A Sufi Way in Resolving the Ethical Issues

(An Ana­lyt­i­cal Study of Fawaid al-Fuad)

I

Human soci­ety is made of vari­ant com­po­nents; very diverse, ben­e­fi­cial and harm­ful, ema­nat­ing from human expe­ri­ences and actions. As diver­si­ty is bound to get into con­flict, in some instance, it can become dis­as­trous for society’s very exis­tence, and so human needs to man­age the bal­ance for sta­bil­i­ty with­in it by sup­press­ing the bad and pro­mot­ing the good. It hap­pens simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. The nature of this diver­gence is, for exam­ple, a con­stant strug­gle between good and bad forces. Each of them tries to be over­lap­ping. These forces radi­ate from man’s ten­den­cies which are inher­ent in his per­son­al­i­ty. Nec­es­sar­i­ly, when man start­ed under­stand­ing his own dis­po­si­tion, stress would have been giv­en on the good for the sake of well-being of his own per­son­al­i­ty, indi­vid­u­al­ly, and for soci­ety, col­lec­tive­ly. Empha­siz­ing good in human per­son­al­i­ty, then, is con­sid­ered to be essen­tial for main­tain­ing the bal­ance. As a result, some inter­est­ed groups devot­ed them­selves for pro­mot­ing it to the extent of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and lia­bil­i­ty. The focus was direct­ed on dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between what is right and what is wrong; and how man may be habit­u­at­ed to what is right. This prac­tice, i.e. ethics what we name it today, unfold­ed wher­ev­er human soci­ety flour­ished in the world through­out his­to­ry. Reli­gion and Phi­los­o­phy (human under­stand­ing of the nature of the uni­verse and human) hap­pened to be the cru­cial means in devel­op­ing the prac­tice of ethics. How­ev­er, it should be not­ed that reli­gion itself can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from phi­los­o­phy due to the fact that reli­gion, actu­al­ly, is affect­ed by man’s curios­i­ty of its under­stand­ing and explain­ing. In devel­op­ing ethics of under­stand­ing that what is right and what is wrong, like oth­er civ­i­lized nations, Mus­lims also devot­ed their efforts; and they adopt­ed both phi­los­o­phy and reli­gion, Islam, as the means to com­pre­hend the nature of man and things.

This prac­tice was start­ed among Mus­lims when the nascent com­mu­ni­ty of Islam was under­go­ing an eth­i­cal cri­sis. How­ev­er, this is not to say that there was noth­ing like ethics for Mus­lims in the Quran and the Hadith of the Prophet. In the Quran and the Hadith words like tazkiyah and ihsan are used for empha­siz­ing ethics and per­form­ing excel­lent and good deeds. But, dur­ing its for­ma­tive peri­od, Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty faced very diverse ide­o­log­i­cal crises, which at some points proved to be fruit­ful. To cope with these crises there seemed uproar with­in the stretch­ing and then split­ting com­mu­ni­ty. These splits mate­ri­al­ized into many groups car­ry­ing respec­tive plans suit­ed to their con­vic­tions; among them was a group of Sufis, then was called tasawwuf. Their motive was to preach eth­i­cal teach­ings of Islam embed­ded into tazkiyah and ihsan by edu­cat­ing the mass­es. The group flour­ished dur­ing the ear­ly cen­turies of Islam as Sufis were dif­fused through­out the Mus­lim world along with the expand­ing Mus­lim empire. As Mus­lims con­querors set their foot in India, Sufis also came. They estab­lished here khan­qahs and caused in bring­ing the Indi­ans into the fold of Islam. Their con­tri­bu­tion in India is not mere­ly lim­it­ed to the preach­ing of Islam, they pro­mot­ed a unique cul­ture also by inter­weav­ing Mus­lim and Indi­an cul­tur­al threads.

