Since Iran is in the news and since Hazrat Ali’s birthday, or Wiladat-e-Maula Ali, fell on January 2 this year in India, I thought it would be interesting to talk about him this week. Who was Hazrat Ali? Ali ibn Abu Talib was born around 600 CE in Mecca. Some say he was born inside the Kaaba, the holiest site of Islam, and that he was the only such person in history. He was the cousin and son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad. He is revered as the first Imam by Shia Muslims and as the fourth Rashidun Caliph by Sunni Muslims. Khulafa-e-Rashideen or Rashidun means the ‘Rightly Guided Successors’ or ‘Rightly Guided Caliphs’, referring to the first four caliphs who led the Muslim community in Arabia after Prophet Muhammad's death. They were Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali.
Of the four, only the first, Abu Bakr, died a natural death. The others were assassinated, including Hazrat Ali in 661 CE. As the son of the Prophet’s uncle, Abu Talib, he grew up under the Prophet’s care after a famine. He later married the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima, and became his son-in-law. After her death, he had eight other wives in all and several slave women who bore him children. He was a close follower of the Prophet and renowned as a great warrior in the cause of Islam.
Shia Muslims consider Ali to be the only legitimate immediate successor to the Prophet of Islam, hence their rift with Sunnis. Iran is almost ninety-five percent a Shia country.
Many in India would have heard the song ‘Man kunto maula fa-haza Ali un maula’. It is traced back to an incident in a Hadith. The Hadiths were originally oral traditions, later recorded as sayings or actions of the Prophet. They were written around 200 years after his passing. This Hadith goes that after his final pilgrimage in March 632 CE, the Prophet stopped at Ghadir Khumm, an oasis, also referred to as the Pond of Khumm, and gathered a large crowd of Muslims. He then made the declaration, “Man kunto maula fa-haza Ali un maula,” meaning ‘Whoever accepts me as a master, Ali is his master too.’ The word maula or mawla is Arabic and is used with masculine names. It means ‘master’ or ‘guardian’.
These words took on another dimension in India in the 13th century. They were woven into a famous qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music, by the Delhi poet, Amir Khusro. He was a follower of the Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya and is often credited as the ‘father of qawwali’. He introduced a fusion of Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Indian musical traditions known as Khusrawi mausiqi, or Khusro-made music. Khusro’s song is considered the first ever qawwali, and it’s classified as a manqabat, a song sung chiefly in praise of Hazrat Ali and other Islamic holy figures. I have heard the song begin with the widely used phrase for Hazrat Ali, ‘Shah-e-Mardan, Sher-e-Yazdan, Quwwat-e-Parvardigar’, meaning ‘King of the brave, the lion of God, the strength of the Creator’. This song is sung in both Shia and Sunni gatherings.
Was Amir Khusro Sunni or Shia? We know he was born in 1253 in Patiyali, Kasganj district in modern-day Uttar Pradesh, in what was then the Delhi Sultanate, as the son of Amir Saifud-Din Mahmud, a man of Turkic extraction, and Bibi Daulat Naz, a converted Indian lady. Amir Khusro’s father was reportedly a Sunni. Khusro’s murshid, or guru, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, was also a Sunni Sufi saint of the Chisti order. He followed mainstream Sunni Islam while practising the mystical Sufi tradition.
I once heard two 20th-century stalwarts of Hindustani music, both Sunni, spontaneously break into this song. They were Ustad Bismillah Khan, the shehnai vidwan, and dhrupad maestro Ustad Fahimuddin Dagar, of the famous Dagar lineage of musicians.
I mentioned that Hazrat Ali was known as a great fighter. His sword, Zulfiqar, is legendary. It had a split blade, and West Asian weapons are apparently commonly inscribed with a quote invoking Zulfiqar. Zulfiqar was frequently depicted on Ottoman flags, especially those used by the Janissaries, the elite soldiers. A ceremonial version is on display at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.
An interesting story I heard concerns Zulfiqar and the Mughal princess Zebunissa. She was Aurangzeb’s eldest child, who wrote poetry under the pen-name ‘Makhfi’, meaning ‘the concealed one’. Though she was his favourite child for years, she fell calamitously from her father’s good graces. She was imprisoned for twenty years in grim Salimgarh Fort next to the Red Fort for supposedly helping a rebellious younger brother.
But this story was before that. Zebunissa was allowed to interact with foreign poets from behind a curtain. An Iranian, Nasir Ali, perhaps emboldened by the fact that Zebunissa’s mother was also Iranian, spoke more familiarly than was acceptable to a Mughal princess. In a cold voice, Zebunissa said in Persian, “Nasir Ali, ba naam e Ali deeda-e-panah. Varna ba Zulfiqar-e-Ali sarbureeda mat.”
Meaning, “Nasir Ali, by the name of Ali (in your name), you’re seeing a pardon. Or else, your head would have been taken off by Zulfiqar, the sword of Ali.” As royal rebuffs go, you can feel the freeze even after three centuries.
I would like to conclude with a saying attributed to Hazrat Ali. It goes, “When you are destitute, trade with Allah through charity”. This could apply to anyone, don’t you think, as a way of being? To ‘trade’ with God by giving?
Renuka Narayanan | FAITHLINE | Senior journalist
(Views are personal)
(shebaba09@gmail.com)