Muntakhab al-tawarikh 120: XXXVIII. Shaikh ‘Abdu-l-Wahid of Bilgram.

120

Bilgram is a dependency of Qannauj. He is a most learned and accomplished man, much given to austerities and devotions. He has a sublime disposition and attractive qualities, and he follows a sublime religious rule. He used formerly to indulge in ecstatic exercises and sing ecstatic songs in Hindi and fall into trances, but he is now past all this. He has written an appreciative commentary on the Nuzhatu-'l-arwah, and many treatises on the technical terms of the Sufis, one of them named Sanabil, and many other able compositions besides. Although he is the disciple of another he has profited much by the company of Shaikh Husain of Sikandra, and used to come every year from Bilgram for the Shaikh’s annual festival, but now that he suffers from defective sight he cannot go there and is settled in Qannauj.
In the year 977 (A.D. 1569-70), when I arrived in Bilgram from Lucknow, the Shaikh came to visit me, on my sick bed, and his was the first visit that had on my wounds the effect of ointment, and he said, “These wounds are the roses of love.”
It so happened that at the same time the venerable Shaikh ‘Abdullah Badaoni came there, like an invisible spirit, from Badaon, and I am convinced that if ever in my life I experienced a “night of power” it was that night. The Mir has a genius for poetry and he wrote of a witty, beloved and acceptable friend named Raja the following couplet :
“Thoughts of thee have made my heart their throne, Never will my heart have room for any but thee ”
Do not depart in anger (lit quarrel) as thou comest first in peace For a moment do thou sit with kindness, so that I may get out of my own self