Charity in Medieval Sufi Islam: Spiritual Dimensions

Khurshid Khan

doi:10.32996/ijllt.2021.4.5.31

Abstract

The Early Chishti Sufi Shaikhs from thirteenth and fourteenth century Delhi made critical interventions in the religious lives of the Muslims in South Asia. They cultivated in their adherents the much-needed ethical vision and sensitivity towards the socially marginalized. Yet hardly any attention is paid to the pedagogy of these Sufis on religion and spirituality. Their discourses on their community are documented in their literary works like malfūzāt. Of late, malfūzāt have been studied as a literary genre for the unique processes of their making. But their didactic contents on Islam and their instructions to Sufi initiates have barely been examined. This lacuna stems on account of the usage of these religious texts as fillers for information lacking in court chronicles. The essay studies the pedagogy of the Early Chishtī Shaikhs and as they related to charity in medieval South Asia. It also examines the mechanisms deployed by them to cultivate a philanthropic vision in Muslims in the praxis of faith.

Highlights

1 Islamic belief plays a vital role in cultivating the virtue of charity in its followers
After the Prophet, the Sufi Shaikhs served as a crucial agency in making the Muslim community aware of the injunctions of the Islamic faith
In South Asia, the positive intervention of the Sufis in the religious lives of the Muslims can be best studied through the didactics of the Chishtī Sufi Shaikhs, which were addressed to their followers

Summary

Introduction

1.1 Agency of the Sufis in the religious life of the community There is a general misconception that Islamic tenets and beliefs are lucidly laid down in black and white in the Qur’ān, the sayings (ahadīs) and practices of the Prophet (sunnah) Such conceptions presume that there is little to be explained to its followers, and a couple of historical circumstances make them untenable. In fourteenth-century Delhi, the Chishti Sufi Shaikh Nasīr al-Din Chirāgh Dilli (d.1356) in his discourses cited and explained umpteen Qur’ānic verses at length His disciple Gesū Darāz’ (d.1422) built on his master’s work in his commentary on the Qur’ān (tafsīr), which can be found in the compilation, the Multaqat (Tareen, 2020). They used anecdotes and examples from everyday life to simplify their interpretations of sharī‘a and communicate their message effectively Their interactive pedagogic method of addressing the audience is to be found in the genre of literature called malfūzāt, which were initially compiled ubiquitously around the fourteenth century. I will be taking up their discussion on these themes later in the essay. 8

Malfūzāt

Sadaqa al-Fitr

Instructions of the Shaikhs on modes of doing voluntary charity

Feeding the Needy

Conclusion