace unclear - Turkey or Yemen

Shah Jalal was the son of a Muslim cleric, Muhammad bin Ibrahim Qureshi (rahimullah), who was a contemporary of the Persian poet and Sufi saint, Mawlana Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi. His mother’s name was Fatima Saida Hasina who was believed to be a descendant of the great Imam Hussain (Radiallahu'anhum), the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (Salallahi'alai wa salaam). An inscription in Dhaka Museum claims Shah Jalal's dad was a native of Kenya, however, there's no clear proof of this statement.

Shah Jalal lost his parents in his childhood and was brought up by his maternal uncle Sayyid Ahmad Kabir Suhrawardy, a notable saint, in Makkah. He excelled in his studies and became a Hafiz (those who can recite the full Qur'an by heart) and was proficient in Islamic theology. After completion of formal education, Shah Jalal received spiritual lessons from his uncle . He achieved Kamaliyat (spiritual perfection) after 30 years of study and meditation.

Shah Jalal's date and place of birth is unclear. Various traditions, folklore and historical documents differ. A number of scholars claim that he was born in 1271 in the village of Konya, Turkey, and later moved to Yemen, either as a child or adult, while vast majority of scholars believe he was born in Kaninah in Hadhramaut, Yemen.

{map - kunqa in yemen, turkmenistan, delhi & sylhet, bangladesh}

According to the author of the Gulzar-i-Ibrar who wrote the earliest account of Shah Jalal's life, dating back to 1613, he was actually from Turkestan. He was a khalifah (disciple) of Ahmad Yassawi/Yesevi (d. 1166) of the Silsila-i Khwajgan, who himself was the disciple of Khawaja Yusuf Hamadani (d. 1140).

Shah Jalal’s spiritual guide was an eminent saint of his time, who had founded the Central Asian Sufi tradition, a school of mystics. And Shah Jalal’s birth-place was in Turkestan. But it is a matter of surprise that this fact is not recorded by any biographer of Shah Jalal Mujarrad. As this was recorded by one of his later disciples it seems to be more authentic and correct.

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However, according to oral and folk hagiographical traditions composed in the mid-nineteenth century, Shah Jalal was an Arab from Yemen. There are also those who claim that his ancestors are from Yemen but he himself was born in Konya, Turkey, where Jalaluddin Rumi's mazar is situated. It's for this reason that he is referred to as "Mujarrad-e-Yemeni" (Bachelor from Yemen).

He was born in Yemen, the son of Shaykh Mahmud bin Muhammad Ibrahim, a member of the Quraish clan of Yemen. His mother was a Saiyida... His maternal uncle, Ahmad Kabir Suhrawardi, nourished him on the milk of cattle. When the boy attained maturity, his uncle gave him training in the Suhrawardi school of mystical knowledge, which was transmitted to him by the following chain of authority: from [the school's founder] Shaykh Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi, to Shaykh Makhdum Baha al-Din, to Abu'l-fazl Sadr al-Din, to Shaykh Abu'l-fatah Rukn al-Din, to Jalal al-Din Bukhari, to Saiyid Ahmad Kabir Suhrawardi, to Shah Jalal.

Excerpts from Suhail-i Yaman ,

The Suhail-i Yaman (Canopus/Star of Yemen), compiled in 1859, by contrast, reflected a later moment in the history of South Asian Islam, by which time Muslims had begun to place emphasis on their spiritual roots in the Middle East, rather than their genealogical roots in Central Asia. Hence in this text Shah Jalal's origins are no longer held to be Turkestan but rather in Yemen.

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Sent on a "lesser jihad" with a handful of earth

Legend has it that one day his uncle Shaykh Kabir gave him a handful of earthand instructed him to go to Hindustan (modern India) and settle in the sacred place which matches this earth completely in smell and color. There he should pass the rest of his life in prayer and meditation and devote it to preaching and establishing Islam.

Being very pleased with Jalal's spiritual growth, his uncle said to him, "Jalal, you have attained the utmost; your heart and mine have become one. But I do not wish to keep you imprisoned". Then taking a clump of soil that he had earlier picked up from the ground underneath his own spiritual retreat, he placed that clump in the hand of his disciple, saying, "Now you must go to India, and when you find soil with the same colour, smell, and taste as this soil, you should stop and settle in that land, after driving out infidels."

