43 - Bader Maqams or the shrines of Badr Al-Din-Auliya (Part II)

Bader Maqams or the shrines of 

Badr Al-Din-Auliya (Part II)

Last Updated on Tuesday, 29 January 2008 01:31 Tuesday, 29 January 2008 01:28

By M. Siddiq Khan

 PIR BADR AL-DIN

Having described,as far as available materials allow, the peculiar shrines dedicated to the Muslim  saint  Pir Badr in their historical and functional aspects, it now becomes necessary  to  refer to the venerable personage of the Pir, his life, work and attributes at fuller length, from the little available biographical data as these may be deduced from the nuggets of history embodied, in a corpus of traditions and legends which have grown up around Badr al-Din Auliya.  Some attempt to analyse the suggestions that there is some affinity between Pir Badr and Khwajah Khidr, as also some relationships, between other Muslim patron, saints of seamen and others dependent on water for their lives, namely, the Panch Pir (the Five Pirs)or Ghazi Pir may also be of interest.

It would be prudent to begin with an entry in Beale's Oriental Biographical Dictionary,  Pir Badr, according to this, is "a Mussalman saint whose tomb is at Chitagum in Bengal and is  evidently of great  antiquity.   There is a stone scraped, into furrows, on which, it is said, Pir Badar used to sit; there is also another bearing an inscription, which from exposure to the weather,  and  having  on  it,  numerous coats of whitewash, is illegible. There is a mosque near the tomb, with a slab of granite, bearing an illegible inscription, apparently from the Kuran. At a short distance is the Masjid of Muhammad. Yasia with an inscription conveying the year of Hijiri 1136 (1724 A.C.)." That  veritable  store-house of oriental—particularly Indian and and  Bengali---lore,  the Vishwa Kosh,  surprisingly, falters over Pir Badr,  its information being  obviously a bald summary of Beale's.1

There are other accounts which also must be studied and. compared with yet others before we can  form  some  opinion on the dates of Pir Badr al-Din Badr-i-'Alam. Dr. Md. Enarnul Haq in his Purba Pakistane Islam (Islam in East Pakistan) suggests that Badr Pir was at the height of his proselytizing activities in Chittagong when Shah Jalal, the celebrated saint of Sylhet, was preaching Islam there, i. e., between 1303 and 1346 A. D. The same writer states elsewhere that   according to an inscription on the tomb of MuhsinAuliya, one of the reputed companions and co-workers of Badr al-Din Auliya at Chittagong, the latter was alive in 1.340 A.D. None of these theories appear to be correct. Since the date of the Pir's death has been accepted as 1440 A.D.,  the suggested dates of Enarnul Haq  cannot be  reasonably accurate. It is reported that Kadal Khan Ghazi the general sent by Sultan Fakhr al-Din Mnbarak Shah (1336-1352) of Sonargaon during his invasion of Chittagong and  expulsion  of the occupying Arakanese,  met Pir Badr al-Din.2

It has been surmised that Badr al-Din was not preaching single-handed and that he had come to Chittagong in company with other preachers of Islam or, at least, while at Chittagong he was working in company with other Muslim missionaries.

There are theories, and they seem to be well-substantiated that Pir Badr came to Chittagong with at least, one companion and that he had some associates and contemporaries in Chittagong toiling for the spread of Islam. It has been mentioned previously that be is stated to have come all the way from Panipat to Chittagong in company, with a friend. The identity of this friend and his co-workers in Chittagong have not clearly been established but it is surmised that Katl (a) Pir,  a militant missionary and doughty warrior,  was the  one  who  accompanied Pir Badr. According to one tradition they reached Chittagong on fish-back, but is more than possible that the fish was a boat resembling a fish in appearance or having a figure-head of a fish at its prew as probably was the case of Shah Sultan Mahisawar who is "'called a fish-rider" because he came on a boat shaped like a fish or with a figure-head of a fish. Another contemporary of Pir Badr seems to have been Muhsin Auliya who died in 1397 and was buried in Battali village in the jurisdiction of Anowara Police Station.3

