[Reader-list] Settlement at Hazrat Nizamuddin- Posting 3

[Yousuf]

Dear Naveid
I have been following your postings on the Nizamuddin
settlement, and you seem to have collected a lot of
interesting information. However, in many instances,
you have not given any reference to the sources of
your information. Many of your stories and historical
data need references. You said that Nizamuddin Aulia
was born in 1236 and lived for almost 100 years. Well,
according to Khaliq Ahmad Nizami, an authority on
Nizamuddin Aulia and Chishti order, he was born in
1243 and died 1325 - that makes it 82 years. You have
also mentioned that Nizamuddin Aulia became the
disciple of Baba Farid in Delhi. Now Baba Farid's
monastry was in Ajodhan (Punjab), and Nizamuddin Aulia
certainly went there to spend time with him. I would
also be curious to know the source of the story about
Amir Khusrau's grandfather evacuating Nizamuddin Aulia
from his house. As far as I know, Khusrau's
grandfather, Rawate Arz, had probably died by the time
Khusrau was old enough to meet Nizamuddin Aulia. If
you have sourced your information from oral tradition,
even those could be verified by the documented
history, since so much documented history about the
era is available. Kindly also double check the
spellings of some of the names - Kokantash or
Kokaltash? In one previous posting you mentioned Kali
masjid, which is actually Kalan masjid (the large
mosque).

Yousuf

--- naveid  pasha <naveid at rediffmail.com> wrote:
> Hi friends.
> This is the third posting in the series of research
> on the settlement at Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti.(This
> is for the independent fellowship)
> So here goes...
> 
> It is the city of Djinns, said Pir Sadr-ud-Din.
> Although the city was attacked by invaders time and
> again, it was rebuilt every time. Each time it rose
> like a phoenix from the fire. The reason for this,
> said Sadr-ud-Din, was that the djinns loved Delhi so
> much they could never bear to see it empty or
> deserted. To this day every house, every street
> corner is haunted by them. - City of Djinns by
> William Dalrymple Delhi, they say, hides in it a
> malleable spirit that converts ashes into brand new
> citadels.
> Cramped with energies of times old and new, Delhi,
> with its unique blend of seven historical cities now
> harbours people and cultures as multi-faceted as a
> ray of light passing through a prism. Areas such as
> Nizamuddin, Mehrauli and Jama Masjid are at the
> three separate ends of the city, forgotten in the
> mad rush of cosmopolitan activity. But they are more
> alive and pulsating with crisp energy now than they
> probably ever did in the history of modern Delhi.
> 
> Delhi s historical ruins speak of a royal past.
> Today more mundane activities sports, shopping and
> eating are their hallmark Historic buildings in Jama
> Masjid, Nizamuddin, Mehrauli and the Lodi Gardens
> are all leaves from a dynamic period of Indian
> history. But today they are connected with
> activities far removed from the past sport and
> leisure, eating, and worship making them familiar in
> our vocabulary of the city.
> But once there were kings and queens, there was a
> fortressed city and a sumptuous palace; there was
> the trumpeting of elephants as they marched in
> procession carrying a royal retinue. There was the
> rhythmic sound of stone cutters as they erected the
> walls of another new city along the banks of the
> river Yamuna; and in a humble hut, there lived a
> holy man whose piety and learning brought people
> from far and near to establish a basti now
> synonymous with his name. And famous for its shrine
> where the Sufi saint, Nizamuddin, lies buried. Not
> all of this happened at the same time. Nizamuddin
> Auliya was born in AD 1236 and lived for almost 100
> years. Hazrat Nizamuddin was an inhabitant of
> Badayun. After the demise of his father, his mother
> brought him to Delhi for educational purposes. In
> Delhi he became a disciple of Baba Farid. He lived
> at Mia bazaar ke sarai in old Delhi till his
> landlord asked him to vacate the house, as he was
> unable to pay the rent. Amir Khusro, a disciple of 
> Hazrat Nizamuddin took him and his mother to the
> haveli of his grand father in old Delhi. Khusro s
> grandfather did not appreciate this and when Amir
> Khusro had gone to Patiala his grandfather asked the
> saint and his mother to shift out immediately. In
> this fashion he lived with different people for
> almost eleven years till one day he heard about a
> quiet and peaceful place called Gyaspur, situated
> outside the main city. On reaching there he found
> that Gyaspur was a small village situated on the
> banks of Sitari, a tributary of Yamuna. The only
> inhabitants of this small town were a few poor
> fishermen. Nizamuddin liked the place instantly and
> started living there in a hut with a thatched roof.
> After sometime Ziauddin, a nobleman from the king s
> court built a khanqah for him, which still exists
> till date. He was a very special man, who by the
> example of his own austere and saintly life became
> known as a zinda pir, a living saint who could heal
> the body and spirit. Although his disciples built a
> tomb over his grave, the original, repaired and
> rebuilt by a Tughlaq monarch has long since
> disappeared. Today, the dargah of Nizamuddin is the
> collective work of many successive followers of the
> saint s teachings who added to a structure first
> built in 1562 by a devotee, the nobleman Faridun
> Khan.
> Nizamuddin basti today is a congested, people-ridden
> settlement not all of its inhabitants are aware of
> the spiritual origins of where they live, and
> certainly not interested in the little architectural
> gems that exist so close to their own ragged lives.
> To reach the dargah, you have to fight your way
> through warrens of the old and the infirm whose
> makeshift plastic roofs or dusty odds and ends
> identify their minuscule places on the earth, past
> wayside stalls peddling garishly coloured sweets and
> ribbons, readymade packets of taburuk (rose petals
> and sweets as offering at the dargah), marigold
> flowers and coverings for the head. And if you can
> ward off the self-styled guides successfully, you
> are finally in the holy precinct itself.
> Surrounded by a courtyard of marble flooring, the
> tomb pavilion is enclosed by delicately trellised
> screens. As rich and zealous devotees contributed
> their bit to glorify the saint, the tomb acquired an
> ornate mother-of-pearl canopy, a veranda with
> engraved marble columns and brackets, and as late as
> the early 19th century, a huge marble dome with gold
> encrusted finials. The spirit of Hazrat Nizamuddin
> remains, however, very much above all the show of
> grandeur, and it is impossible not to be moved to
> devotion, especially on Thursday nights when the
> qawwals sing impassioned verses in praise of the 
> Sufi saint.
> Aside from the steamy dhabas that dish out spicy
> meat recipes and thick soft rotis to soak up the
> gravy, several other structures make the Nizamuddin
> complex a place worth visiting. Across the tomb
> enclosure to the west is the red sandstone Jamat
> Khana Mosque built on the spot where Nizamuddin
> himself would pray and sermonise. Probably
> constructed in 1325, it is a composite structure of
> three domes over three bays, central one being the
> largest. One of the telltale signs that establishes
> the period of building before the prolific Feroze
> Shah Tughlaq period are the marble lotus buds that
> fringe the arches, while the arches themselves are
> squinched to make the square bays appear octagonal.
> On the northern side of the dargah is a baoli, now
> practically dry all year round, where young boys
> would show off their diving skills. Even though
> historians date the baoli back to the reign of
> Feroze Tughlaq, oral history has it that the work
> for the baoli had begun during the period of
> Gyasuddin Tughlaq. Gyasuddin Tughlaq had a dislike
> for Hazrat Nizamuddin and so he derived means of
> irritating and disturbing him. Legend says the baoli
> was being built when the imperious Ghiyasuddin
> Tughlaq, angered by the saint s refusal to pay back
> money to the royal coffers that he had given away in
> charity, forbade its further construction.
> More-over, Nizamuddin had prophesied that
> Ghiyasuddin s son, prince Jauna would become the
> sultan which he did by manipulating his father s
> death. Moreover the construction of the baoli
> coincided with the construction of Gyasuddin Tughlaq
> s fort. So he ordered all the labourers in the city
> to work at his construction site and banned any
> other construction work in the city. So the workers
> decided to work for the baoli at night, in the light
> of oil lamps. 
> When Tughlaq found out about this he got angry and
> forbid the shopkeepers to sell oil to the people in
> Gyaspur. By this time the workers had already hit
> water level and some amount of water had already
> surfaced. Hazrat Nizamuddin asked his disciple to
> take some of this water in a lamp and light it. When
> he did this the water started to burn like oil. It
> is from here that this disciple got the title of
> roshan chirag [burning lamp] and came to be known as
> Hazrat Chirag Dehli [the lamp of Delhi].
> A few other minor monuments dot the Nizamuddin
> complex, but within the dargah enclosure itself is
> the delicate tomb of Jahanara, Shah Jehan s
> daughter, and a disciple of the Chisti saint. She is
> said to have built it during her lifetime,
> inscribing it with the touching words: Let naught
> cover my grave save the green grass; for grass well
> suffices as a covering for the grave of the lowly.
> It is unfortunately noticed only by some as they
> return from the ritual homage to the main shrine.
> A pilgrimage to Nizamuddin is incomplete without a
> visit to two to the other graves, one surrounded by
> marble jaalis that of Amir Khusro, the saint’s
> most devoted disciple and poet whose mystic verses
> are sung by every qawwal; and the other, simpler one
> of yet another writer, Mirza Ghalib, perhaps the
> greatest Urdu and Persian poet to have ever lived.
> Chaunsat khambe, is another interesting structure
> which lies behind the mazaar of Mirza Ghalib is
> actually the tomb of Mirza Shamsuddin, who was the
> brother of Mirza Aziz Kokantash and their mother had
> breast fed King Akbar. And it was Akbar who had
> gotten the tomb constructed after Shamsuddin had
> been murdered.
> The markaz, a building which is situated opposite
> the Ghalib Academy, and which is a mosque cum
> resting-place for the jamats [ groups of people who
> travel from place to place propagating religious
> fervour amongst Muslims] is another structure of
> historical importance. The history of this markaz is
> as follows : there was a bagh called
> Baghiche-Anarkali where now the Markaz is. The bagh
> was last owned by two brothers, Mir Taqi and Mir
> Naqi. Sitari, a tributary of river Yamuna was the
> source of irrigation for this spectacular bagh.
> Goods were transported to this part of the city via
> the river. Mir Taqi & Mir Naqi had got a baradari
> built in the bagh for leisure. People called this a
> bungalow because it had a sloping roof instead of a
> dome, which was the Islamic way of building. The
> sloping roof was the influence of British
> architectural style. This baradari was later taken
> over by Mirza Ilahi Baksh, the father in law of
> Bahadurshah 
=== message truncated ===>
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