According to the hadith, prayer and performing
good deeds on this night will win God’s forgive-
ness for past sins. Many Muslims also believe that
on this night each year God decrees all that will
happen in the year to come, in keeping with the
meaning of qadr as “destiny.”
See also Fat e; martyrdom; prophets and
prophethood.
Further reading: S. D. Goitein, “Ramadan: The Muslim
Month of Fasting.” In Studies in Islamic History and
Institutions edited by S. D. Goitein, 90–100 (Leiden: E.J.
Brill, 1966); Michael Sells, Approaching the Quran: The
Early Revelations (Ashland, Oreg.: White Cloud Press,
1999): 100–103.
Nizam al-Din Awliya (Nizam ud-Din
Auliya) (1243–1325) renowned Sufi saint of the
Chishti order in India who is credited with inspiring
the spread of Chishti teachings throughout South Asia
Nizam al-Din Awliya was born in 1243 in Badaon,
a settlement east of delhi, india, to which his
grandfather had migrated from bUkhara in Cen-
tral Asia. His father died when Nizam al-Din was
five years old and his mother, whom he revered as
a model of piety, raised Nizam al-Din and his sis-
ter in abject poverty. As the son of a sayyid, Nizam
al-Din received religious edUcation in his youth
from teachers in Badaon and was quickly recog-
nized as a brilliant student in the qUran, hadith,
and fiqh. In his late youth he moved to Delhi with
his mother, where he visited the khanqah (Sufi
hospice) of Shaykh Farid ad-Din Ganj-i Shakar
(1173–1265), known commonly in India as Baba
Farid, of the chishti sUFi order. He immediately
impressed Shaykh Farid and joined his khanqah
to become his pupil. At the early age of 23 he was
appointed as Shaykh Farid’s khalifa (successor),
making him the fourth Chishti shaykh of the Sul-
tanate period in India, after which he was directed
to settle in Delhi to spread the Chishti teachings
as part of the larger flowering of Chishti khanqahs
throughout India.
Nizam ad-Din became a legend during his own
lifetime, known for his charisma, his passionate
desire for God, and his belief that the ultimate
essence of Sufism was service to humanity. His
khanqah on the outskirts of Delhi served in part as
a local charity center in which he worked to alle-
viate poverty. Unlike most other Sufis of his time,
Nizam ad-Din was celibate and unmarried. He
fasted regularly, both out of concern for the needs
of the poor as well as for his own spiritual practice,
and he integrated a schedule of personal prayerful
solitude with an active cultivation of community
prayer and devotion in his khanqah. His khanqah
attracted people from all segments of Indian soci-
ety, and samaa assemblies—gatherings of ecstatic
devotional mUsic performance—were held regu-
larly there despite controversy in the Sultanate
surrounding the practice. He eschewed involve-
ment in the politics of the Sultanate, most notably
evidenced in his refusal to accept land grants from
the sultans and invitations to their court.
Nizam al-Din’s renown stems largely from
the remarkable historical record provided by
the Indo-Persian poet Amir Hasan Sijzi, who
recorded his conversations. This record, entitled
Fawaid al-fuad (Morals for the heart), was begun
in 1308 and completed almost 14 years later. It
was a popular contemporary text prior even to its
completion, and its panegyrics helped to launch
the popularity of the shaykh. Nizam al-Din’s pop-
ularity spread further through the poetry of Amir
Khusraw (d. 1325), a stUdent of the shaykh and
the most celebrated and widely read of the Persian
poets of India. He is also the subject of a Chishti
hagiography called Siyar al-awliya (Lives of the
saints), written 30 years after his death in 1325.
Contemporary khanqahs throughout South Asia
trace their roots back to Nizam al-Din Awliya,
and to the present day South Asian Muslims and
Hindus visit his tomb in Ghiyathpur, a suburb of
Delhi, to receive blessings.
See also asceticism; delhi sUltanate; persian
langUage and literatUre; qawwali; sUFism.
Megan Adamson SijapatiK 530 Nizam al-Din Awliya