In the face of the several and conflicting theories about the period in which Badr al-Din flourished and his dates, it becomes necessary to assess the data offered and justify the date of the Pir's death which has been accepted as correct at the beginning of this paper.  In .part II of the monograph on the Contributions to the Geography and History of Bengal ( Muhammadan Period) edited by Blochmann, Badr al-Din Badr-i-Alam's date of demise is given as 844 A.H. or 1440 A.D. and be is definitely identified as having spent a long time  in Chittagong. He is stated to have come from Meerut in the North-West Province of those days and spent his last days in Bihar where he was buried after his death in the Chhota Dargah. This identification is generally accepted and corroborated by scholars who include M. Hidayet Hossain, in his article on Badr Pir in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, and others like Temple, O'Malley, Beames, Beveridge, Gait and Karim.4

  That Pir Badr, is, integrally, a historical figure is admitted by all these scholars,  as also by others like Anderson, Sladen  and others mentioned previously. It has been possible to ascribe a definite period to him although the date of birth, cannot unfortunately be established.

Therefore, to fix the dates of Pir Badr al-Din’s approximate lifetime on the basis of reports of his period of activity in Chittagong coinciding with that of Hadrat Shah Jalal in Sylhet and his meeting with Kadal Khan Ghazi, a general of the Sultan of Sonargaon, Fakhr al-Din Mubarik Shah who is started to have conquered Chittagong, may be misleading.5 The situation is aggravated and   further confused by the fact that there seems  to  have  been  more  than  one Pir of  this name or of a similar name, namely, Shaykh Hadrat Badr 'Alam, Shaykh Badr 'Alaia Zahidi who was probably known as Shaykh Badr al-Islam.  Pir Badr al-Din who was stated to have dsfeated the Raja of Hematabad of Dinajpur and preached Islam there 6 and Badir uddin Shah Madar alias   Ghazi Madar who died in 840 A.H. fighting the unbelievers. In any case, the   death of Pir Badr    al-Din Badr-'Alam is  known to have taken place in 1440  and  therefore, it does not appear  probable that the saint lived for well  over  a  hundred  yeas  as made out in the  statement by    Dr. Haq.

Unfortunately there is very little detailed information about the saint in addition to what has   already been stated above. M. A. L.Hough, Deputy Commissioner of Akyab,sent in 1893 a written    communication about the Pir from one of his subordinates a Bengali Deputy Inspector of schools,  which in spite of its defective  style and poor orthography of names, is reproduced below for its  subject-matter:

Bodor Mukarn, correct word is Bodor Mukhan, the residence of Bodor, Pir  Bador or Bodor Sahib or Bodor Auliya. There are different names by which he is known. His name is Shaik Boderuddin, i, e., he does not belong to the direct descendent (sic!) of the Prophet, but he belongs to the common class of people.  He was well versed in Arabic and Persian. He is said to be Mulovie. He is an Indian, most probably nearest to Punjab. He began his career of religious life from Jama Musjid of Delhi. He had three others, his intimate friends, with whom he used to attened many a religious lectures.

Tradition: There lived in ancient time a very rich man in India, who had a beautiful daughter.There lived in the same town;a Fakir, or Devotee, whose name was Shaik Firit (the well-known Shekh Farid). One day when this Devotee was passing by that rich man's house his daughter saw the Devotee in dirty or filthy rags. Seeing this, she drew her nose saying: “What a Loath some man the mad man is." That very night she had vary severe pain in her stomach. No one can cure. The cause was attributed to her insulting the Devotes. So the Devotes was invited and bagged pardon.  But he said: Unless she drinks some water wrung out of his filthy rags, she will never, be cured. But at last owing to very severe pains she drank. From that day she showed signs of pregnancy, and after 10 ( Lunar, ) months the Badoruddm is said to have (been) born.7

This apocryphal account, for there is no evidence of any definite information on which it was based, is interesting in that some corroboration is available of one of the statements in the first para, although the second seems to be based more on imagination than facts. Thus Meerut  which  is  generally accepted  at  his  birth-place was very near the Punjab frontier as  also  near Panipat  which has  been mentioned  in another account as the place from where the Pir  with  a  companion cams to Gaur on the way to his ultimate destination, Chittagong via Dacca.8

