The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c14.73

v4.c14.73

At this period there was much unrest among Muslims in India. The millennium of Muhammad's flight from Mecca was approaching and there was a belief, not universal, but widely current, that the manifestation of the Mahdī, who was to convert the whole world to Islam, to fill the earth with equity and justice as it had been filled with tyranny and oppression, and to reign for seven years, was about to take place. In 1504, in the reign of Ibrāhīm Lodī, one Sayyid Muhammad of Jaunpur had given definite form to this doctrine, and had at length claimed to be the Mahdī, but had died on his return from the pilgrimage to Mecca. In Sher Shāh's reign Shaikh 'Alā'ī, son of Shaikh Hasan, one of the most highly respected religious teachers in Bengal, made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and on his return established himself in Bayāna as his father's successor, but after a time fell under the influence of Shaikh 'Abdullah Niyāzī, an Afghān who had been a follower of Sayyid Muhammad of Jaunpur. The two leaders confined their teaching and preaching, the distinctive mark of which was rigid puritanism, to the poor. They kept no goods or means of livelihood, but they and their followers always went armed, and made it their business to enforce as well as to make the laws. They admonished any whom they found in the city or in the market doing an act which they judged to be unlawful or irreligious, and, if he paid no need to their warnings, administered chastisement, and they permitted no interference with their actions by officials, though they aided all magistrates who acted in accordance with their tenets and principles. This defiance of constituted authority rendered ‘Alā’ī so obnoxious to the magistracy and the public that by the advice of ‘Abdullah Niyāzī he set out once more for Mecca, but, on reaching Khavāsspur, near Jodhpur, he succeeded in converting Khavāss Khān, then governor of Sher Shāh’s territories in Rājāsthān, to his views. His fanatical condemnation of all worldly enjoyment soon, however, disgusted Khavāss Khān, and ‘Alā’ī returned to Bayāna, where he was living when Islām Shāh ascended the throne. He was summoned to Āgra, appeared at court with a large band of ragged and dirty armed followers, saluted the king as an equal and bore himself most insolently. Maulānā ‘Abdullah of Sultānpur, entitled Makhdūm-ul-Mulk, of whom more will be heard in Akbar’s reign, held the office of *Sadr-us-Sudūr*, or chief jurist, and unsparingly condemned ‘Alā’ī as a schismatic.