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According to the Gulzar-i-Ibrar, Shah Jalal requested his pir (master) in Makkah to permit him to embark on the lesser jihad or warfare against infidelity in a dar al-harb (land outside the Islamic occumene) in the same way as he had directed him towards success in higher (spiritual) jihad.

The pir blessed him as requested and ordered his 313 most eminent disciples to accompany Shah Jalal. Other oral tradition put this number to be 700 (a mythical figure).

They journeyed east through India to spread Islam.

Apparently Shah Jalal was driven by the Mongol invasions to Baghdad and from there he went to Multan and Uch. At Uch it is possible that he was formally initiated into the Suhrawardiyya order as is suggested by local legends.

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Their expedition was not an ascetic or peaceful one. The booty gained from their warring enabled them to live luxuriously. Shaikh Jalal would leave various saints along the way to propagate Islam in the newly acquired territories.

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Encounter with Nizam Uddin Auliya in Delhi

Shah Jalal and his disciples reached India in c. 1300, where he met with many great scholars and mystics. In Ajmir, he met the great pir (mystic), Kwaja Gharibnawaz Moinuddin Hasan Chisty, and in Delhi he met with the city's famous Shaykh Nizam Uddin Auliya, another major Sufi mystic and scholar.

It so happened that during this time, the army of Sultan Shamsuddin Firuz Shah (1301 - 1322), the enterprising governor of Bengal, was fighting against powerful Hindu king Raja Gur Govinda of Sirhat (present day Sylhet), north-eastern most edge of the Bengal delta. According to legend, Gur Govinda was persecuting the Muslims and when the governor's army, led by Sikander Khan Ghazi, was defeated they sought help for Nizam Uddin Auliya who requested Shah Jalal to go to Sylhet and rescue the Muslims - in particular Sheikh Burhan Uddin. The Sheikh was only a handful of Muslims living in the kingdom of Gur Govinda, but he was cruelly imprisoned and his newborn son was killed after the sheikh had slaughtered a cow - considered holy in the Hindu religion - to celebrate his son's akika (christening).

So Shah Jalal and his followers left Delhi, together with Sikander Khan Ghazi (of the Delhi Sultanate) en route to Bengal to join the battle and liberate Sylhet from the hands of its oppressor.

Warrior saint - conquering Sylhet, in rural Bengal, from Raja Gur Govind

Shah Jalal arrived in Sylhet with his 360 auliyas (disciples or followers) , including his baghna (sister's son) Shah Paran. They reached Bengal and joined the Muslim army in the Sylhet campaign. Knowing that Shah Jalal was advancing towards Sylhet, Raja Gaur Govinda, the king, removed all ferry boats from the river Surma, thereby cutting off any means of crossing into Sylhet. Finding no boat when he reached the banks, legend has it that Shah Jalal spread out his Jainamaz (prayer rug) so that he and the other fighters (muhajidin) might cross Surma nodi by sitting on it. Upon reaching the opposite bank, he ordered the Azan (call to prayer) to be sounded, at which the magnificent palace of Gaur Govinda shattered.

Shah Jalal and his auliyas, aided by the army of Sikander Khan Ghazi, engaged in a fresh, hotly contested battle against the might of the local raja's 100,000 strong footmen and several thousand horsemen. However, the raja's Hindu army was completely defeated and crushed by the Muslim Army. Gur Govind too was killed in the battle.

Alternative view #1: Sikandar Khan Ghazi conquers Sylhet not Shah Jalal

An inscription from Sylhet town, dated 1512-13, says that it was Sikandar Khan Ghazi and not Shah Jalal who had actually conquered the town in the year 1303-4.

There is contemporary evidence that Sufis of Bengal were pious mystics (pir) or freebooting settlers operating under the authority of charismatic leaders, such as Shah Jalal, and were not holy warriors. In this role they are seen as peace makers spreading Islam through their noble deed and superior knowledge.

No contemporary source endows them with the ideology of holy war; nor is there contemporary evidence that they slew non-Muslims or destroyed non-Muslim monuments. No Sufi of Bengal – and for that matter no Bengali sultan, whether in inscriptions or on coins – is known to have styled himself ghazi [warrior companion]. Such ideas only appear in hagiographical accounts written several centuries after the conquest. In particular, it seems that biographers and hagiographers of the 16th century consciously (or perhaps unconsciously) projected backward in time an ideology of conquest and conversion that had become prevalent in their own day. As part of that process, they refashioned the careers of holy men of the 13th and 14th centuries so as to fit within the framework of that ideology.