II

Shaykh Niza­mud­din Awliya was one of the most cel­e­brat­ed Sufis, who lived dur­ing the late 13th and ear­ly 14th cen­tu­ry in India. He is cred­it­ed with his efforts in impart­ing eth­i­cal and moral teach­ings of Islam, to the extent that, as the renowned his­to­ri­an Ziaud­din Barani describes in his account, ‘peo­ple refrained from many improp­er things, because they con­sid­ered them­selves dis­ci­ples of the Shaykh—[As a result of his teach­ings] the gen­er­al pub­lic showed an incli­na­tion to reli­gion and prayer.’

Shaykh Niza­mud­din­was born cir­ca the year 1243–1244, in Badaon in a fam­i­ly which migrat­ed from Bukhara owing to the upheavals caused by the Mon­gol inva­sion. While he was still in his infan­cy, he lost his father. His moth­er, then, took care of him. It was his moth­er who is said to have incul­cat­ed in him ‘the spir­it of res­ig­na­tion and con­tent­ment.’ Dur­ing his ear­ly twen­ty years Shaykh Niza­mud­din lived in Badaon and com­plet­ed his edu­ca­tion. These days of abject pover­ty led Shaykh Niza­mud­din to con­sid­er mov­ing from Badaon to Del­hi, the then cap­i­tal city of the Sul­tanate, where he could ben­e­fit from the bet­ter aca­d­e­m­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able here. Shaykh Nizamuddin’s first thought was to become a qazi, ‘the high­est ambi­tion of a schol­ar in those days’, but he was des­tined to be some­thing else, a dervish. After com­ing to Del­hi, he hap­pened to stay in the neigh­bor­hood of Shaykh Najee­bud­din Mutawakkil, a younger broth­er of Shaykh Farid, and him­self a Sufi and pious dervish. Who drew his atten­tion to Shaykh Farid, whom he was inspired in his ear­ly youth. His des­tiny then brought him to the khan­qah of Baba Farid in Ajod­han, now Pak­pat­tan, at the time when he was only twen­ty years old. Baba Farid instruct­ed in him some basic texts and fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of the order. Inspired by his intel­li­gence and spir­i­tu­al poten­tial, Baba Farid quick­ly made Shaykh Niza­mud­din his chief suc­ces­sor, khal­i­fa, and entrust­ed him with the task of the spir­i­tu­al well-being of oth­ers.

After hav­ing been bestowed with khi­lafat, though reluc­tant he had to live in Giy­ath­pur, a vil­lage some miles from the cap­i­tal, through­out the rest of his life. As a sin­cere dervish he devot­ed his whole life to the human­i­tar­i­an cause. He con­struct­ed a build­ing called khan­qah by the side of Jamu­na Riv­er. The pur­pos­es of this estab­lish­ment were man­i­fold. This was the place where peo­ple were edu­cat­ed in the teach­ings of Islam, the poor got ful­filled with their needs, home­less and trav­el­ers were pro­vid­ed with shel­ter. The gate of the khan­qah was wide open for all kinds of peo­ple irre­spec­tive of their caste, creed, class and reli­gion. They were treat­ed here not on the basis of their reli­gious affil­i­a­tions, rather as the cre­ation of God. The man­ag­ing mem­bers of the khan­qah were instruct­ed by Shaykh Niza­mud­din to look after the vis­i­tors of dif­fer­ent faiths in such a way that their sen­ti­ments may not get offend­ed. It seems that Shaykh Niza­mud­din pur­sued his dis­ci­ples to devel­op a lan­guage which should be com­mon both to Hin­du and Mus­lim. He asked his dis­ci­ple Amir Khus­row ‘to com­pose poet­ry in Hin­di lan­guage so that Mus­lims could attract towards the ver­nac­u­lar of Hin­dus and unfa­mil­iar­i­ty may be reduced’.

