The Book of Nizamuddin Aulia by Jaffer Mehru

Author:Jaffer, Mehru [Jaffer, Mehru]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184757422
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE PATH TO TAWAKKUL

Since Nizamuddin never married, his mother lived with him till her death, mostly in awful poverty, in the capital city. Such biblical poverty, however, is commonplace in the lives of all the great Chishti masters. Their attitude to poverty is special, even reverential, since the absence of any means of subsistence is said to make it possible for a pious man to give evidence of tawakkul, his complete trust in God.29

The family often starved together. If they came by some money, Zulaikha preferred to use it for engaging well-known teachers for her son. Once they had had nothing to eat for three whole days, when a man with a tureen of porridge made from rice and lentils knocked at the door. Nothing seemed more delicious than the pot of simple khichri that had appeared before them as if by miracle.

When they ran out of food his mother would smile and say that on that day, the family was the guest of God. Nizamuddin confessed that his heart filled with delight when he heard his mother utter those words and he always longed to hear her repeat them.

Such staunch moral support from the mother is not unusual in the making of an Islamic mystic. It was surely from his mother that Nizamuddin inherited the emotion of joyful resignation to the will of a higher consciousness whenever he was faced with difficulties later in life.

Ever since he was a child, Nizamuddin had touched his head to Zulaikha’s feet after seeing the first sliver of the new moon in the heavens. One starry evening after he had repeated the ritual, Zulaikha requested him to spend that night in the home of Najib, their neighbour. In the early hours of the following morning Zulaikha asked for Nizamuddin. She took his hand in hers and said that she was leaving him in the care of God. Then she was gone.

Nizamuddin told his friends that the last words spoken by his mother were more precious to him than a houseful of jewels and gold. The words provided his mourning heart with much peace and solace at different stages in his life. Long after his mother had left him, Nizamuddin felt that he was always protected by God.

Nizamuddin buried his mother in the Qutub Minar area in a village called Uchchin. Throughout his life it was his habit to visit her grave regularly. His mother’s death was probably the most dramatic experience in Nizamuddin’s life. Speaking to disciples in later years, he would mention the death of his mother often. On one occasion he repeated the incident and then burst into tears. ‘So convulsed was he with tears that I could not make out what he was trying to say,’ his friend and chronicler Amir Hasan Sijzi recalled.

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