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The inscription can be viewed in the Dhaka Museum, though it is not clear what building in Sylhet the inscription was originally affixed to.

Alternative view #2: Gur Govind helps Shah Jalal build first masjid

In a later biography of Shah Jalal, the Suhail-i Yaman (Canopy of Yemen), Gur Govind is not crushed by Shah Jalal as he was in the earlier, 1613, hagiography, rather, he assists the newcomer in building the region's first masjid, thereby involving himself in establishing Islam in Bengal.

In this respect, [Gur Govind] his role resembles that of Lakshmana Sena in the Sekasubhodaya: because a former raja assists in building the first mosque, a prior Hindu cultural world is construed as connected to a subsequent Muslim world, and not annihilated by that world.

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According to this view, when Shah Jalal reached Sylhet he shouted out to its reigning monarch, "Oh, Gur Govind, how is your health?". When Gur Govind heard the shaykh's soothing voice he jumped out of his sandals and lowered his head to the ground in a gesture of servitude. Then he said, "I have handed over the rule of this kingdom to Sikandar. What further service is there I might do for you?". Shah Jalal replied, "If you can, get enough stone and brick for building a pleasing mosque". http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pR0LzVCpfw8C&pg=PA384&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Y-WPT7WuBtGHhQfW3OitBA&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false

Gur Govind went to the mountains and with the supervision of his chief minister found the requisite stones and bricks, which he sent to Shah Jalal. From these materials, Shah Jalal then built a mosque having 120 domes.

Choukidhiki area in Sylhet matches the soil given to Shah Jalal

After the battle was won, Shah Jala noticed that one particular mound of earth - the one where his shrine is now located in 'Dargah Mohallah', near Choukidhiki area of Sylhet - possessed a soil of the same smell, taste, and colour as that given him by his uncle. So he settled there.

He then assigned the administration of Sylhet's towns and parganas [revenue circles] to his 360 companions, keeping his closest associates - the Prince of Yemen, Haji Yusuf, and Haji Khalil, and his most advanced disciples - near his hospice in Choukidhiki. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pR0LzVCpfw8C&pg=PA384&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Y-WPT7WuBtGHhQfW3OitBA&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false

From here, he preached Islam and became a celebrated Muslim figure in Bengal.

During this period Islam in Bengal had become an overwhelmingly agrarian phenomenon, with most Muslims farming the earth as rice cultivators. Not surprisingly, the text views Shah Jalal through the lens of agrarian piety. The reason the shaykh chooses to settle in Sylhet is not because he is looking for infidels to slay or convert, but because Sylhet's soil is right: its smell, taste, and colour exactly match the clump of soil that his spiritual teacher had given him before he, Shah Jalal, departed for India. Even today Muslim cultivators in north-central Bangladesh relate the story of Shah Jalal and his clump of soil as the explanation for how their ancestors became Muslims.

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Auliya's sent to spread Islam amongst the Hindu and Buddhist Bengalis

The entire region fell to Shah Jalal who apportioned the land among his followers. He and his disciples traveled and settled http://www.islam-bd.org/heros/shahjalal/shahjalal.html as far as Mymensingh and Dhaka to spread the teachings of Islam. Shah Paran preached in Sylhet, Shah Malek Yemeni in Dhaka, Syed Ahmad Kolla Shahid in Comilla, Syed Nasiruddin in the region of Pargana Taraf, Haji Daria and Shaikh Ali Yemeni. An expedition to Chittagong was led by Khwaja Burhanuddin Qattan and Shah Badruddin. An expedition to Sunamganj was led by Shah Kamal Qattani, whose shrine is located in Shaharpara, Sunamganj.

It is generally believed that the number of Shah Jalal followers coming with him from the Middle East was 313 and this number had grown to 360 by the time they had arrived in Sylhet. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=O3GXOqPa67MC&pg=PA166&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ptqPT-yhOsWYhQeSjN20BA&ved=0CFoQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false

Impressed by the character and personality of Shah Jalal and his auliyas the local Hindus and Buddhists embraced Islam in drove and became Muslim.