After hav­ing made such unprece­dent­ed con­tri­bu­tions to human­i­ty, Shaykh Niza­mud­din breathed his last on 3 April, 1325. How­ev­er, along with his death, his endeav­ors did not die away. They sur­vived in the form of his dis­ci­ples and teach­ings, still extant in Fawaid al-Fuad and oth­er works, which had far reach­ing effects on medieval Indi­an soci­ety.

III

Being inter­est­ed and instruct­ed in the tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion, includ­ing tasawwuf, since his child­hood, Shaykh Niza­mud­din was exposed to var­i­ous schol­ar­ships of his time. These all helped him become an eru­dite schol­ar and a pro­fi­cient spir­i­tu­al men­tor. Since assum­ing the suc­ces­sor­ship of Baba Farid, he pas­sion­ate­ly ded­i­cat­ed him­self to the task of sav­ing peo­ple from sin and suf­fer­ing. For car­ry­ing out this task, inevitably, he had to edu­cate peo­ple in such a way that they could dis­tin­guish between right and wrong, and act accord­ing­ly. Being aware of the fact, Shaykh Niza­mud­din start­ed the prac­tice of hold­ing assem­blies where he could teach peo­ple. He adopt­ed the Sufi method of teach­ing in pref­er­ence to the tra­di­tion­al one, i.e. mem­o­riz­ing tra­di­tion­al books alone. Being a Sufi, his focus con­cen­trat­ed on devel­op­ing a sen­tience regard­ing the val­ue of morals and ethics. In his assem­blies, all kinds of peo­ple of all ages were allowed to sit and extract guid­ance from his teach­ings. The nature of these assem­blies was con­ver­sa­tion­al where Shaykh Niza­mud­din deliv­ered didac­tic fables, para­bles and sto­ries of the prophets, saints and pious men, in addi­tion to the recita­tion of the vers­es from the Quran and Hadith or their inter­pre­ta­tions, in a nar­ra­tive form. Each car­ried mes­sages for the audi­ences. Some­times these sto­ries hap­pened to have a def­i­nite space-time con­text. He con­tin­ued direct­ing peo­ple to the right path through­out his life His last con­ver­sa­tion was record­ed in Fawaid al-Fuad in 1322, not long before the year of his death in 1325.

After his death his teach­ings con­tin­ued con­tribut­ing to bring about a mas­sive change in the soci­ety. The impres­sion of being his dis­ci­ple, murid, was so strong that their con­scious­ness pre­vent­ed them ‘from doing things for­bid­den’.
The val­ue of Shaykh Nizamuddin’s teach­ings ema­nat­ing from his con­ver­sa­tions came to be believed as an embod­i­ment of a mod­el to be fol­lowed and imi­tat­ed. This con­vic­tion pur­sued his dis­ci­ples to record his con­ver­sa­tions. Amir Hasan Ala‑i Sijzi, one of the com­pil­ers of Shaykh Nizamuddin’s con­ver­sa­tions, thus, at the begin­ning of his book, Fawaid al-Fuad, puts for­ward the motive of his ini­tia­tive in these words that, ‘the heart of the spir­i­tu­al­ly aroused will ben­e­fit from it.’

These com­pi­la­tions received a sin­cere atten­tion of the mass­es after his demise, but Fawaid al-Fuad among them became more famous for var­i­ous rea­sons. Its com­pil­er, Amir Hasan , painstak­ing­ly record­ed the con­ver­sa­tions while sit­ting in the assem­bly. And then after, he showed it to his mas­ter to revise it lest some­thing unau­then­tic might be found its way in the text. Sufis and peo­ple of medieval India regard­ed it as a man­u­al for guid­ance. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan informs us that in his time men and women used to read it.

Chrono­log­i­cal­ly, Fawaid al-Fuad con­tains an account of Shaykh Nizamuddin’s con­ver­sa­tions from 28 Jan­u­ary, 1308 to 2 Sep­tem­ber, 1322. It is divid­ed into five fas­ci­cles, and each is com­posed of dif­fer­ent num­bers of assem­blies.

