BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 29 of 142

Correct — C, Firdousia. The Firdausi order is the one silsilah of Indian Sufism that belongs to Bihar. It began as a branch of the Suhrawardi order, was carried from Delhi eastward in the fourteenth century, and struck root in Bihar so completely that it became effectively an independent order there and spread almost nowhere else. Its towering figure is Shaikh Sharfuddin Ahmad Yahya Maneri, called Makhdum-ul-Mulk, the most influential Sufi Bihar has produced: born at Maner near Patna, he spent years in ascetic retreat in the Rajgir hills before settling at Bihar Sharif in what is now Nalanda district, where the Sultan built him a khanqah and where his tomb remains one of eastern India's principal dargahs. His hundreds of letters of spiritual instruction, the Maktubat-i-Sadi, circulated far beyond Bihar and are among the most widely read Sufi writings produced in India. One honest qualification belongs on the card, because it is what makes this a medium-confidence answer rather than a certainty: 'founded in Bihar' is a loose description. The Firdausi lineage traces back through Najibuddin Firdausi in Delhi and beyond him to Central Asian roots, so the order was not created from nothing in Bihar; it was transplanted there, became independent there and remained confined to it. On a paper that offers four silsilahs and asks which belongs to Bihar, that is the intended and the only defensible answer, because each of the other three has a documented origin somewhere else entirely.

• (a)Qalandhar — The Qalandars were not a silsilah in the ordinary sense at all. They were wandering, ecstatic, deliberately unconventional dervishes who rejected the settled khanqah discipline that defined the organised orders — no fixed lineage of masters, no institutional centre. India's best-known Qalandar shrine is that of Bu Ali Shah Qalandar at Panipat in Haryana, far from Bihar.
• (b)Kubriya — The Kubrawiya was founded by Najmuddin Kubra in Khwarezm, in Central Asia, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It entered India through the north-west and had its principal Indian influence in Kashmir, where Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani and his followers carried it in the fourteenth century. Its Indian story is a Kashmiri one, not a Bihari one.
• (d)Quaderia — The Qadiriya takes its name from Shaikh Abdul Qadir Jilani of Baghdad, who died in the twelfth century, and was introduced into India in the fifteenth century with its early Indian centre at Uch in what is now Pakistani Punjab. It spread widely afterwards — Dara Shukoh was among its adherents — but it neither began in Bihar nor was ever centred there.

Indian Sufism organised itself into silsilahs — chains of spiritual descent running from a master to his disciples, each with a distinctive discipline and a network of khanqahs. Four orders dominated medieval India. The CHISHTI, brought by Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti to Ajmer, kept its distance from the state, refused royal grants, admitted people of every community and used devotional music, sama, as a path to God; Nizamuddin Auliya and Nasiruddin Chirag-i-Dehlavi belong to it. The SUHRAWARDI, established by Bahauddin Zakariya at Multan, took the opposite view, accepting state patronage and office. The QADIRI came later, from Baghdad through Uch. The NAQSHBANDI, associated with Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi in the seventeenth century, was the most orthodox and rejected sama. The Firdausi is the Suhrawardi branch that migrated east and became Bihar's own, which is why a Bihar paper can reasonably expect a candidate to know it while a national paper would not.

The route through this question is geographical rather than doctrinal: attach one place to each order and read the stem for the place. Chishti to Ajmer and Delhi, Suhrawardi to Multan, Qadiri to Baghdad and then Uch, Naqshbandi to Sirhind, Kubrawiya to Central Asia and then Kashmir, Firdausi to Bihar. Three of the four options here have well-documented homes outside Bihar, which leaves the fourth without any need to know its history. That elimination is the safer route, because the positive claim — that the Firdausi order was 'founded' in Bihar — is not strictly accurate and could make a well-read candidate hesitate. The wider point worth carrying is why Bihar had a distinct Sufi tradition at all. Bihar Sharif, Maner and Rajgir sat on the route between Delhi and Bengal, the region had been a centre of monastic learning for a thousand years before the khanqahs arrived, and the Delhi Sultanate's eastward expansion in the fourteenth century brought both the state and its Sufi networks into the province at the same moment.

• The Firdausi silsilah is a branch of the Suhrawardi order that became rooted in Bihar in the fourteenth century and spread little beyond it.
• Its greatest figure was Shaikh Sharfuddin Ahmad Yahya Maneri, Makhdum-ul-Mulk, born at Maner near Patna, who withdrew to the Rajgir hills before settling at Bihar Sharif in present-day Nalanda district, where his khanqah and tomb stand.
• His collected letters of spiritual counsel, the Maktubat-i-Sadi, are among the most widely circulated Sufi writings produced in India.
• Origins of the other orders: Kubrawiya founded by Najmuddin Kubra in Khwarezm and carried into Kashmir; Qadiriya from Shaikh Abdul Qadir Jilani of Baghdad with its early Indian centre at Uch; the Qalandars were unaffiliated wandering dervishes rather than an organised silsilah.
• The two dominant orders of medieval India were the Chishti, which refused state patronage and used devotional music (sama), and the Suhrawardi, which accepted it — the Firdausi descends from the second.

• Treating the Qalandars as a silsilah. They were deliberately unaffiliated wandering dervishes, which is why no founding place attaches to them.
• Confusing the Kubrawiya's Indian home with Bihar. Its Indian influence was in Kashmir, through Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani.
• Reading 'founded in Bihar' too literally. The Firdausi order was transplanted to Bihar and became independent there; it was not created there from nothing.

BPSC asks medieval religious history through its Bihar attachments — which order belongs to the State, which saint is buried where, which Sultan built which khanqah — because those are facts a Bihar candidate is expected to hold. UPSC asks the same silsilahs nationally and doctrinally, testing who was whose disciple, who accepted state service, and which order introduced which practice.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Shaikh Sharfuddin Ahmad Yahya Maneri, the most celebrated Sufi of Bihar, belonged to which silsilah ?

  • (a)Chishti
  • (b)Firdausi
  • (c)Naqshbandi
  • (d)Qadiri

  Answer(b) Firdausi — a branch of the Suhrawardi order. He settled at Bihar Sharif in Nalanda district, where his khanqah and tomb made the town the order's centre.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which Sufi order is associated with the use of sama, or devotional music, as a means of drawing close to God ?

  • (a)Naqshbandi
  • (b)Qadiri
  • (c)Chishti
  • (d)Suhrawardi

  Answer(c) Chishti — the order of Muinuddin Chishti at Ajmer and Nizamuddin Auliya at Delhi, which also refused state patronage. The Naqshbandi order, by contrast, rejected sama and was the most orthodox of the four.