The Auliya (saint) Pir Badr is known and venerated allover Bengal and Northern India.  According to the information collected by Dr. Wise and Beames, Badr  al-Din  Badr-i-Alam (or Full Moon of the Faith and Full Moon of the world) was born at Meerut in the North-West Provinces of those days (or Uttar Pradesh in India). The exact or even approximate data of his birth cannot be ascertained although there is a rather much too vague and wide suggestion from one quarter   that this was sometime after the birth of Hadrat Sayyid ‘Abdul Qadir Jilani's birth which was in 470 A. H./1077 A.D. He adopted the wandering life of a fakir and "was probably draw to Bengal by the energetic preaching and advance of Islam there in the reign of King Jalal al-Din Abul Muzaffar Muhammad Shah(1414-1430 ) who had been converted from Hinduism.” From Gaur he passed on to Dacca and thence took a boat to reach Chittagong, the future scence of his activities for many years before he finally in response to a call from Shaykh Sharaf al-Din Ahmad Yahiya  Muniari, the celrbrated saint of Bihar, then on his death  bed, returned  to Bihar but was too late to meet Sharaf al-Din by forty days." 9 He spent his remaining days in that province and breathed his last in 844 A.D. (1440 A..D)

It has already been stated that he sailed in a boat from Dacca using the only fast and practicable route of travel those days by river to the Bay of Bengal and then along the sea-coast to the month of the Karnafuli and Chittagong. However a more picturesque, if legendary, version of his arrival is recorded by various writers including Wise, Hidayet Hosain, O'Maliey and others.  According to  this,  as  related  by  the  guardians (mutawallis or  khadims?) of Badar Shah's  dargah  (tomb)  at
Chittagong, about 1413 A.D.(this being a more probable date than 1744 as suggested by others )   Badr al-Din 'Auliva  arrived at Chittagaag on a floating piece of rock and proclaimed to the amazed onlookers that he had come all the away from  Arakan in order to rid Chittagong of the evil spirits, jinns and fairies who were  rampant  there  and  whose  depredations had made the place uninhabitable. However thrilling the tale of the floating stone be, it is more rational to hold that he came in a large boat from Dacca although Beames's theory that one of the numerous Portuguese sails dotting the waters of the Bay might have carried the. saint to Chittagong, has already bean examined and found to be baseless.

Badr al-Din’s selection of Chittagong as the place of his extensive missionary activities is interesting. At the time Chittagong had an evil reputation as has been suggested above and it is   possible that the story of the jinns and faires and their subsequent fate may be totally symbolic depicting the eternal struggle between good and evil and the triumph of the former. In any case it appears that. Islam was making no headway in the place. This was a challenge to the Pir dedicated in the cause of his faith arid he made his way there and set to combat the evil spirits.  The legend goes that he proceeded to settle on the top of a hill in the heart of old Chittagong which has been referred to as within the heart of the city and "the palladium". The saint begged for mere space to place one single lamp (or chati) and receiving it, lit his lamp. The miraculous power of the saint caused the light of the lamp to drive the evil sprits away further and further and ultimately, for good and it has been suggested that Chatigaon (village of the chatis or lamp) was the original name of Chittagong derived from this incident. The site of the original shrine of the Auliya in Chittagong can be located without much difficulty. Shihab al-Din Ahmed Talish, the 17^th century chronicler of Mughal history in Bengal and author of the Fathiyya-i-ibriyya wrote that:  "On a height within the fort is a tomb, known as the astana of Pir Badr; the attendants of the shrine perform prayer and fast. The Magh infidels have settled some villages in waqf on this tomb; they make pilgrimage to the holy dead and offer presents." 0’Malley states that the small hill before the Commissioner's House is reputed to be the place where the Pir lit his lamp and herein commemoration candles, paid for by a mixed clientele of Muslim, Hindu and even Christian devotees are burnt nightly even today and an urs (a commemorative feast)is held on the 29^th of the month of Ramandan or  the  Muslim month of fasting. Beale, writing in 1881 said that near   the  tomb of the  Pir , there was  a  mosque  with  a weather-bitten illegible stone inscription and the Pir's tomb and its mosque were close to the 18^th century mosque of Muhammad Yasin which has been  located to be in the Rahmatganj quarter of the  town. This tallies with the location of the hill mentioned by 0'Malley and is therefore the probable site of the original dargah of Pir Badr.  The Badr Pati or dargah at the south-western end of Bakshi Bazar is however more popularly known today as the  dargah of Badral-Din  Anliya.10