Many respectable Muslims of Sylhet are descendants of Hazrat Shah Jalal’s 360 followers, who settled all over the districts of Assam and Bengal. The graveyard of the saint, Hazrat Shah Jalal, is highly revered upon and is visited every day by hundreds of people both Muslims and non-Muslims.

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Encounter with Ibn Battuta

Around the same time as Shah Jalal was settling in Sylhet another great Muslim personality was being born in Morocco - Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd Allāh al-Lawātī al-Ţanjī ibn Baṭūṭah, or simply Ibn Battuta (also known as Shams ad-Din). Ibn Battuta would grow up to become a world famous traveler, journeying eastward through xxxx countries and travelling a total distance of non-stop for 29 years.

Journey from Chotrogram to Sylhet

Ibn Battuta states that he went to see Shah Jalal in the mountains of Kamaru, that is, Kamrup in Assam. Sylhet, however, is on the edge of the delta region just south of the hills of Assam. Ibn Battuta does not mention Sylhet by name, but Shah Jalal is known to have resided there. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZF2spo9BKacC&pg=PA263&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ouaPT7rCMpOGhQe25oSiBA&ved=0CF4Q6AEwBjgU#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false

Spiritual practices of Shah Jalal

In his travel accounts, Ibn Batuta described that Shah Jalal (R) was a great saint of hoary age and a dervish with exceptional spiritual powers. Ibn Batuta learnt that the saint had met Caliph al-Mustasim Billah at Baghdad, and that he was there at the time of the Caliph's assassination. The companions of Shah Jalal (R) later told Ibn Batuta that the saint died at the age of one hundred and fifty and that he observed fasting in almost all the days of a year. He also performed namaz throughout the night. He was thin, tall and scantily bearded. http://www.banglapedia.org/httpdocs/HT/S_0238.HTM

At his visit to Shah Jalal, Ibn Battuta found him indulging in very austere forms of self denial. He would fast for 10 days at a time and was thin as a stick. His fellow dervishes consumed the gifts given to him by devotees, while the Shah lived only on milk from his cow. The khanqah itself was situated near a cave. Ibn Battuta was impressed with Shah Jalal’s intuitive and miraculous powers for which, the author writes, he was known form the Eastern Islamic world to China.

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Shah Jalal became so renowned that even the world famous Ibn Battuta, then in Chittagong, was asked to change his plans and go to Sylhet to meet this great saint. On his way to Sylhet, Ibn Batuta was greeted by several of Shah Jalal (R.A)'s disciples who had come to assist him on his journey many days before he had arrived. Once in the presence of Shah Jalal (R.A), Ibn Batuta noted that Shah Jalal (R.A) was tall and lean, fair in complexion and lived by the mosque in a cave, where his only item of value was a goat from which he extracted milk, butter, and yogurt. He observed that the companions of the sheikh were foreign and known for their strength and bravery. He also mentions that many people would visit the sheikh to seek guidance. Shah Jalal (R.A) was therefore instrumental in the spread of Islam throughout north east India, including Assam. The meeting between Ibn Batuta and Shah Jalal is described in his travelogue in Arabic, Riḥlah Ibn Baṭūṭa (the Journey of Ibn Batuta). Amir Khusrau also gives an account of Shah Jalal (R.A)'s conquest of Sylhet in his book "Afdalul Hawaade". Even today in Hadramaut, Yemen, Sheikh Makhdum Jalaluddin's name is established in folklore.

Sheikh Burhanuddin Sagharji of China informed Ibn Battuta that Shah Jalal controlled everything that happened in the world. Even though Shah Jalal did not leave Bengal after he had returned there finally, it is believed he miraculously performed his morning prayers in Makkah whether he also made an annual pilgrimage.

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Did Ibn Battuta really met Shah Jalal?

It has always been a controversy whether Ibn Battuta had the privilege of meeting Hazrat Shah Jalal Mujarrad or Hazrat Jalaluddin Tabrizi.

The whole controversy regarding Shah Jalal has been created by Ibn Battuta. It is he who turned Shah Jalal Mujarrad into Shah Jalaluddin Tabrizi while writing on him. Jalaluddin Tabrizi had already left this world 120 years before the arrival of Ibn Battuta in Bengal and Assam. As the whole manuscripts of Ibn Battuta was robbed of by the robbers, so whatever he wrote was based on his memory.

