CDS (II) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 81 of 120

Correct — B, Central Afghanistan. Sufi orders take their names in two ways: some from their founding figure, as the Qadiri order does from Shaikh Abd'ul Qadir Jilani, and some from a place. The Chishtis are of the second kind. NCERT states the point in as many words — some orders 'were named after their place of origin, in this case the town of Chisht in central Afghanistan'. The town, Chisht-e Sharif, lies in the valley of the Hari Rud in Herat province, on the western edge of the Afghan highlands, and the order carried its name into India with the migration of Sufis in the late twelfth century. Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti settled at Ajmer, and the silsila became the most influential in the subcontinent.

• (a)Western Turkey — Western Turkey is the country of the Mevlevi order associated with Rumi and Konya, not of the Chishtis.
• (c)Eastern Iran — Eastern Iran is a near miss and the reason this option is here: Chisht lies close to the Iranian frontier and the whole Khurasan region straddles it, but the town itself is on the Afghan side.
• (d)Eastern Iraq — Eastern Iraq is the home ground of the Qadiri order, founded by Shaikh Abd'ul Qadir Jilani of Baghdad, whose name the order carries.

A silsila is a Sufi order defined by an unbroken chain of teachers running back from a living shaikh to the Prophet, and the four that mattered most in India were the Chishti, Suhrawardi, Qadiri and Naqshbandi. The Chishtis are distinguished by their poverty, their distance from rulers and state service, their acceptance of visitors of every faith, and their use of sama, devotional music, as a means of approach to God. The khanqah, the hospice where the shaikh lived and taught, and the dargah, the tomb-shrine that grew up after his death, are their two characteristic institutions.

The tempting option here is eastern Iran, because the Persianate world of Khurasan reaches across the modern border and because the order's language and idiom are Persian. The exam is following NCERT, which places Chisht in central Afghanistan, and that is the answer to give. A candidate who wants a firmer hold can remember the chain of Indian Chishti shrines instead — Ajmer for Muinuddin, Delhi for Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki and Nizamuddin Auliya, Ajodhan for Baba Farid — and note that the founder's own place of origin lies further west, in Afghanistan.

• The Chishti order takes its name from the town of Chisht; NCERT places it in central Afghanistan.
• Chishti Sufis migrated into the subcontinent in the late twelfth century and became the most influential order there.
• Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti settled at Ajmer, where his dargah remains the order's principal Indian shrine.
• Baba Fariduddin Ganj-i-Shakar and Nizamuddin Auliya are among the major shaikhs of the Indian Chishti chain.
• The Chishtis are associated with sama, devotional music, and with keeping their distance from rulers and state office.

• Assuming the order is named after Ajmer or after a place in India; the name is that of a town abroad.
• Pairing the Chishtis with Baghdad; that is the Qadiri connection.
• Treating every famous Sufi of medieval India as a Chishti — Bahauddin Zakariya of Multan, for instance, was a Suhrawardi.

As a place-of-origin question, as an order-to-saint match, or as an odd-one-out among named Sufi shaikhs.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Qadiri Sufi order takes its name from which one of the following?

  • (a)A town in Afghanistan
  • (b)Its founding shaikh
  • (c)A district of Delhi
  • (d)A city in Turkey

  Answer(b) Its founding shaikh — Shaikh Abd'ul Qadir Jilani, unlike the Chishtis, who are named after a place.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The dargah of Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti is situated at which one of the following places?

  • (a)Ajodhan
  • (b)Ajmer
  • (c)Multan
  • (d)Gulbarga

  Answer(b) Ajmer — the principal shrine of the Chishti order in India.