The Chishtiyya is the great Sufi way of the Indian subcontinent. Founded in the twelfth century by Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī in Ajmer, it shaped for eight centuries the spirituality of a multi-confessional subcontinent. Its particularity: a universal love that transcends religious borders — Hindus and Muslims meet there — a joyful poverty, a radical refusal of political power, and the invention of the qawwālī, that mystical song today known worldwide.
The founder — Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī
Khwāja Muʿīn al-Dīn Ḥasan Chishtī · مُعِين الدِّين الچِشْتِي (1141-1236) is one of the most beloved figures of Indian Islam. Born in Sīstān (Afghanistan / eastern Iran), he lost his parents very young and inherited a small orchard. He was still an adolescent when he sold his goods, distributed them to the poor, and set out on the roads in quest of God.
He studied in Bukhara, Samarkand, Medina, Mecca, Jerusalem. His spiritual master was Khwāja ʿUthmān Harvanī, a Sufi of Khorasan, himself attached to the lineage later called Chishtī (from the name of the village of Chisht in Afghanistan where Khwāja Abū Isḥāq Shāmī lived in the tenth century).
Around 1190, following several visions, Muʿīn al-Dīn left the Middle East for India. He settled in Ajmer, then the capital of the Chauhan (Hindu) state. A few years later, the Turkish invader Muḥammad Ghūrī conquered the region — but Muʿīn al-Dīn, for his part, remained in Ajmer in a modest zawiya, welcoming indistinctly Muslims and Hindus, rich and poor.
He died in Ajmer in 1236, at the advanced age of ninety-five. His tomb — the Ajmer Sharif Dargah — became immediately the greatest Sufi sanctuary of the subcontinent. Even today, it welcomes each year several million pilgrims, an important part of them Hindus and Christians. It is one of the very rare holy places in the world where several confessions coexist peacefully.
The teaching — the love that does not distinguish
The teaching of Muʿīn al-Dīn and of his successors is characterised by a few fundamental principles:
- Universal love — God manifests Himself in every creature; to love the creatures is to love Him. “The service of the creatures is more precious than a thousand prayers,” said Muʿīn al-Dīn.
- Absolute equality before God — without distinction of caste, religion, status. In the Chishtī tekke, the Brahmin, the untouchable, the Muslim, the Sikh are welcomed at the same table.
- The service of the poor — the langar, the free communal kitchen, is central. Food is served there to whoever enters, without discrimination. Even today, the Ajmer Sharif distributes thousands of meals each day.
- The refusal of political power — the classical Chishtī rule absolutely forbids the masters to accept gifts from those in power, to frequent princes, to hold official offices. “Better a meal of dry bread at the table of a poor man than a banquet at the table of a king,” said Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ.
- The use of music — the samāʿ, and particularly the qawwālī, as a way of spiritual elevation. Where the Naqshbandiyya advocates silence, the Chishtiyya sings.
The great successors
The Chishtiyya knew, after its founder, a remarkable succession of saints — traditionally called the Five Sultans of the way:
- Quṭb al-Dīn Bakhtiyār Kākī (d. 1235) in Delhi — who established the Chishtiyya in the capital of the sultanate.
- Farīd al-Dīn Ganj-i Shakar (d. 1265) in Pākpattan (Punjab) — called “Baba Farid,” who spread the way in the Punjab and wrote in the local language (his verses would later be integrated into the Guru Granth Sahib of the Sikhs).
- Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ (1238-1325) in Delhi — perhaps the most beloved of all, whose dargah in Delhi remains a major spiritual hearth. His teaching, transmitted in Fawāʾid al-Fuʾād (“Benefits of the Heart”), is one of the summits of Indo-Persian Sufi literature.
- Naṣīr al-Dīn Chirāgh-i Dihlī (d. 1356) — successor of Niẓām al-Dīn in Delhi.
- Gīsū Darāz (d. 1422) — who transmitted the way to the Deccan (southern India).
The qawwālī — the spiritual invention
The most enduring cultural contribution of the Chishtiyya is the invention of the qawwālī · قَوَّالِي — the mystical song in a group that combines texts in Persian, in Hindavi, in Punjabi, on complex rhythms accompanied by the tabla and the harmonium.
The creator of the qawwālī as we know it is Amīr Khusrau Dihlavī (1253-1325), the beloved disciple of Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ. An immense poet — he wrote in Persian, in Arabic, in Hindavi — a brilliant musician, Amīr Khusrau invented a form that mingles Persian and Indian traditions: Sufi spiritual texts are set to rhythms inherited from classical Indian music. The result is explosive.
For seven centuries, the qawwālī would be transmitted from generation to generation, from father to son, within the same family of singers (the qawwāls). It is sung in the dargahs (mausoleums of saints), especially during the ʿurs — anniversaries of the death of the saints, celebrated as “weddings with the Beloved.” At the Ajmer Sharif, at the dargah of Niẓām al-Dīn in Delhi, hundreds of thousands of people come each year for these ceremonies.
In the twentieth century, the great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (1948-1997) carried the qawwālī onto the world stage. His voice of a striking power, his seven octaves, his crescendos that rise to ecstasy — all this touched a worldwide audience that had never heard of Sufism. After him, the Sabri family, the Wadali Brothers, the Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali continue the tradition.
A way of ecumenism
One of the unique characteristics of the Chishtiyya is its spontaneous ecumenism. The Chishtī saints never sought to convert the Hindus aggressively. On the contrary — many among them formed deep friendships with yogis, sadhus, bhakti poets. The religious borders, in the Chishtī dargahs, dilute.
This openness culminates in the seventeenth century with the Mughal prince Dārā Shikoh (1615-1659), affiliated to the Qādiriyya but deeply influenced by the Chishtī sensibility. Dārā Shikoh translated the Upanishads into Persian (Sirr-i Akbar, “The Great Secret”), wrote The Confluence of the Two Oceans (Majmaʿ al-Baḥrayn) to demonstrate the convergence of Sufism and Vedānta. He would be executed in 1659 by his more orthodox brother Aurangzeb — but his work has become, for many, a model of authentic interreligious dialogue.
Bhakti poetry and Chishtī Sufism
The mutual influence between the Chishtiyya and the Hindu bhakti movement is extraordinary. Kabir (fifteenth century), Nanak (founder of Sikhism, d. 1539), Mira Bai, Tukaram — all carry in their spiritual expression the trace of Chishtī Sufism, which they encountered daily. Conversely, the kāfī songs of Bulleh Shah (d. 1757), of Sultan Bahu (d. 1691), of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (d. 1752) — all Chishtī-Qādirī-Suhrawardī Punjabi-Sindhi — constantly integrate the vocabulary and the images of bhakti.
This interpenetration explains why, in South Asia, the border between Sufism and bhakti remains porous — to the point that many Hindus still go today to the Muslim dargahs, and that many Muslims revere Hindu saints.
The Chishtiyya today
Today, the Chishtiyya remains one of the major spiritual forces of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and of the South Asian diaspora in the West. Its dargahs — that of Muʿīn al-Dīn in Ajmer, that of Niẓām al-Dīn in Delhi, that of Baba Farid in Pākpattan, that of Khwāja Bandeh Nawāz in Gulbarga — remain hearths of massive pilgrimage, frequented beyond confessional borders.
The order itself is divided into several branches — Chishtiyya-Niẓāmiyya, Chishtiyya-Ṣābiriyya, etc. But all share the same atmosphere: universal love, open welcome, vibrant qawwālī, refusal of power, service of the poor.
Give to the heart the generosity of the river,
to the soul the warmth of the sun,
and to the body the humility of the earth. Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī