A STUDY OF SOURCES OF THE SULTANATE WITH

EMPHASIS ON THE MALFUZAT AND THE PREMAKHYAN

TRADITIONS
INTRODUCTION

The inception of the second millennium CE marked the beginning of a radically new and
transformative phase in the history of India, which would last nearly as long as the millennium itself. During
virtually this entire period a good part of India was under the political and socio-cultural dominance of
invaders, first under Turks, then under Mughals, and finally under British.

These invaders stood in stark contrast to their earlier counterparts who had entered the subcontinent
through its porous borders over the whilom millennia and then, latter in time, merged indistinguishably into
the Indian socio-cultural milieu. This did not happen with Turks, Mughals or British. Although theirs was
a society of coexistence but they did not blend into a homogeneous social formation. The first phase of this
millennial history of foreign rule in India began with the invasion of India by Turks and the establishment
of the Delhi Sultanate.1

THE ISLAMIC WRITING TRADITIONS

The Delhi Sultanate, after its creation in 1210, lasted for almost two hundred years and for almost
half that period functioned as the sole bastion of Muslim power in the Indian subcontinent. The source
materials for the Delhi Sultanate — largely narrative in form and written in Persian, with the addition of
descriptions of India by external observers who wrote in Arabic — are markedly less satisfactory than, for
instance, either those available for the Mughal empire that followed it or those composed in the
contemporary Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria.2 According to Jackson, much of the literature of this
period focusses on the arrangement of narrative events, and consequently the reader is all often served up
a barely digestible repast of seemingly unconnected events.

Scholars divide the literary tradition of Islam into two broad sections- political and non-political. As
the name suggests, political literature is related to the political institutions that were functional under the
Sultanate rule. The works of writers befalling this category were written histories comprising a detailed
account of the remembrances of the past, and were authored either under the patronage of the ruler or those
associated with the court or polity. The non-political texts were individual literatures written by people who
were not directly associated with the court, like the Sufi saints and the bhaktas.

A plethora of literary historical works formed the part of the Muslim writing traditions that were in
practise throughout Central Asia. Some of these are Sira, Ansab, Maghazi, Tabaqat, Tariq, Malfuzat, and
Insha, among others. Sira, one of the earliest type of Muslim writing tradition, deals with history and gives
detailed information regarding the life of the Prophet. It also talks about the norms of jurisprudence and

1
Eraly, Abraham. 2014. The Age of Wrath : A History of the Delhi Sultanate. New Delhi: Viking, Penguin Books
[India].
2
Jackson, Peter. 2003. The Delhi Sultanate : A Political and Military History. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
gives preference to hadis, sunna and all other norms related to the practice of Prophet Muhammad. Ansab,
on the other hand, is a genealogical study and gives extensive details on the family of the ruler or the author
himself. The next highly organised tradition of writing is that of Maghazi. It deals with the collection of
information in proper sequence with respect to time and space, providing accounts of military history of a
ruler or a military commander; once again with the description beginning from the military expeditions of
the Prophet Muhammad. The word Tabaqat is derived from the Arabic ‘tabaqa’ meaning section. The
literary works that fall under this category narrate a longer time period of Islmaic rule. Thus, the entire
political regime is covered, with each and every section under a ruler being written into a chapter. Tabaqat-
i Nasiri, for instance, a text on the Islamic world — and the Mamluk Sultan Iltutmish — by Minhaj-i-Siraj
Juzjani, composed in 1260, covers specific actions of the slave rulers in India. Tariq (lit. history) contains
literary source scovering historical background from the creation of the universe, the rise of Islam to the
reign of the patron ruler. Another corpus of literary works was related to the guidance that was directed
from the state to the provincial bodies of administration. Known as the Insha, literally meaning ‘later’, they
give detailed accounts of specific centralised political institutions with all units under its regular command.
The understanding of this particular tradition of Islamic writing leads one to the idea that authority was
unidirectional with the central power being unquestionable, as is depicted by the court orders, called
farmans, to the offficials of the state. The remaining traditions of Malfuzat3 and Premakhyans4 were not
state sponsored and were, therefore, free from exaggerations of political and militaristic achievements of
the rulers, as will be evident from the discussion that follows.5

THE MALFUZAT TRADITION

The historical formation of Sufism in India is a process that has taken centuries, and its origins are
available to us only through a series of later reconstructions. From the time of Al Hujwiri 6 (d. 1074 CE),
the north-western cities of India were home to a number of Sufis, though Hujwiri is one of the few whose
writings have come down to us. Later tradition records that in the late twelfth century, when most of the
great Sufi orders began to crystalize in different parts of the Islamic world, the Chishti order first became
established in India. Although later authors such as Jami (d. 1492 CE) tell stories of the early Sufis of
Chisht, the first Chishtis themselves wrote nothing, nor do contemporary witnesses tell us anything of their
lives. The oral teachings of the Chishtis, as revealed in the "oral discourses", known popularly as malfuzat
literature, took on a canonical textual form that soon became the authoritative and normative genre both for
members of the order and for their lay followers.

