On how to deal with friends and foes

One day in the life of a Sufi

On how to deal with friends and foes 

Raziuddin Aquil 

There were as many as three contemporaries of Nizamuddin Auliya named as Ziya:

First, Ziya Sanai was a mulla type hostile opponent of Hazrat Nizamuddin, just because he was fond of music and justified it as a perfectly valid spiritual exercise, whereas the former considered it as un-Islamic and anti-sharia innovation.

Second was Ziya Naqshabi, a Badaun-based prominent Sufi writer from a parallel chain of the Chishtis, through Shaikh Hamiduddin Nagauri, who was a disciple of Muinuddin Chishti Ajmeri. Ziya Naqshabi was neither an antagonist of Nizamuddin, nor a blind follower; he was involved in scholarly enterprise writing such well-known books as Silk-us-Suluk and Tuti-nama, an Indo-Persian adaptation of ancient Indian tales of panchtantra variety.

Third was Ziya Barani, who later grew into a major historian, political ideologue and theorist through his works such as Tarikh-i Firuzshahi and Fatawa-i Jahandari. Ziya Barani, along with Amir Khusrau and a host of other poets and intellectuals in the service of the Delhi Sultans, venerated Nizamuddin as a spiritual master par excellence.

Understandably, Nizamuddin’s approach to Ziya Sanai was to dismiss him as one of those creatures, testing the limits of one’s patience; he would visit the graves of such people three or four days after their death, praying to God, forgiving and forgetting the pain just out of the way!

Himself coming from Badaun, Nizamuddin maintained a graceful distance towards Ziya Naqshabi, civility as we call it in modern times – not saying anything against and not praising either.

And, with the likes of Ziya Barani and his friends, Nizamuddin would shower all his affection, praying for their success in this world and hereafter, backing to the hilt in times of any difficulty and spend some fine moments as friends and fellow-travelers on the Sufi path of love.

Chu man bekhair kunam yaade raftagan daaram, umid aanke mara-hum bekhair yaad kunand 

(Since I respectfully remember those who are gone, I hope I should also be respectfully remembered [when I am gone!]).