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Died a bachelor

Shah Jalal enabled his followers to take wives and settle down. However, he himself did not marry, leaving behind no descendants and thus came to be known as Mujarrad (Bachelor) or Shah Jalal Mujarrad. This was also another way of distinguishing from other people as the name Shah Jalal was common at the time http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=O3GXOqPa67MC&pg=PA170&lpg=PA170&dq=shah+jalal+kenya&source=bl&ots=&sig=SBRuBJ0rvWe-b1cXRl4q5zHttdI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zASdT8eJEYWA8gOD053bDg&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=shah%20jalal%20kenya&f=false with many prominent figures such as Jalal Uddin Tabrizi, Shah Jalal Uddin Gajarwan, and Shah Jalal Bukhari also possessing similar names.

The exact date of his death, just like his birth, is unknown. According to Ibn Battuta, it was 1347 http://www.islam-bd.org/heros/shahjalal/shahjalal.html. He died in Sylhet, Bangladesh and is buried in the Dargah Mohalla/Amber Khana area of present day Sylhet. Later, a mazar (shrine) - the "Shah Jalal Dargah (Sharif)" (Shah Jalal's tomb) - was built as remembrance and his grave was included within this mazar.

The tomb of Shah Jalal (Rahimullah) is visited daily by a large number of devotees. His grave is unusually large, which indicates his tall physique as described by Ibn Battuta.

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After the death of Shah Jalal, Gaur was included in the Kingdom of Bengal and placed in charge of governor http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=O3GXOqPa67MC&pg=PA166&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ptqPT-yhOsWYhQeSjN20BA&ved=0CFoQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false. In the reign of Akbar, it passed with the rest of Bengal into the hands of the Mughals.

Legacy

Shah Jalal's dargah sharif (mazar)

The Shah Jalal Dargah Sharif (shrine) is located in the Amber Khana area of Sylhet. It contains the largest masjid in Sylhet - and one of the largest in the country - with xxxx number of floors and capacity to hold more than xxxxx worshipers. There's also a large graveyard where prominent 'Sylheti' personalities are buried, including xxxx and actor Salman Shah. The Shah Jalal dargah is the largest such compound in Bangladesh and is visited by more pilgrims than any other. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ov2oltTLinkC&pg=PA90&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ptqPT-yhOsWYhQeSjN20BA&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false http://www.panoramio.com/photo/9620118 After the Jumma Prayer at Hazrat Shahjalal Mazar Masjjid ( Mosque), Sylhet. The Musullis were getting out from the Masjjid. Every Friday, thousands of Muslims come throughtout Bangladesh as well as abroad to offer prayer to the Holy Mazar as well as participate the BIG Jumma Jamat in this Masjjid. It is come to know that the Second largest Jumma Prayer of Bangladesh held in the Holy Shahjal Masjjid after Baitul Mokkram in Dhaka.

People's faith in his wonder-working powers was so great that the tradition, retold by Ibn Battuta, was maintained that every day he performed namaz (prayer) in Makkah and then in the twinkling of an eye returned to Sylhet. For that matter, this 'miracle' is a commonplace of the entire Indian hagiography: even Amir Khurd, who usually endeavours to avoid stories about karamat, writes that every morning a flying camel used to carry away Nizamuddin Awliya to Ka'bah and bring him back by the first breakfast.

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Shah Jalal's veneration in no way reflects his military feats and his status as a ghazi: in contrast to Bahraich, no banners and spears are held at his mazar in Sylhet.

For every shrine in Bangladesh there are stories. These hagiographical accounts of the saints affirm the sanctity of the person and so demonstrate how and why the figure deserved to be the recipient of divine blessing or baraka. In fact, stories of saints frequently parallel the hagiographical and historical accounts of the Prophet Muhammad’s life, validating the saints’ Muhammad-like human qualities. For example, a second version of Shah Jalal’s arrival to Bengal tells of a conversation between the Prophet Muhammad [PBUH] and Shah Jalal. In a dream, Muhammad [PBUH] instructs Shah Jalal to go to India to save Muslims from persecution. Muhammad’s direct communication clearly defines Shah Jalal’s mission as a sacred quest. Thus, many of the images in the story mirror Muhammad’s life. Just as Muhammad [PBUH] was given a prophetic command by God, so too did Shah Jalal receive his saintly commission from Muhammad [PBUH]. Moreover, Shah Jalal took 313 companions to India just as Muhammad [PBUH] took 313 companions in the victorious Battle of Badr against the Makkans