The reference to Pir Badr's tomb in Chittagong in addition to that at the Chhota Dargah of Bihar appears to need some explanation. Besides the tomb in Chittagong town, there are four other    so-called tombs of Pir Badr Shah in Chittagong District, the scene of the Pir's labours, viz., at Kajaldanga near the tomb of Qalandar Shah and at Haimgaon, Lamburhat and BhandaIjuri Ghat  respectively within  the jurisdictions  of the police stations of Boalkhali, Patiya, Raozan and   Rangunia. There is also another, tomb at Kalna in Burdwan District in West Bengal reputed to be the tomb of Badr Shah. Since it is definite that Pir Badr al-Din died in Bihar and was buried there, the other tombs may either relate to other holy men of the same name or similar names or alternatively, it may be that the others are symbolic tombs or mazars the erection and maintenance of which is not an unusual, practice as in the cases of Shah Bayazid Bistami of Chittagong and Shah Ismail Ghazi at Mandaran and others.11

Besides his historic preaching of Islam, in the face of difficulties and dangers which is said to be  largely the reason for the comparatively early accession of the greater part of the population of the Chittagong District to Islam, there are other reasons attributed for the generation of Badr al-Din Auliya.

One attribute of Pir Badr which needs fuller examination and description is "the idea of his dominion over rivers and the sea".  Badr Pir or Badr al-Din Auliya is held to be "the guardian saint of sailors and is invoked by the boating classes, Hindu as well as Muhammadan, when they start on a journey by sea or river", the incantation running as follows :

Amara  achchi polapan

Gazi achche nigahman,.

Shire Ganga dariya Panch Pir,

Badr, Badr, Badr.

(This may be translated from Bengali as- "we are children and the Ghazi is our protector, the river. Ganges is over us.  Oh Panch Pir (Oh, the five saints),. Oh. Badr, Badr).  It is worth while  noting  here  the  association  of  other  Pirs,  namely Ghazi Miyan and the Panch Pir with Pir Badr.

Another incantation of the same type and purpose quoted by Anderson runs thus:

Darya ke panch paise, Badr, Badr.

(or "Five copper pieces for the river. Oh Badr").  This act of dropping five copper coins into the river is said to have been originally a women's custom. 12

The reason for this historic figure of a famous Muslim saint and missionary being adopted as the patron saint of boatmen, seafarers, fishermen and travellers, or even as a “water demon" as he has been called by wise, is not understood clearly.13

Beames theorize that "the primitive nature worship of the Non-Aryan aborigines of India" was embodied in the persons of Pirs and thus Pir Badr al-Din, the celebrated saint of Eastern Bengal,   that land of seas and rivers, was credited with the powers to rule the waters and control the storms. This is however not an entirely adequate explanation of the attribution of these extraordinary powers.

A better explanation is that in Bengal, the historic figure of Badr al-Din  Badr-i-Alam  has  become  inextricably  blended with the legendary figure of Khwaja  Khidr and to a much lesser  extent  with  those  of  Ghazi  Pir, Zinda  Pir and the Panch Pir.  An article by M. Longworth Dames in the   Encyclopedia of Islam says:

"Khwadja Khidr (or Khizr in India), is in many parts of India identified with a river-god or spirit of wells and streams. He is mentioned in the Sikandar-nama as the saint who presided over the well  of immortality. The name was naturalized in India, and Hindus as well as Muslims reverence him and it is sometimes converted by Hindus into Radja Kidar.On the Indus the saint is often identified  with the river, and be is sometimes to be seen as an old man clothed in green. A man who escapes drowning is spoken of as evading Khwadja Khizr (Temple, Legends of the Panjab, i. 221)......His principal shrine is an island of the -Indus near Bakhar, which is resorted to by  devotees of both  creeds (Sind  Revisited,  ii,  226)......The  saint  is believed to  ride  upon  a fish,  which is adopted as a crest by the kings of  Oudh and appears on their coins.Possibly in this case there is also  a  survival  of the  fish avatar of Vishnu. Muslims offer prayer  to  Khwadja  Khizr  at  the  first  shaving  of  a  boy, and a little boat is  launched  at the same  time: also  at the close, of  the  rainy  season.” 14

Whatever be the local variations in the attributes of Khwaja Khidr, it is generally stated by Muslims that the saint, hidden from mortal eyes in the past as in the present, as charged by God, directs errant wayfarers and the drowning and the helpless.15   According to others, among the functions of Khidr, the patron saint of the waters or "God of the Flood" as he has been described by Crooke were included those of protection of boats from being damaged, lost or destroyed, the guidance of bemused wayfarers and their safety.

The following statement by him describes the mode of his veneration. "He (Khwajah Khidhr) is worshipped by burning lamps, feeding Brahmans, and by setting afloat on a village pond a little raft of grass with a lighted lamp placed on. it". The feeding of the Brahmans must have been practised by Hindus although probably a number of ignorant Muslims may have followed the practice of burning lamps and floating them on water.16   According to the Vishwa Kosh, Mlislim  women float small rafts or bhelas  carrying lamps and flowers and coconut oil to the accompaniment of incantations on the last Friday of  the  Bengali month of  Shraban (Shaon) every year.  Taylor says in 1839 that "The Beirah festival in honor of Khwajah Kizier (supposed to be the prophet Elias) was conducted with splendur during the time of Nowarrah was maintained here (Dacca), but in this respect it has greatly declined of late years."

Gait, speaking about Khwzja Khidr mentions that "Closely allied to the adoration of Pirs is the homage paid to certain mythical persons, amongst whom Khwaja Khizr stands pre-eminent. This personage appears to have been a pre-lslamic hero of the Arabs and some say he was a prophet or paighambar born a thousand years before Muhammad. He is said by many to be the ‘servant of  God'  mentioned in the Kuran, whom Moses found  by  following  in  the  track  of a  fried  fish  which miraculously came to life, and rebuked Moses on several occasions for his undue   curiosity. However this maybe, Khwaja Khizr is believed at the present day to reside in the seas and rivers of of India, and to protect mariners from shipwreck. His special connection with water is due to his having wandered all over the waters of the world in search of the water of     everlasting life. He is invoked by mariners, and is also propitiated by the more ignorant  Muhammadans,  at  marriages  and during the rainy season, by the launching in rivers and  tanks  of  beras  or small paper  boats, decorated  with  flowers  and lit up with candles. Food is also distributed to the destitute in his name, or left on  the  bank  to  be  picked  up  by  the first beggar  who  passes.” It is to be noted that certain attributes and functions of Pir Badr appear to be  more  or less  the  same  as  those of Khwajah Khidr but then it would be  unwise  to  make  a  complete identification of the  two  as  one mingled figure  as  there is obvious overlapping in the good   and  evil  attributes  of legendary,  or even  real  figures wrapped  in legends, and  traditions.

On the other, hand Dr. Wise in his Notes on the Races, Castes and Trades of Eastern Bengal, makes the following remarks which would make out that the Pir Badr and Khwajah  Khidr are not   the same but that in the opinion of many followers of their cults they do exercise a condominium over rivers and seas: He writes: "Besides  Khwajah  Khizr, Bengal  supplies other  animistic  ideas regarding water, and   Pir Badr shares with him the dominion of rivers. This spirit  is invoked, by every sailor and fisherman, when starting on a cruise, or when  overtaken  by  a  squall  or  storm."