It is widely believed that while the Chishtis did not express themselves in writing, they eventually
produced a broader and more sustained literary tradition than any other Sufi tradition. Neither Mu`in al-

3
Malfuzat is the Sufi tradition of history writing which emphasizes the relationship between the pir and his murid.
4
Premakhyans, composed in limited time period from the late 14th century to the mid-16th century and specifically
by Sufi poets, mostly in Hindavi, were versified romances which combined various local and traditional literary
practices.
5
Chaudhary, Azad. Notes from the lecture of 19, August 2021. On the Sources of Turkish History. History of India
IV
6
Al Hujwiri, revered as Data Ganj Bakhsh by Muslims of South Asia, was an 11th-century Persian Sunni Muslim
mystic, theologian, and preacher from Ghazna, who became famous for composing the Kashf al-maḥjūb
(lit. 'Unveiling of the Hidden'), which is considered the "earliest formal treatise" on Sufism in Persian.
Din Chishti (the founder of the Chishtiyya tradition) nor his two main successors, Qutb al- Din Bakhtiyar
Kaki (d. 1235) and Farid al- Din “Ganji Shakkar” wrote any books. However, the impact of the Chishti
master of the following generation, i.e. Nizam al- Din Awliya was so profound on his contemporaries that
a new genre of literature, the malfuzat emerged as a body of literary tradition. The authors of malfuzat
rewrote the master’s words heard in a session out of memory, sometimes helped by the master himself in
the writing process. In this, the writer inevitably exercised some kind of selection and interpretation, and
so produced a narrative structure depicting the Sufi teaching from a particular point of view. Sufi
hagiography insofar as it stressed sayings was basically an outgrowth of the hadith literature, which
collected the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. In India, the malfuzat quickly became a dominant literary
form for the transmission of Sufi teaching, so that later generations of Indian Sufis found it almost
indispensable to commit their discourses into this textual mould.

As far as the accuracy of the malfuzat as a written record is concerned, it may be regarded
conspicuously as a fairly precise, on linguistic grounds alone (as is pointed by the modern Iranian literary
critic Bahar), recording of the sayings of the Shaikh. But unfortunately, it does not shed any light on the
process of literary composition that gave the text its form. Furthermore, the Chishti malfuzat is conveniently
divided into “original” and “retrospective” works- the former comprising the sayings of Nizam al- Din
Awliya and those of his two disciples Nasir al- Din Mahmud Chiraghi Dihli (d. 1356) and Burhan al- Din
Ghari'b (d. 1337). These "original" texts, all written by literate and courtly disciples, may be juxtaposed
with another series of malfuzat purporting to be dictated by the principal Chishti Shaikhs to their successors,
illustrating the main line of evolving authority in the order known as the silsila. These "retrospective" texts
stressed the hagiographic mode of personal charisma and authority, while the ''original" ones focused on
the teaching element consisting of practice and speculation; but all the malfuzat texts made the person of
the Sufi master an essential part of the teaching.7

Amir Hasan Sijzi Dihlawi, the deisciple of Nizam al- Din Awliya, undertook the task of recording
his teachings and conversations in a book called Fawaid Ul Fawad (Morals of the Heart) originally written in
the Persian language. Mir Khwurd, referring to him as ‘Amir Hasan Ala Sijzi’ wrote in praises of the blessed
author as-

…whose burning lyrics brought forth the fire of love from the flint of lovers'
hearts, whose pleasing verses conveyed solace to the hearts of the eloquent, and whose
invigorating subtleties are the sustenance of the discerning.8

Several years later after the composition of this work, a conversation took place between the Shaikh
and his devoted disciple, an anecdote which extends the role of malfuzat as a text that served a nearly
religious standard. Reading the first volume Nizam Awliya said in approval-

“You have written well, you have written like a dervish, and you have also given it a good
name. As the hadith conveys ethical and ritual norms to the Muslim community, so the malfuzat
now establish the principles of mysticism. In both cases the focus upon the personal source of the
teaching is an essential part of the disciple's ability to remember the teacher's words, to preserve

7
Ernst, C. W. (2021). Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center by Carl W.
Ernst (2004–08-19). Oxford University Press; 2 edition (2004–08-19).
8
Ibid
 them for himself and others. In this way the Sufi malfuzat function as a parallel to the primary canon
of Islam, the Qur'an and hadith.”