 

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Jalali kabutor and Jalali mas

When Shah Jalal left Delhi, India, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya gave him two pairs of black pigeons http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=O3GXOqPa67MC&pg=PA166&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ptqPT-yhOsWYhQeSjN20BA&ved=0CFoQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false which, according to folk belief is found still today in the dargah of Shah Jalal in Sylhet and other places of Bengal, such as Cachar districts. As such these pigeons are referred to as "Jalali pigeon". Like many other saints of East Bengal Shah Jalal gradually acquired the traits of a guardian of waters and patron of trades connected with water, for example, fishermen and boatmen. Adjacent to his tomb and the masjid is the wudu area where the faithful perform ablution prior to reading the namaz or salah (daily prayers). Next to this wudu area is a large pond there are huge fish The feeding of these fish is the principal pious act of [khoybor] ziyarat (grave worshiping) to Sylhet.

If the fish eat the offering, the pilgrim's dua (supplication) will be heard. In this sense Shah Jalal's cult is quite similar to the rites of veneration of Mangho Pir or Bayazid Bistami in Chittagong and, again, is influenced by Hindu rituals.

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All three of these saints [Shah Sultan Bastami, Khan Jahan Ali & Shah Jalal] are associated with introducing Islam to three major regions of Bangladesh and attributed with playing a pivotal role in converting dense forest into rich cultivated lands. This introduction of Islam, and the general work of the saints, is often equated with “civilisation building”. In hagiographies even the saints’ relationship with the environment was deemed miraculous. This relationship demonstrated the saints’ special connection to Bengal’s physical and natural environment. More specifically, the saints were endowed with a special power over animals. Bistami (or Shah Sultan) for example, came to Bengal riding a fish, Khan Jahan Ali came to Bengal riding on the backs of two crocodiles, and Shah Jalal was known to tame tigers and protect deer. These myths paradigmatically mark a major economic, social, and cultural transformation of the Bengal landscape. Communities were formed around the construction of mosques and shrines in former forested regions and as time passed the stories surrounding these figures came to include miracles and fantastic abilities that ultimately transformed these ordinary men into saints.

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Urs

Annually, devotees of particular saints return to the shrines for mawlids, or the saint’s birth anniversaries, which, ironically, are often celebrated on the anniversary of the saint’s death. The largest and most widely celebrated mawlids are for the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Hence on the 12th of the Islamic month of Rabi al-Awwal Muslims gather to celebrate Muhammad’s birth with panegyrical poems, stories about his mother’s pregnancy, his birth, and his life. And as birth anniversaries venerate the role of the Prophet, so too do the urs (weddings) to celebrate the role of the saint. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ov2oltTLinkC&pg=PA90&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ptqPT-yhOsWYhQeSjN20BA&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false

The employment of the term urs confirms the inherent understanding of the death of a divinely blessed person as union with God. Thus, one who is regarded saintly in life is recognised at death as having achieved the ultimate spiritual goal. This divine union propels the saint toward a completely unfettered connection with God. Consequently, devotees of these saints believe these Sufis to be potent sources of blessings and miracles, miracles originally descended from God. To tap into the saint’s power and become a recipient or beneficiary of divine blessings, individuals visit the saint’s shrine. The transfer of blessings from the saint to the recipient occurs through objects such as a tomb, or through people associated with the saint such as a disciple, a genealogical heir of the saint (pir), or a caretaker (khadim) to the shrine.

 

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Pilgrims visit saints’ tombs for numerous reasons such as taking family holidays, seeking solitude or a place to meet friends, or to pay respects to the saint and to participate in urs celebrations and make vows.

