Ajmer Sharif

The dargah of Muin al-Din Chishti at Ajmer is the most important Sufi shrine in South Asia, and a place whose visitors have never been only Muslim.

The saint and the order

Muin al-Din Chishti, who died at Ajmer in 1236, founded the Chishti order in the subcontinent, the most influential of the Sufi lineages of South Asia. The Chishtis taught poverty, tolerance of other faiths, service to the poor and the use of music, especially the devotional singing called qawwali, as a means to God. That combination made the order enormously popular and, to stricter jurists, permanently suspect. A shrine grew over the saint's grave, patronised over the centuries by sultans and Mughal emperors, some of whom walked to it as pilgrims.

The dargah and its devotion

The dargah complex, entered through great gateways, centres on the domed tomb, before which pilgrims offer flowers, cloth and prayers and tie threads in petition. Its annual urs, the commemoration of the saint's death understood as his union with God, draws vast crowds, and qawwali is sung at the shrine. The devotion is intercessory: petitioners ask the saint to carry their needs, a practice central to South Asian Sufi piety and criticised by reformist currents that regard it as improper.

A shared and contested space

Ajmer Sharif has for centuries been visited by Hindus and Sikhs as well as Muslims, which is why it functions in Indian public argument as evidence of a shared devotional culture, and, for those hostile to that idea from any direction, as a problem. It remains a living, intensely active shrine drawing pilgrims from across the subcontinent and beyond, its significance bound up with the wider place of Sufism in the religious life of the region.

An emperor once walked most of the way from Agra to Ajmer to fulfil a vow made at this shrine, and its kitchens still cook for pilgrims on a similarly large scale.

The saint who founded the order

Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti arrived in India around 1192 and founded the Chishti Sufi order there, teaching a message of religious tolerance and service that drew both Muslim and Hindu followers during his lifetime, a reputation that has carried through to the shrine's present-day character as a site visited across religious lines.

A Mughal pilgrimage tradition

Mughal emperor Akbar reportedly walked on pilgrimage from Agra to Ajmer more than once to fulfil vows, a practice of imperial devotion that later Mughal rulers continued in various forms, and the dynasty funded significant additions to the shrine complex, including large gateways and buildings that remain part of the site today.

Cooking on an industrial scale

The shrine maintains two enormous cauldrons, or degs, used to cook rice and other food in bulk for distribution to pilgrims, a practice tied to the order's emphasis on charitable service; donors sponsor cooking runs, and the food is distributed freely, functioning much like the langar tradition found at Sikh gurdwaras, though organised through the shrine's own separate custodial system.

The Urs

The annual Urs, marking the anniversary of the saint's death, draws large numbers of pilgrims from across South Asia and beyond, treating the death date as a celebration of spiritual union rather than an occasion of mourning.