The author’s ability in evoking the presence of his pir, his skilled hand at writing 9 , the close
relationship between the master and his disciple as well as the manner in which it expounded the Sufi
teaching is what made it a popular text of the contemporary times. Besides, the text, in contrast to the
dynastic chronicles, throws some light on aspects of social history as well.

Despite the attention and popularity that this particular corpus by Sijzi gained, the malfuzat tradition
that followed took an ‘uneven’ character. This was a result of change in the temperament between the
serious legal and ascetic emphasis of the Shaikh as well the immaturity of the compilers. This, for instance,
as many scholars agree, holds true for the hagiography of Nasir al- Din Mahmud (popularly known as the
Chirag-i Dihli) by Hamid Qalandar, who admitted to his own “preference for composing mediocre Persian
verse instead of meditating”10 in his manuscript called Khayr al-majalis. It is also argued that when the
Chirag-i Dihli was shown sections of Hamid’s compilation, he remarked that they were inaccurate and
threw them away; also noting the unambiguous shortcomings of its author, Paul Jackson comments that the
author of Khayr al-majalis had “no real and genuine aptitude for mysticism”.11 Nonetheless, Carl Ernst and
Annemarie Schimmel state that Hamid’s writings present and important link in the recording of Chishti
teachings; with the malfuzat texts now beginning to take on the canonical function of acting as normative
texts that reflected religious authority of the Shaikh and the individualist piety of the author and the pir’s
disciples.

Sayyid Jalal al-din Husayn Bukhari (1308–84), popularly known as Makhdum-i jahaniyan
Jahangasht, was the leading Shaikh of the Suhrawardi Sufi order and one of the most influential and widely
respected religious figures of his day. Jalal al-din Bukhari’s malfuzat are some of the earliest extant
Suhrawardi examples of this genre. They are also particularly valuable because there are a number of
compilations done by different disciples at different times in Jalal al-din’s life — including Khizanat al-
fawa'id al-jalaliya (Treasury of Jalalian morals) compiled by Ahmad Bhatti (1351-66), Khulasat al-alfaz-i
jami' al-ulum (Abstract of the words of the collector of knowledge compiled by 'Ala' al-din Husayni in 1379
and 1380, Tuhfat al-sara'ir (Gift of secrets) compiled by Muhammad Ghaznawi in 1376, among 4 others.12

A detailed inspection of the malfuzat text illuminate whole segments of the Indo-Muslim society.
Because of the authors’ tendencies to include almost everything that happens to or is done by the Shaikhs
in the presence of their disciples, these texts contain much incidental material on the various activities of
their masters. Thus, malfuzat can be used to explore such disparate issues as the culinary habits, economic
conditions, vernacular languages, topography, and even pastimes of particular periods and localities. South
Asian malfuzat record actual teaching sessions, including informal conversation, textual explanation, mini-
lectures, and other interactions between the Shaikh and his audience. Moreover, they also often highlighted
the relationship of the Shaikh with the Sultan. For instance, an anecdote features in the malfuzat of Jalal al-

9
Hasan Sijzi was a skilled court poet who wrote eloquently in Persian; he wrote several hundred lyric poems
(ghazals) and panegyric odes (qasids) addressed to the Sultans of Delhi.
10
Hamid, Qalandar, Khayr almajalis, p. 31.
11
Paul Jackson, "Khair Al-Majalis: An Examination," in Islam in India: Studies and Commentaries, vol. 2,
Religion and Religious Education, ed. Christian W. Troll (Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt Ltd., 1985).
12
Steinfels, Amina. 2004. “His Master’s Voice: The Genre of Malfūẓāt in South Asian Sufism.” History of
Religions 44 (1): 56–69. https://doi.org/10.1086/426655.
din Bukhari, according to which in the late 1330s he was appointed by the ruler Sultan Muhammad bin
Tughluq (r. 1325–50) to the position of regional shaykh al-islam (head of the Sufi Shaikhs). Sultan
Muhammad b. Tughluq was notorious for his poor relations with the Sufi community and to have been
honoured by him with such a title, therefore, was something of a coup. But, Jalal al-din gave up the position
offered to him, and in doing so proved his own spiritual purity as well as his obedience to his spiritual
master rather than his temporal ruler. It is this presentation of the full range of teaching activities, religious
beliefs and relationship with polity that produces the variety of subject matter, which makes malfuzat texts
fascinating, confusing, and historically significant.