Mazar worshiping - an Islamic perspective

Shahjalal Antorjatik (International) Airport

Shahjalal University of Science & Technology (SUST), Sylhet

www.sust.edu/

Shahjalal bridge (Sylhet)

Learning resources

hazrat shaykh (also spelt 'sheikh') sufi khanqah auliya dargah mazar jainamaz urs kabutor bridge http://www.islam-bd.org/heros/shahjalal/shahjalal.html http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ov2oltTLinkC&pg=PA90&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ptqPT-yhOsWYhQeSjN20BA&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false “Dealing With Deities: The Ritual Vow in South Asia ” (2006) contributed by Sufia Uddin http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=O3GXOqPa67MC&pg=PA166&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ptqPT-yhOsWYhQeSjN20BA&ved=0CFoQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false Biographical Encyclopedia of Sufis By N. Hanif [???????] Ibn Battuta confused Sheikh Jalal with Sheikh Jalalud-Din Tabrizi, and so many later writers following the Moorish traveller did likewise. In 1345, Ibn Battuta journeyed especially through Chittagong and Kamrup to visit the saint. Sheikh Jalal told him that he had seen the last Abbasid Caliph, al-Mustasim Billah (1242-1258). Ibn Battuta completed his book in December 1357. The Sheikh was reported to have died in 1347, therefore, he would have been born in 1201 and it is possible he could have visited the Caliph al-Mustasim [????????] Sylhet – Gaur Govind chops of the right hand of Burhanuddin. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=O3GXOqPa67MC&pg=PA166&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ptqPT-yhOsWYhQeSjN20BA&ved=0CFoQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false http://hudsoncress.net/hudsoncress.org/html/library/history-travel/Eaton,%20Richard%20-%20The%20Rise%20of%20Islam%20and%20the%20Bengal%20Frontier.pdf His biography was first recorded in the mid sixteenth century by a certain Shaikh ‘Ali (d. ca. 1562), a descendant of one of Shah Jalal’s companions. Once again we note a gap of several centuries between the life of the saint and that of his earliest biographer. According to this account, Shah Jalal had been born in Turkestan, where he became a spiritual disciple of Saiyid Ahmad Yasawi, one of the founders of the Central Asian Sufi tradition.[8] The account then casts the shaikh’s expedition to India in the framework of holy war, mentioning both his (lesser) war against the infidel and his (greater) war against the lower self. “One day,” the biographer recorded, Shah Jalal represented to his bright-souled pīr [i.e., Ahmad Yasawi] that his ambition was that just as with the guidance of the master he had achieved a certain amount of success in the Higher (spiritual) jihād, similarly with the help of his object-fulfilling courage he should achieve the desire of his heart in the Lesser (material) jihād, and wherever there may be a Dār-ul-ḥarb [i.e., Land of non-Islam], in attempting its conquest he may attain the rank of a ghāzī or a shahīd [martyr]. The revered pīr accepted his request and sent 700 of his senior fortunate disciples…along with him. Wherever they had a fight with the enemies, they unfurled the banner of victory.[9] It is true that the notion of two “strivings” (jihād)—one against the unbeliever and the other against one’s lower soul—had been current in the Perso-Islamic world for several centuries before Shah Jalal’s lifetime.[10] But a fuller reading of the text suggests other motives for the shaikh’s journey to Bengal. After reaching the Indian subcontinent, he and his band of followers are said to have drifted to Sylhet, on the easternmost edge of the Bengal delta. “In these far-flung campaigns,” the narrative continued, “they had no means of subsistence, except the booty, but they lived in splendour. Whenever any valley or cattle were acquired, they were charged with the responsibility of propagation and teaching of Islam. In short, [Shah Jalal] reached Sirhat (Sylhet), one of the areas of the province of Bengal, with 313 persons. [After defeating the ruler of the area] all the region fell into the hands of the conquerors of the spiritual and the material worlds. Shaikh [Jalal] Mujarrad, making a portion for everybody, made it their allowance and permitted them to get married.”[11] Written so long after the events it describes, this account has a certain paradigmatic quality. Like Shaikh Jalal al-Din Tabrizi, Shah Jalal is presented as having brought about a break between Bengal’s Hindu past and its Muslim future, and to this end a parallel is drawn between the career of the saint and that of the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad. The number of companions said to have accompanied Shah Jalal to Bengal, 313, corresponds precisely to the number of companions who are thought to have accompanied the Prophet Muhammad at the Battle of Badr in A.D. 624, the first major battle in Muhammad’s career and a crucial event in launching Islam as a world religion. The story thus has an obvious ideological drive to it. But other aspects of the narrative are more suggestive of Bengal’s social atmosphere at the time of the conquest. References to “far-flung campaigns” where Shah Jalal’s warrior-disciples “had no means of subsistence, except the booty” suggest the truly nomadic base of these Turkish freebooters, and, incidentally, refute the claim (made in the same narrative) that Shah Jalal’s principal motive for coming to Bengal was religious in nature. In fact, reference to his having made “a portion for everybody” suggests the sort of behavior befitting a tribal chieftain vis-à-vis his pastoral retainers, while the reference to his permitting them to marry suggests a process by which mobile bands of unmarried nomads—Shah Jalal’s own title mujarrad means “bachelor”—settled down as propertied groups rooted in local society. Moreover, the Persian text records that Shah Jalal had ordered his followers to become kadkhudā, a word that can mean either “householder” or “landlord.”