Nizamuddin Auliya’s most famous disciple, the poet Amir Khusro had read in a Hadith that South Asia was the place where Adam descended to e...
Nizamuddin Auliya’s most famous disciple, the poet Amir Khusro had read in a Hadith that South Asia was the place where Adam descended to earth after being expelled from paradise. Azad Bilgrami, a seventeenth-century Islamic scholar, described India as the place where the eternal light of Muhammed first manifested in Adam, while Arabia is where it found its final expression in the physical form of the Prophet.
The Mughal emperor Akbar sponsored caravans of pilgrims to Arabia for many years, but few commoners undertook hajj. In any case, no Mughal emperor ever went for hajj. They patronised the Sufi shrines, and the Sufis in turn accorded spiritual and moral legitimacy to the emperors. On the strength of this legitimacy, Akbar assumed the position of the leader of the faithful. Akbar even went as far as challenging the Ottomans, who were the caretakers of the holy lands of Mecca and Medina, and considered the leaders of the Islamic world at that time.
“In early September 1579, a group of theologians, including the Shaikh ul-Islam, were pressured into signing a text claiming for Akbar a special status of Padshah-i-Islam, beyond that even of a Sultan-i-Adil…one of the epithets used for him was now Mujtahid, as also...