Farooqi has writ­ten that once Amir Hasan com­plet­ed his work, he went on to revise it. He adopt­ed only those por­tions for his sum­ma­rized ver­sion of Fawaid al-Fuad which focused on the dis­cus­sion of saints, shed light on Shaykh Nizamuddin’s biog­ra­phy and the­o­log­i­cal dis­cus­sions. How­ev­er, while read­ing Fawaid al-Fuad, it seems that many times he left out Shaykh’s own reflec­tions about the things he was talk­ing about; and if they were includ­ed, there might be some more scope of think­ing about his per­son­al­i­ty. For exam­ple, in assem­bly 8 in the fourth fas­ci­cle he records as, ‘Then the con­ver­sa­tion moved towards for­bear­ance, and in con­nec­tion with that he told a sto­ry about Shaykh al-Islam Farid al-Din.’ This way he jumps direct­ly on a sto­ry skip­ping the pre­ced­ing con­ver­sa­tion which, can be assumed, might be car­ried Shaykh Nizamuddin’s own under­stand­ing regard­ing for­bear­ance to which he might have relat­ed the sto­ry. Nev­er­the­less, the book is remark­able in terms of pro­vid­ing a vast scope for think­ing about Shaykh Niza­mud­din Awliya.

IV

Ethics is described as ‘sys­tem­atiz­ing, defend­ing and rec­om­mend­ing con­cepts of right and wrong’. Defin­ing ethics in this way seems more the­o­ret­i­cal. But in terms of Mus­lim ethi­cists, they had been ‘more inter­est­ed in morals and mat­ters of con­duct’.

Ethics is one of the inter­est­ing fields where Mus­lims have been engaged in intel­lec­tu­al exer­cis­es. Among Mus­lims, how­ev­er, Sufis are said to have occu­pied a dis­tinct place in terms of this dis­ci­pline, as their prime con­cern is based upon these car­di­nal prin­ci­ples: purifi­ca­tion of one’s inner self and sin­cer­i­ty in deeds. Like oth­er Mus­lims, Sufis are also inspired by the Quran and Hadith in deriv­ing their con­cepts and creeds. There are many instances in the Quran and Hadith where some guid­ing prin­ci­ples for dis­tin­guish­ing between right and wrong are revealed. And their motive is clear­ly defined as suc­cess­ful­ness i.e. sal­va­tion. The Quran tells its fol­low­ers that ‘suc­cess­ful indeed is he who puri­fies him­self’. Puri­fy­ing one’s self includes puri­ty in faith, deeds and devo­tion to God. Like­wise, Hadith says ‘deeds (their cor­rect­ness and rewards) depend upon inten­tions.’ These prin­ci­ples remained cen­tral to the Sufi thought upon which Sufis con­struct­ed whole edi­fice of their ide­ol­o­gy of right and wrong for puri­fy­ing inner self to attain solace and eter­nal peace. Shaykh Niza­mud­din, like oth­er Sufi mas­ters, also inher­it­ed the same lega­cy which is evi­dent, as we will see, from his record­ed con­ver­sa­tions.