THE PREMAKHYANS

Another particularly remarkable development in Sufi circles was the popularity of Hindu themes in
Hindi (or Hindavi) — sometimes also Awadhi13 — literature and poetry (Sanskrit Mahakavyas and Persian
masnawis) written by Sufis from the fourteenth to the mid sixteenth century. The Premakhyans were a
ready reflection of the society and polity, both local administration and central authority, of this time, and
also provided insight into the vernacular perspective of life. This vernacular lifestyle is comes specifically
from those political fringes which were under the rule of the dominant political power. They were in stark
contrast to the otherwise dominant Arabic-Persian and Sanskrit forms of writing which sought to represent
the dominant political powers and social institutions. Besides, they involved the Sufi principle of loves
along with pleasure, pain, bereft and tragedy. The Premakhyans belonged to the supressed powers which
existed below the sovereign authority or dynasty.14

The most important premakhyans in chronological order were- Mulla Daud’s Chandayaan, Narayana
Das’s Chitai-Charita, Mrigavati of Shaikh Qutban of Jaunpur, Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s Padmavat and
Mir Manjhan Shattari’s Madhumalati. 15 After Madhumalati was composed in the 1540s, there is no
surviving evidence of any premakhyan; perhaps because of the consolidation and centralisation of the
Mughal polity under Akbar, which led to the decline of the provincial courts. Moreover, Akbar and his
successors were more interested in patronizing mannerist or rīti poetry and the poetry devoted to Lord
Krishna in Braj Bhāṣā, another premodern literary language hailing from the region around Mathura.16 Of
the prominent and known Premakhyans, the most renowned work has, undisputedly, been that of Jayasi.
Behl writes:

‘The Padmāvat offers us at first glance a grand mystical progress through a fantasy landscape and an
interior landscape of the self. The technical poetic language of the first half of the Padmāvat does much
more than create a fantasy landscape.’

13
Waqiat-i Mushtaqi talks about these traditions in detail and how they were increasingly becoming the part of
conversations among the common masses.
14 14
Lecture by R. B. Azad Choudhary, ‘Premakhyans, vernacular literature, position of women, and Sufism and its teachings’,
21 September, 2021, recorded by Vibhuti Pathak; in History of India IV.
15
Debanjan. 2021. “Premakhyans and the Assimilation of the Classical Traditions in Medieval India.” Dhaara. March 28, 2021.
https://dhaaramagazine.in/2021/03/28/premakhyans-and-the-assimilation-of-the-classical-traditions-in-medieval-india/.
16
Behl, Aditya and Doniger, Wendy. 2016. Love’s Subtle Magic : An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition, 1379-1545. New York:
Oxford University Press.
 It begins with the praise of the Almighty in creating the beautiful world, and goes on to convey
aesthetic pleasures through rasa and dhvani (suggestion) with the use of allegories and imageries. Jayasi
uses coded tantric, yogic, and bhakti devotional terms to suggest that the imaginary landscape on which
Ratansen advances to attain Padmavati is an interior landscape, within which Ratansen crosses stages in
the symbolic geography of the body (imagined as a city) to reach the Sufi goal.

Chandayan, the fourteenth century text and the oldest in this genre, is another spectacular work which
was composed in Awadhi (although the script is Persian). Muzaffar Alam points out that, ‘among the
celebrated early Hindavi masnawis, verses from Mulla Da'ud's Chandayan, compiled in 1379, have the
distinction of being recited from the mosque pulpit of Delhi’.17 Muntakhab al-Tawarikh of the sixteenth
century chronicler, Badauni, narrates the incident of a Maulana who, influenced by the austerity of the
Chandayan and its connection with the verses from the Quran, believed that it was a divine truth. Chandayan
is the story of a Rajput princess, Chanda, who elopes from the censorship of her parents, Brahmanical
shastric injunctions and general public with his lover, Lorik, an Ahir by caste. Although, Mulla Daud inserts
Sufi allegory in his work, Chandayan is wholly Indic. As, for instance, Lorik, who has little hope of meeting
his lover, lives in segregation as a Gorakhpanthi yogi for almost a year. Moreover, when Chanda is bitten
by a snake after escaping from her father's city, Lorik says that his condition is worse than Ram's after the
abduction of Sita, and he wants Ram and Hanuman to help him at this time, for he has no one else. The
integration of popular Hindu beliefs in the works Islamic masnawis of the Sufis is the result of the ideology
of wahadat al-wujud (Unity of Being or Unity in Multiplicity). ‘The cultural ethos was at this level
conducive to a greater interaction between different sects and the mutual appreciation of apparently
divergent thoughts and practices’.18