This is corroborated by Risley who, when describing the Tiyars of Bengal, says:  “As was natural, the Tiyars have peopled the waters and streams with beneficient and wicked spirits, whose friendship is to be secured, and enmity averted, by various religious rites. Along   the   banks   of   the river Lakhya they worship Pir  Badr,  Khwajah  Khjizr, and, in fulfillment of vows, offer through   any Musalman  a goat  to Madar, whom  they regard, as a water god, but who may be identified  with Shah Madar Badi'uddm who is not,of course, Badru'ddin. Aulia, but another famous saint.”17

However, it is not incumbent in this paper to come to any final conclusions on the question of the identification of Pir Badr  with  Khidr  as the foregoing discussion is sufficient for our purpose.  It may be fruitful for some student of Sociology to further examine this aspect of the matter although the researches of Temple, in particular, leave hardly much scope for the addition of more  materials for  examination of the subject,

It now remains to examine the commingling of the personalities of Pir Badr al-Din and Pir Ghazi Saheb and then Panch Pir, the first named at least being a mythical person like Khwaja Khidr.

Ghazi Saheb or as he is also known, Ghazi Miyan, is also known as the patron saint of the boatman of Bengal and this explains why in the  invocation by people beginning a riverine or sea-borne voyage Ghazi  is associated  with Badr Pir. Hindus also invoke Ghazi saheb,  whom they hold as a River God and protector of boats and ships along with their Water Goddess Ganga Devi. According to Stapleton, he learnt from some Bengali Musalmans that Ghazi Miyan "was the son Sekandar Padshah ( the first muslim invader of Sylhet ) and that he  fought  against  Matuk Raja of Biratnagar, a place in the Rajshahi Division.  What historic basis there is for the romantic tale of Ghazi, Kalu and the maiden Champavati of which there were three different printed versions in circulation in the form puthis in 1913 is now difficult to assess.  It is however to noted that the Ghazi Miyan mentioned by Gait as "said be the nephew of Mahmud oF Ghazni and whose tomb is Bahraich" is not the Ghazi Saheb in whom we are interested.

It is difficult to find any such association between Ghazi Saheb aid Badr Pir as is found in the  case  of the latter and  Khwaja Khidr.18

The Panch Pir include generally Ghazi Miyan, Pir Badr, Zindah Ghazi, Sheikh Farid, Khwajah  Khidr collectively. In an article in the   Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics it is stated: "In West  Bengal the ‘five saints' form one of the main  objects of adoration, not  only of  Muhammadans,    but also of  "Hindus of the lowest grades. They are often worshipped as family deities.“19    Therefore, the Panch Pir are also looked upon as protectors of boatmen and seafarers and very  often  dargahs in commemoration of these  Pirs  including  Badr, are  found at mouths of rivers.It has already been  seen that in the invocation at the beginning of  sea voyage or river  journey  the  Panch Pir  are  also addressed  in addition  to  Pir  Badr  and Ghazi Pir.

In any case, this much stands out clearly. Pir  Badr is essentially a historical  figure,  overlaid  with  legendary attributes and is distinct from Khwaja Khidr and  Ghazi Miyan. His cult is distinct from that of these other mythical pirs as also from that of the Panch Pir of whom he is paradoxically one.

(SECTION B)

From  Burma’s lost Kingdom (Pamela Gutman)

The identity of the nats protecting other prominent sites clearly changed over time. One such is the protector housed in the Buddaw Maw Kun shrine.

 

Said to have been founded in 1756 by Muslims in honor of the saint, Buddaw Auliah, the British Commissioner in Arakan in 1876 recorded that:

On the southern side of the island of Akyab...there is a group of masonry buildings, one of which, in the style of its construction, resembles an Indian mosque; the other is a cave, constructed of stone on the bare rock... called Buddermokan, Budder being the name of a saint of Islam, and Mokan, a place of abode. It is said that 140 years ago or thereabout; two brothers named Manick and Chan, traders from Chittagong, while returning from Cape Negrais in a vessel loaded with turmeric, called at Akyab for water, and the vessel anchored off the Buddermokan rocks. On the following night Manick had a dream that the saint Budder Auliah desired him to construct a cave or a place of abode at the locality where they obtained water. Manick replied that he had no means to comply with the request. Budder then said that all Manick's turmeric would turn to gold, and that he should therefore endeavor to erect the building from the proceeds thereof. When morning came Manick, observing that all the turmeric had been transformed into gold, consulted his brother Chart on the subject of the dream and they conjointly constructed a cave and also dug a well in the locality now known as Buddermokan.20

 

Today the shrine consists of a cave on the rocks and a structure where the roof is a blend of the Indian mosque and the Burmese turreted spire. Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims worship the saint here for protection against the dangerous spirits of the water. Some will bring their new cars here and forward and reverse three times, a contemporary gesture of the traditional obeisance.