For Sufis, ethics is God-cen­tric. He is the source of per­form­ing good behav­ior. Believ­ing in Hadith, Sufis regard that inten­tion behind per­for­mance will decide the stan­dard of deeds. Thus, Shaykh Niza­mud­din also seems wor­ried about incul­cat­ing the doc­trine into his dis­ci­ples by say­ing that ‘Be pure and unmarred wher­ev­er you are’. In fas­ci­cle 1, assem­bly 24, he cit­ed a sto­ry in response to a ques­tion was asked about ones who observe the all-night prayer vig­il in the mosque, and ones who stay up all night in their home (who are bet­ter among them?). The sto­ry reads: a man who in bygone days used to stay awake through­out the night and per­form prayers in the con­gre­ga­tion­al mosque of Dam­as­cus; he hoped that such con­spic­u­ous devo­tion would secure his appoint­ment as Shaykh al-Islam. He then went on to say that ‘the first thing you must do is to turn your back on becom­ing Shaykh al-Islam or mas­ter of a Sufi hos­pice’. In the same assem­bly he also said that ‘to recite one por­tion of the Quran at home is bet­ter than to recite the whole of the Quran in a mosque.’ By telling these Para­bles, Khwa­ja Niza­mud­din wished to teach his dis­ci­ples that impure inten­tions are harm­ful and dis­as­trous for one’s inner self. Deeds with impi­ous inten­tions may lead actions toward dan­ger­ous motives. For God must be the sole motive behind all human actions; whether spir­i­tu­al or mun­dane. Sufis’ spir­i­tu­al­ism essen­tial­ly empha­sizes on pure inten­tion and sin­cer­i­ty. What­ev­er God-ori­ent­ed peo­ple do, Khwa­ja Niza­mud­din said, they do for the sake of God; and their inten­tion is always for God. The Sufis notion of being God-ori­ent­ed is inspired by two rea­sons; the first is love or wish for attain­ing God’s will and the sec­ond is the sense of lia­bil­i­ty. Because what­ev­er we do in this world, we will be asked in the here­after. By the fol­low­ing cou­plet he tends to teach the same idea:

The deed-books read on Judg­ment Day
Must have their entries here first penned.

Ethi­cists divide ethics into three parts broad­ly: meta ethics, nor­ma­tive ethics and applied ethics. The sec­ond of them, nor­ma­tive ethics, includes the efforts to arrive at moral stan­dards that reg­u­late right and wrong con­duct. It is a search for an ide­al lit­mus test of prop­er behav­ior. This prin­ci­ple of ethics is enshrined in what is called the Gold­en Rule: ‘We should do to oth­ers what we would want oth­ers to do to us.’ This prin­ci­ple means to touch one’s con­scious­ness about the fact that oth­ers are humans in the same mean­ing as he is. What­ev­er he feels they feel the same. If he seems it wrong to be harmed by some­one else, then it would also be wrong to harm oth­ers. With this rea­son­ing we can under­stand and judge right and wrong con­duct.

Mus­lims were very ear­ly made aware of this prin­ci­ple. The prophet said to them, ‘None of you tru­ly believes until he loves for his broth­er what he loves for him­self.’ Sufis behav­ior regard­ing this Gold­en Prin­ci­ple was enthu­si­as­tic. It was, for them, not such an ide­al which would be hard to be prac­ticed, rather they made it applic­a­ble. Sufi mas­ters in their khan­qahs taught it to their dis­ci­ples and trained them. Khwa­ja Niza­mud­din is record­ed to have told a sto­ry of Khwa­ja Ajall Shi­razi, who taught his dis­ci­ple, instead of instruct­ing him supereroga­to­ry prayers, ‘what­ev­er you do not find agree­able for your­self, do not wish it to hap­pen to oth­ers; wish for your­self (only) what you also wish for oth­ers.’

Inter­est­ing­ly, with Sufis we find some­thing beyond the ethi­cists’ prin­ci­ple of Gold­en Rule. To them, the Gold­en Rule would read: We should do to oth­ers what we would want God to do to us. If we want God to show His mer­cy upon us, we should be kind and gen­er­ous to His cre­ation. That is why, Shaykh Niza­mud­din con­sid­ered it to be nec­es­sary as he said that one should be warm-heart­ed and live­ly com­pas­sion­ate for peo­ple. At anoth­er place, he revealed the same belief he had in a dif­fer­ent way. He said that ‘Between God and man there are two kinds of rela­tion­ships, between man and man, three kinds. The rela­tion­ship of God to man is char­ac­ter­ized by either jus­tice or kind­ness, or oppres­sion. If peo­ple are just or kind to one anoth­er, God will be kind to them. But if peo­ple are oppres­sive or unjust with one anoth­er, God will judge them accord­ing­ly, and He will mete out the appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment, even if the offend­er be the prophet of his time!’ The con­clu­sion of the above remark may be assumed that the sin­cere desire for the love for God and His mer­cy requires that one should be just and kind to oth­ers.

