The biography of Shaikh Muinuddin Chishti, authored by Jahanara, is known as
- (a)Munis al Arwah
- (b)Fawaid ul Fuwad
- (c)Sirat ul Auliya
- (d)Muraqqa-e Dehli
Correct — A, Munis al Arwah. Jahanara, the eldest daughter of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, made a pilgrimage to Ajmer in 1643 in her father's company and wrote an account of the shrine and its saint under the title Munis al Arwah, which translates as The Confidant of Spirits. It is a biography of Shaikh Muinuddin Chishti, the founder of the Chishti order in India whose dargah at Ajmer is the most revered of the Chishti shrines, and it is also a remarkable first-person record of how a Mughal princess understood a pilgrimage — she describes not sleeping on a leopard skin, not extending her feet towards the sanctuary, walking barefoot from the doorway, circling the tomb seven times, and placing her own rose scarf on it. The other three titles are all real works of the same broad tradition, which is what makes the item worth setting, but none of them is hers.
- (b)Fawaid ul Fuwad — Printed in the booklet as Fawaid ul Fuwad — a slip for Fawa'id al-Fu'ad, which means the benefits or morals of the heart. It is not a biography at all but a malfuzat, a record of the conversations of Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya, compiled by the Persian poet Amir Hasan Sijzi Dehlavi in the early fourteenth century, and it is the founding text of that genre in India.
- (c)Sirat ul Auliya — Siyar ul Auliya is a tazkira, a collective account of the lives of the Chishti masters, written by Amir Khurd. It covers Muinuddin Chishti among many others, but it is a fourteenth-century work by a male author of the order, not Jahanara's.
- (d)Muraqqa-e Dehli — Muraqqa-i Dehli, the Album of Delhi, is Dargah Quli Khan's eighteenth-century account of the city, its shrines and its performers, written by a visitor from the Deccan. It describes the shrine of Nasiruddin Chiragh-i Dehli, not the life of Muinuddin Chishti.
Sufi literature in India falls into recognisable genres, and questions are usually built on the boundaries between them. Malfuzat record a master's conversations; tazkiras are collective biographies of a lineage; maktubat are collections of letters; and a work like Jahanara's belongs with the biographies, written from outside the order by a devotee rather than by a disciple.
Every option here is a genuine title, so the item cannot be solved by spotting an invented name. Attach each to its author instead — Jahanara to Munis al Arwah, Amir Hasan Sijzi to Fawa'id al-Fu'ad, Amir Khurd to Siyar ul Auliya, Dargah Quli Khan to Muraqqa-i Dehli. Two further anchors help. Jahanara is unusual in Mughal history as a princess who wrote, and her Chishti devotion was shared by her brother Dara Shukoh, whose own writings on Sufism survive. And the order she was writing about takes its name from the town of Chisht in central Afghanistan, not from anywhere in India, which is a separate favourite of examiners.
- Munis al Arwah, The Confidant of Spirits, is Jahanara's biography of Shaikh Muinuddin Chishti, written around her pilgrimage of 1643.
- Muinuddin Chishti founded the Chishti order in India; his dargah at Ajmer is its most revered shrine.
- Fawa'id al-Fu'ad is the malfuzat of Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya, compiled by Amir Hasan Sijzi Dehlavi.
- Muraqqa-i Dehli is Dargah Quli Khan's eighteenth-century account of Delhi and its shrines.
- The Chishti order takes its name from the town of Chisht in central Afghanistan.
- Confusing a malfuzat with a biography — Fawa'id al-Fu'ad records conversations, not a life.
- Attaching Fawa'id al-Fu'ad to Nizamuddin Auliya as its author; he is its subject and Amir Hasan Sijzi its compiler.
- Placing the town of Chisht in India; it is in central Afghanistan.
As a book-to-author attribution, or as a matching list of Sufi texts with their authors and subjects.
Assertion (A): The sponsor and the most prominent figure of the Chisti order of Sufis in India is Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti. Reason (R): The Chisti order takes its name from a village Chisti in Ajmer. In the context of the above two statements, which one of the following is correct?
- (a) Both A and R are true and R is the correct explanation of A
- (b) Both A and R are true, but R is not a correct explanation of A
- (c) A is true, but R is false
- (d) A is false, but R is true
Answer(c) A is true, but R is false
The same saint, with the order's name as the tested point. Muinuddin Chishti is indeed its founding figure in India, but the name comes from the town of Chisht in Afghanistan rather than from anywhere near his shrine at Ajmer.
CDS_GK_2021_II_Q812021The town of Chisht, from which the Sufi Chishti Silsila derives its name, is located in
- (a) Western Turkey
- (b) Central Afghanistan
- (c) Eastern Iran
- (d) Eastern Iraq
Answer(b) Central Afghanistan
The companion question later in this very paper. The examiner set the order's origin and its literature in the same session, so a candidate who had read one chapter properly could pick up both marks.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Fawa'id al-Fu'ad, an early example of the malfuzat genre, records the conversations of
- (a)Shaikh Muinuddin Chishti
- (b)Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya
- (c)Baba Farid
- (d)Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi
Answer(b) Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya — compiled by the poet Amir Hasan Sijzi Dehlavi in the early fourteenth century.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Chishti silsila takes its name from a town located in
- (a)eastern Iran
- (b)central Afghanistan
- (c)western Turkey
- (d)Sindh
Answer(b) central Afghanistan — unlike most orders, which are named after a founder, the Chishtis are named after their place of origin.