[12] Not having brought wives and families with them, his companions evidently married local women and, settling on the land, gradually became integrated with local society. All of this paralleled the early Ottoman experience. At the same time that Shah Jalal’s nomadic followers were settling down in eastern Bengal, companions of Osman (d. 1326), the founder of the Ottoman dynasty, were also passing from a pastoral to a sedentary life in northwestern Anatolia.[13] Fortunately, we are in a position to compare the later, hagiographic account of Shah Jalal’s career with two independent non-hagiographic sources. The first is an inscription from Sylhet town, dated 1512–13, from which we learn that it was a certain Sikandar Khan Ghazi, and not the shaikh, who had actually conquered the town, and that this occurred in the year 1303–4.[14] The second is a contemporary account from the pen of the famous Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta (d. 1377), who personally met Shah Jalal in 1345. The shaikh was quite an old man by then and sufficiently renowned throughout the Muslim world that the great world traveler made a considerable detour—he had been sailing from South India to China—in order to visit him. Traveling by boat up the Meghna and Surma rivers, Ibn Battuta spent three days as Shah Jalal’s guest in his mountain cave near Sylhet town. As the Moroccan later recalled, This shaikh was one of the great saints and one of the unique personalities. He had to his credit miracles (karāmat) well known to the public as well as great deeds, and he was a man of hoary age.…The inhabitants of these mountains had embraced Islam at his hands, and for this reason he stayed amidst them.[15] One would like to know more about the religious culture of these people prior to their conversion to Islam. The fragmentary evidence of Ibn Battuta’s account suggests that they were indigenous peoples who had had little formal contact with literate representatives of Brahmanism or Buddhism, for the Moroccan visitor elsewhere describes the inhabitants of the East Bengal hills as “noted for their devotion to and practice of magic and witchcraft.”[16] The remark seems to distinguish these people from the agrarian society of the Surma plains below the hills of Sylhet, a society Ibn Battuta unambiguously identifies as Hindu.[17] It is thus possible that in Shah Jalal these hill people had their first intense exposure to a formal, literate religious tradition. In sum, the more contemporary evidence of Sufis on Bengal’s political frontier portrays men who had entered the delta not as holy warriors but as pious mystics or freebooting settlers operating under the authority of charismatic leaders. No contemporary source endows them with the ideology of holy war; nor is there contemporary evidence that they slew non-Muslims or destroyed non-Muslim monuments. No Sufi of Bengal—and for that matter no Bengali sultan, whether in inscriptions or on coins—is known to have styled himself ghāzī. Such ideas only appear in hagiographical accounts written several centuries after the conquest. In particular, it seems that biographers and hagiographers of the sixteenth century consciously (or perhaps unconsciously) projected backward in time an ideology of conquest and conversion that had become prevalent in their own day. As part of that process, they refashioned the careers of holy men of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries so as to fit within the framework of that ideology. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pR0LzVCpfw8C&pg=PA384&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Y-WPT7WuBtGHhQfW3OitBA&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false {PROFESSIONAL - ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF RAJA GAUR GOVIND: HELPED TO BUILD FIRST MOSQUE} {GREAT INFO - MUGHAL REVENUE COLLECTION IN BENGAL} http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZF2spo9BKacC&pg=PA263&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ouaPT7rCMpOGhQe25oSiBA&ved=0CF4Q6AEwBjgU#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false {ADVENTURES OF IBN BATTUTA} http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QK0aLjQtX2cC&pg=PA165&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Y-WPT7WuBtGHhQfW3OitBA&ved=0CGYQ6AEwCDgK#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XyzqATEDPSgC&pg=PA15&dq=bangladesh+shah+jalal&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ptqPT-yhOsWYhQeSjN20BA&ved=0CGwQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=bangladesh%20shah%20jalal&f=false {ISLAM IN BANGLADESH - COMPREHENSIVE}