Mulla Daud was the pioneer of the genre of Premakhyans, and the later poets followed the tradition
set forth by him. Though the premakhyans were written in the Persian masnawi format, the narrative style
was centred on the aesthetics of the ‘rasa’, which is defined in Natyshastra by Bharata as the ‘flavour’ of
the poem derived from ‘vibhava, anubhava and vyabhicharibhava’. As a result, the cultivated reader
experiences the love displayed in the poem, as well as other lively feelings that the author is trying to convey
through his text.

“The moment that he saw Madhumālatī she possessed his heart completely. His soul bowed
down to her beauty. Seeing her lying in sweet sleep, the fire of love engulfed his body, consuming
him utterly, from top to toe. Like a lotus opening towards the sun, he blossomed as he saw her face.
Love from a past birth, like a green shoot, sprouted in the prince’s heart.”

These perfectly curated lines from Manjhan Shattari’s Madhumalati form a ready echo of the love
that the protagonist Manohar, prince of Kanaigiri, shows towards his beloved Madhumalati, princess of the
city of Maharas. Aditya Behl explains that ‘the image of a lover blossoming like a lotus’ when Manohar
behold the grace of the beloved’s face signifies ‘the opening up of a religious community (ummah) to the
spiritual truth taught by the Prophet Muhammad.’ He further states that Manohar becomes aware of the
reality of creation of this world by mystic love, through awareness of love. Just like Madhumalati is
described by Manjhan from head to toe, the prince is also consumed with fire from head to toe. Therefore,

17
Muzaffar Alam. 2004. The Languages of Political Islam : India, 1200-1800. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.
18
Ibid.
if the beloved’s body is the representation of the ‘brilliant revelation of the divine’, then Manohar signifies
the ‘believer who witnesses this effulgent manifestation.’19

Since the Premakhyans were composed by the disciples of Shaikhs, they are filled with allegorical
instances of the Sufi quest for Divine Truth, as is evident from the discussion already. The fana or
unification of the devotee with his beloved or God is symbolised throughout these texts. The protagonist
overcomes the obstacles in the path between him and God, which symbolise the pervasive worldliness that
one must overcome according to the Sufi ideology. For example, ‘in Chandayan and Padmavat, the heroes
are torn between two women- representing the material and the spiritual milieus respectively. In cases like
Padmavat, the Jauhar becomes the symbol for fana, while the same is represented in the Chandayan by the
adoption of natha mendicancy by the protagonists, Chanda and Lorik. Once again, the misery and tradegy
that accompanies the lives of the characters in the Premakhyans are symbols of the ‘arduous journey a
disciple embarks upon towards the quest for Truth.’20

CONCLUSION

Both of these literary traditions form an important part of Islamic and Sufi theology, polity and social life
of the contemporary times. Besides, both malfuzat and Premakhyans stand as a strong testimony to the
intermingling of Islamic and traditional Indian literary customs that are outrightly evident from the symbols
and elements used in these works. While the malfuzat tradition lays emphasis on the life of the Sufi saint
and the relationship (both closeness and detachment) that the Shaikh shared with his disciples, the Emperor
and the subjects of the kings; Premakhyans, on the other hand, present a worldview through Sufi
perspectives and their longing to unify with the God with vivid descriptions of love, agony and pain
portrayed through innumerable imageries and symbols. However, both these traditions of literature played
a crucial role in forming a popular identity of Sufism, propagating the teachings of the Quran intermingled
with popular local literary traditions. As a result, not only the auspicious personality and instructions of the
Shaikh were passed though the silsila after his death, but also the universal message of Sufism was
preserved for the posterity.

19
Behl, Aditya and Doniger, Wendy. 2016. Love’s Subtle Magic : An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition, 1379-1545. New York:
Oxford University Press.
20
Debanjan. 2021. “Premakhyans and the Assimilation of the Classical Traditions in Medieval India.” Dhaara. March 28, 2021.
https://dhaaramagazine.in/2021/03/28/premakhyans-and-the-assimilation-of-the-classical-traditions-in-medieval-india/.
SUBMITTED BY-VIBHUTI PATHAK
SUBMITTED TO- AZAD SIR
ROLL NUMBER- 18
B.A. HONS. HISTORY