Sufi lit­er­a­ture focus­es on some par­tic­u­lar virtues which, as is con­sid­ered, should be all-per­va­sive in human dis­po­si­tion. These virtues cause in puri­fy­ing man’s inner self and help him pass through the spir­i­tu­al sta­tions, maqa­mat. Once a man pass­es through the sta­tions, he becomes per­fect, kamil. And to remain in per­fec­tion, sta­bil­i­ty and firm­ness is required in these virtues.

Man is not infal­li­ble mean­ing he is an easy prey to sin. But through repen­tance he can feel sor­ry for his pre­vi­ous wrong behav­ior, and can join the com­pa­ny of right­eous men. In this regard, Shaykh Niza­mud­din believes, on the author­i­ty of Hadith, that the pen­i­tent is equiv­a­lent to the upright. This is because, he goes on to explain, he who repents is every moment con­scious of the need to obey. This very enthu­si­as­tic and ardent zeal of sav­ing him­self from com­mit­ting sins reduces to ash­es all his sin­ful excess­es.

How­ev­er, repen­tance, taw­bah, requires con­stan­cy. By con­stan­cy, Shaykh Niza­mud­din means that ‘when the pen­i­tent grounds him­self in repen­tance, he will not wish for any sin nor will he even rec­ol­lect the word ‘iniq­ui­ty’.’
Hope of repen­tance is a bet­ter cure of sin­ful­ness, toward which Shaykh Niza­mud­din per­suad­ed his dis­ci­ple.
Anoth­er virtue, com­plete trust, tawakkul, (in God), is regard­ed very desir­able in Sufi lit­er­a­ture. By this, Sufis main­tain that men should be con­tent and desir­ing noth­ing oth­er than God. Man should be trust­ful in God, to the extent that ‘like a corpse in the hands of a wash­er­man; which asks no ques­tion and does not move on its own.’
This con­cept has rev­o­lu­tion­ized the very idea of con­duct and human behav­ior. If a man does not desire of any­thing from any­one oth­er than God, he does not need to fear for oth­ers and wor­ry about any­thing. Through his own pecu­liar method, Shaykh Niza­mud­din teach­es it to his dis­ci­ples in Fawaid al-Fuad.

For attain­ing tawakkul, Sufis pre­fer an ascetic life and refrain from indulging into the world­ly things i.e. wealth, fame and so on, lest their con­cen­tra­tion may be dis­turbed. There are many inter­est­ing dis­cus­sions about asceti­cism and the con­cept of asceti­cism in tasawwuf in Fawaid al-Fuad.

Endurance, sabr, and con­tent­ment, raza, are among the car­di­nal virtues in Sufi lit­er­a­ture. In the Quran endurance is described as a mean for seek­ing help and sta­bil­i­ty from God in dif­fi­cul­ties. For, there have always been prob­lems in the way of per­form­ing right and refrain­ing from wrong. At this time, man is need­ed to be firm and con­stant. Sufis believe that this could be attained by endurance and con­tent­ment.

How­ev­er, for Sufis, the con­cept of endurance and con­tent­ment is very ide­al­is­tic. Shaykh Niza­mud­din tells us what Sufis mean by them. He says: ‘endurance is that when some­thing odi­ous hap­pens to you, you bear with it and do not com­plain. As for con­tent­ment, that is when some­thing odi­ous hap­pens to you and you do not regard it as odi­ous, but instead act as if that mis­for­tune had nev­er befall­en you!’ Though it seems imprac­ti­cal, but to the Shaykh, these virtues are attain­able only if man ‘is pre­oc­cu­pied with med­i­tat­ing on God.’ Shaykh Niza­mud­din goes on at oth­er place, by quot­ing al-Ghaz­za­li, that ‘endurance is the dom­i­nance of the urge to seek God over the urges to sat­is­fy one’s own desire.’

