What the Chishtis Taught, and What Else Ajmer Holds

The order that traces itself to Ajmer became the largest Sufi tradition in South Asia, and its distinguishing positions are worth stating because they were contested from the beginning. Chishtis permitted sama, the disciplined listening to sung poetry as a devotional exercise, which stricter jurists regarded as forbidden entertainment. They held that a master should keep away from rulers and refuse land grants, so as not to owe anyone. And they made the free kitchen a central obligation rather than an occasional charity.

The chain runs from Muinuddin through Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki at Delhi, Farid al-Din Ganj-i Shakar in the Punjab, whose verses were later included in the Sikh scripture, and Nizamuddin Auliya back at Delhi. Each of those tombs became a centre in turn, so the order is mapped across northern India as a series of shrines rather than as a set of monasteries.

Ajmer holds more than the dargah. The mosque known as Adhai Din ka Jhonpra, built at the end of the twelfth century from the materials of dismantled temples and colleges, is one of the earliest Islamic buildings in India and carries an inscribed screen of great refinement. A short distance away lies Pushkar, with its lake and one of the very few temples anywhere dedicated to Brahma, and a Jain temple in Ajmer itself holds an elaborate gilded model of the Jain cosmos.