THE FOREIGN ENCLAVE

Foreigners were not permitted to live within the city but from the time of Min-Bin (1531-1553) were accommodated at Daingripet, to the west of the walls on the bank of the Aung-dat river where ships could harbour. The Portuguese built a church here, the Indian traders a Hindu temple and the Dutch merchants their factory. There was probably also a mosque, as a mihrab stone was found in the vicinity. Earlier the Bengali Muslims who are said to have accompanied Min Saw Mun back to Arakan built the Santikan mosque southeast of the city walls, east of the road to the Le-mro cities.

 Reference: 

1. Beale, Thomas William, The Oriental Biographical Dictionary. ..Calcutta, 1881, p. 216; Vishwa Kosh, Calcutta, 1307 B. E. Vol. XI, p,480.
2. Md.  Enainul Haq, Purba Pakistane Islam, p. 22; sec also his Bange Sufi Prabhava, unpublished thesis pp.  244-254.
3. Md.   Enamni Haq,  Bange  Sufi  Prabhava, unpublished  thesis,  pp. 235-37.  Karim. A. op. cil., pp. 88-89.
4. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Leyden, 1913, Vol. I, pp. 559-60: Temple. O'Mally,  Beames,  Beveridge, ops. cits., Gait, Report on the Census of Bengal, 1901, Vol. VI, Part I,  p. 178; Karim, A. Social  History of the Muslims in Bengal, Dacca, 1959, pp. 114.
5. Md. Enamul Haq, Purba Pakistane Islam, p. 22, see also the name author’s unpublished   thesis. Bange Sufi Prabhava, pp, 244-250.
6. Karim, A. op. cit. p.110 ; Md. Enamul Haq, Purba Pakistane Islam, p. 52.
7. Quoted by Temple op-. cit. pp.  8-9.
8. Vide Supra, f. n.
9. However there is another account according to which Shaiaf  al-Din died in 1446.
10. Jadu Nath Sarkar's translation in the Feringi Pirates of Chatgone, The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, June 1907. O'Malley op. cit., pp.  56-57; Beale, op. cit., p. 216; Ancient  Monuments in Bengal,  1895, pp. 228-231.
11. Muhammad Enamul  Haq,  Bange Sufi  Prabhava pp. pp.  132-33; Karim, op, cit. p. 165, f. n. 1.
12. Gait,  op. cit., p.  178, quotes from Dr. Wise, Anderson, op. cit.
13. Quoted, by Temple, op. cit., p. 12.
14. Crooke, Popular   Religious of Northern India, 1894, pp.30 L,  The Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. D, pp. 865-66.
15. Sayed Asghar Hossain Deobandi,  Hayat-i-Khizr  (in  Urdu), Locknow, 1906, p. n.
16. Crooke, op. cit., p.  89;  Vishwa  Kosh,  Vol.  5
17. Rislay, -Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  1892,   Vol.  II. p.  330.   Taylor oo. cit.. o. 247.                                          
18. Vide supra,  also  stapleton,  H. E.  ed.,   Ghazi  saheb,   the   Patron  saint of Boatman in the Dacca River, August 1913, pp. 143-152.
19. Vol.  IX,  p.  600.
20. Forchhammer p.60

This paper was published at Journal of the Asiatic Society of Pakistan, Vol. VII, June 1962 and Burma’s lost Kingdom  of Pamela Gutman.

 

< Prev		Next >

Credit :

http://www.kaladanpress.org/v3/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1135:bader-maqams-or-the-shrines-of-badr-al-din-auliya-part-ii&catid=60:arakan&Itemid=36