The virtues, patience, taham­mul, and for­bear­ance bur­d­bari, are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Sufi paci­fistic ide­ol­o­gy. Sufis tend to adopt a peace­ful way of resolv­ing con­flicts. Revenge, to them, is not prefer­able. ‘One, says Shaykh Niza­mud­din’ must not be bent on retal­i­a­tion.’ Because retal­i­a­tion brings more destruc­tion to both sides. By this a con­flict can­not be resolved until the weak­er fac­tion is destroyed or humil­i­at­ed. The way Shaykh Niza­mud­din explains the con­cept is adorable and fas­ci­nat­ing. He says: ‘if some­one puts a thorn (in your path) and you put a thorn (in his), there are thorns every­where!’

V

The eth­i­cal phi­los­o­phy which devel­oped under the Sufi envi­ron­ment stands in a dis­tinct place in the his­to­ry of eth­i­cal phi­los­o­phy. Tasawwuf has devel­oped a pecu­liar method of train­ing in eth­i­cal and moral con­ducts. What does it do? It stim­u­lates the emo­tions and feel­ings buried in the uncon­scious­ness of man. It makes peo­ple aware of the Islam­ic con­cept of account­abil­i­ty in front of God. Being made aware of this fact, man refrains from com­mit­ting sins. The virtues it focus­es upon are impor­tant in terms of enhanc­ing human char­ac­ter. While oth­er philo­soph­i­cal and reli­gious schools tend to devel­op those morals and eth­i­cal val­ues which are rec­i­p­ro­cal, tasawwuf desires to bring change and devel­op­ment into those actions as well, which are pure­ly spir­i­tu­al i.e. wor­ship of God. This is also a part of Sufi ethics which makes it unique.

