The Institutes of Akbar 395: Note on the Nuqtawiah Sect.

395

It was mentioned above (p. 177) that Mir Sharif spread in India doctrines which resembled those of Mahmud of Basakhwan. The curious sect which Mahmud founded, goes by the name of Mahmudiyah, or Wahidiyah, or Nuqtawiyah, or Umana. Mahmud called himself Shakhs i Wahid, or ‘the individual,’ and professed to be the Imam Mahdi, whose appearance on earth ushers in the end of the world. According to the Calcutta edition of the Dabistan and Shea’s Translation, he lived about 600 A. H.; but the MSS. of the Maasir have A. H. 800, which also agrees with Badaoni’s statement that Mahmud lived at the time of Timur. The sect found numerous adherents in Iran, but was extinguished by Shah 'Abbas i Mazi, who killed them or drove them into exile.
Mahmud had forced into his service a passage from the Qoran (Sur. XVII., 81), 'asa an yab’asaka rabbuka maqaman mahmudan, ‘Peradventure thy Lord will raise thee to an honorable (mahmud) station.’ He maintained that the human body (jasad) had since its creation been advancing in purity, and that on its reaching a higher degree of perfection, ‘Mahmud’ would arise, as indicated in the passage from the Qoran, and with his appearance the dispensation of Muhammad would come to an end. He taught the transmigration of souls, and said that the beginning of every thing was the nuqtah i khak, or earth-atom, from which the vegetables, and from these the animals, arose. The term nuqtah i khak has given rise to their name Nuqtawis. For other of Mahmud’s tenets, vide Shea’s translation of the Dabistan, vol. III., pp. 12 to 26.
Some of Mahmud’s doctrines must have been of interest to Akbar, whose leanings towards the ‘man of the millennium,’ transmigration of souls, &c., have been mentioned above, and Mir Sharif i Amuli could not have done better than propounding the same doctrine at Court, and pointing to Akbar as the restorer of the millennium.
The author of the Alam Arai Sikandari, as the Maasir says, mentions Mir Sharif i Amuli under the following circumstances. In 1002, the 7th year of Shah ‘Abbas i Mazi’s reign, the astrologers of the age predicted, in consequence of certain very inauspicious conjunctions, the death of a great king, and as this prediction was universally referred to Shah Abbas, Jalaluddin Muhammad of Tabriz, who was looked upon as the greatest astronomer of the period, proposed that Shah 'Abbas should lay aside royalty for the two or three days the dreaded conjunction was expected to last, and that a criminal who had been sentenced to death, should sit on the throne. This extraordinary expedient was everywhere approved of; the criminals threw lots, and Yusuf the quiver-maker, who belonged to the heretical followers of Darwish Khusrau of Qazwin, was raised to the throne. He reigned for three days, and was then killed. Soon after, Darwish Khusrau was hanged. His ancestors had been well-diggers, but he was a dervish, and though he had been wise enough never to speak of his Nuqtawiyah belief, he was known as one of the sect, and was accordingly killed. So also Mir Sayyid Ahmad of Kashan, whom 'Abbas killed with his own sword. Among his papers treatises were found on the Nuqtah doctrine, and also a letter addressed to him by Abulfazl in Akbar’s name. Mir Sharif i A'muli, a good poet and the head of the sect, heard of these persecutions, and fled from Astrabad to Hindustan.
Regarding the last sentence, the author of the Maasir remarks that it involves an anachronism, for Mir Sharif was in India in 984, when Akbar was at Dipalpur in Malwah; and besides, Sharif i Amuli was mentioned in no Tazkirah as a poet.