.….….….….….……

. Tarikh‑I Firuz Shahi, ed. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, p. 308 (quot­ed in the intro­duc­tion of the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Fawaid al-Fuad (Morals For The Heart) Bruce Lawrence, p.3. (US: Paulist Press)
. Ibid. p.16.
. Ibid. p 24.
. Fawaid al-Fuad, Urdu trans­la­tion, Khwa­ja Hasan Niza­mi, p.79. (India: Urdu Acad­e­my Del­hi, 1990).
. Fawaid, Lawrence, p.25.
. Ibid. p.26
. Ibid. p.26.
. Niza­mi Bansari, Ahmed Ayaz, Urdu trans­la­tion by Khawa­ja Hasan Niza­mi, (Pak­istan: Dost Pub­li­ca­tion) (the writer of this book is con­tem­po­rary and dis­ci­ple of Shaykh Niza­mud­din who wrote an inter­est­ing event in def­er­ence to the Hin­du cus­tom which he wit­nessed in the khan­qah dur­ing his first vis­it.)
. Ibid. p.29.
. Shaykh Niza­mud­din left a large num­ber of his dis­ci­ples as his lega­cy, who were trained in his khan­qah under his guid­ance. After his death, they all dis­persed through­out the coun­try engag­ing in dis­sem­i­nat­ing the teach­ings of Shaykh, which result­ed into the devel­op­ment and suc­cess of Chishti order in India. Nis­ar Ahmed Farooqi pro­duced a com­pre­hen­sive list of his 111 suc­ces­sors who are liv­ing in the accounts of his­to­ri­ans and hagiog­ra­phers, but if it is com­pared with the com­plete list, as Farooqi said, can­not even be a frac­tion of it. (Fawaid, Urdu, Niza­mi, pp. 145–49.)
. Fawaid, Lawrence, p.42.
. In addi­tion to Amir Hasan, some oth­er dis­ci­ples of Shaykh Niza­mud­din record­ed his con­ver­sa­tions. Khaliq Ahmed Niza­mi has giv­en a list of five oth­er com­pi­la­tions. These are as fol­low: Durar‑i Niza­mi, by Ali Jan­dar; Mal­fuzat, by Khwa­ja Shams al-din Bihari; Anwar al-Majalis, by Khwa­ja Muham­mad; Has­rat Namah, by Ziya al-din Barani; Tuh­fat al-Abrar wa Kara­mat al-Akhyar, by Khwa­ja Aziz al-din Sufi. How­ev­er, except Durar‑i Niza­mi all oth­er com­pi­la­tions are extinct., Fawaid, by Lawrence, p.46.
. In this arti­cle, gen­er­al­ly, I have adopt­ed Bruce Lawrence’s Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Fawaid al-Fuad, ‘Morals For The Heart’, but at some place where I need­ed I have trans­lat­ed my own. Though, for main­tain­ing the authen­tic­i­ty of the trans­la­tion, I have cross­checked it with the orig­i­nal Per­sian text. The orig­i­nal text, which I am using here, was first pub­lished by Urdu Acad­e­my Del­hi, in 1990 with the Urdu trans­la­tion of Khwa­ja Hasan Thani Niza­mi. How­ev­er, the trans­la­tion car­ries bla­tant trans­la­tion mis­takes. For exam­ple, Lawrence has trans­lat­ed tasad­duq as for­give­ness, and the whole sto­ry, which fol­lows it, goes on con­trary to the sto­ry nar­rat­ed in the text, (Lawrence, Fawaid, p.123.).
. Amir Hasan Ala‑i Sijzi was born in Badaon in 1254. After receiv­ing his ear­ly edu­ca­tion in his native town he moved to Del­hi where he had been asso­ci­at­ed with roy­al court. He was an excel­lent poet, and so was con­ferred an hon­orary title ‘Sa’di of Hin­dus­tan’. He was a devot­ed dis­ci­ple of Shaykh Niza­mud­din Awliya. By writ­ing Fawaid al-Fuad, he is cred­it­ed with ‘intro­duc­ing a new genre for the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of mys­tic ideas and prac­tices.’
. Fawaid, fas­ci­cle I, assem­bly 28.
. Fawaid, Lawrence, p.4.
. Fawaid, Urdu, Niza­mi, p.171.
. Trans­lat­ed by the author from the Per­sian text.
. http://www.iep.utm.edu/ethics/print; accessed on 1/20/2016.
. A His­to­ry of Mus­lim Phi­los­o­phy, ed. M M Sharif, , p.306, (Ger­many, 1963).
. Quran, 87:14.
. Zia al-Quran, Pir Karam Shah Azhari,p.543–44 (Pak­istan: Zia al-Quran).
. Bukhari, book 1; Hadith no. 1.
. Fas­ci­cle II, assem­bly 3.
. Fawaid, fas­ci­cle II, assem­bly 18. This sen­tence is not in the Lawrence’s trans­la­tion. I found it in the text pub­lished with Hasan Nizami’s Urdu trans­la­tion.
. Fawaid, fas­ci­cle I, assem­bly 1.
. http://www.iep.utm.edu/ethics/print.
. Fawaid, fas­ci­cle I, assem­bly 6.
. Ibid. fas­ci­cle IV, assem­bly 4.
. Ibid. fas­ci­cle III, assem­bly 13.
. Fawaid, fas­ci­cle I, assem­bly 1.
. Ibid., fas­ci­cle I, assem­bly 17.
. Ibid, fas­ci­cle II, assem­bly 9.
. Ibid. fas­ci­cle I, assem­bly 6.
. Ziaul Quran, Karam Shah, p.107.
. Fawaid, fas­ci­cle II, assem­bly 9.
. Ibid.
. Ibid. fas­ci­cle II, assem­bly 26.
. Ibid. fas­ci­cle II, assem­bly 35
. Ibid.