This time, Dara Shukoh was more forthright in approaching the reclusive Sufi. But the prince left no record of these early encounters with Mulla Shah. Once again, Tawakkul Beg fills in some of these silences. He tells us it was Shah Jahan who met the Sufi first. He reports that the emperor set up camp in the garden of Zafar Khan, governor of Kashmir, whose wife, incidentally, was Mumtaz Mahal’s niece. Once ensconced in a pavilion with a view of the Dal Lake, Shah Jahan sent a message to Mulla Shah, saying that he wished to hear the Sufi teacher’s discourses on divine truths and gnosis. Mulla Shah retorted, “Day and night you’re in the company of people who only understand the external world. You’ve moved far away from spiritual matters. If you were to hear about these, what effect would they have?” Shah Jahan was undeterred and pressed his case. Mulla Shah relented and came to visit the emperor. There, at Shah Jahan’s request, the shaikh explained the subtle distinctions between three Sufi terms, using the analogy of himself and the emperor: Cognitive certainty (ilm-ul-yaqin) occurs when Mulla Shah knows that the emperor Shah Jahan exists. Seeing and recognizing the emperor is an example of visual certainty (ain-ul-yaqin). Absolute certainty (haqq-ul-yaqin) takes place when he is actually in the emperor’s presence.49
Dara Shukoh and Jahanara did not participate in this conversation, though they might have seen the pir from afar. The prince had a desire to visit Mulla Shah, which intensified late one night while he was still awake praying. He set out impulsively, taking with him a close and trusted servant called Mujahid. The darkness provided a cover for them as they crept into the courtyard of Mulla Shah’s house. They could discern the shadowy form of the Sufi pir as he sat in meditation under a chinar tree.50
The prince left Mujahid by the entrance and approached Mulla Shah. Tawakkul Beg relates that he stood silently near the pir. For a whole hour, Mulla Shah ignored him. Finally, the pir asked, “Who are you?” though of course he knew full well who his visitor was. The prince gave no reply. “Why don’t you speak? Tell me your name!” Mulla Shah asked again.
“My name is Dara Shukoh,” the prince responded feebly.
“What is your father’s name?” the pir demanded.
Dara answered, “The emperor Shah Jahan.”
“Why have you come?” asked Mulla Shah.
“I’m a seeker of God and have come to this threshold for spiritual guidance,” replied the prince.
Mulla Shah did not suppress his annoyance any further. “What have I got to do with emperors and princes? I’m an ascetic with no desires. What sort of time is this to come give me a headache and make trouble? Get lost and don’t come again!”
Dara Shukoh became despondent and tears flowed from his eyes all night. He took Mujahid and went back the next day, but Mulla Shah completely ignored him. The prince became even more upset and left crestfallen in tears. As they walked back, Mujahid, who was disturbed to see his master in such a state, asked, “What miracles and greatness do you see in this dervish to make you come every night and suffer so much? Dervishes are good-natured and manifestations of mercy. They aren’t bad-natured and bad tempered like this one.” He spoke this way about Mulla Shah so that the prince’s heart would grow cold toward him, explains Tawakkul Beg. Dara Shukoh retorted that if the Sufi were truly a hypocrite, he would not have behaved as he did but would have welcomed him warmly.
That night, Mujahid suddenly fell ill. For some hours, he lay burning with fever. By the time morning came he was already dead. The prince was distraught. This was divine punishment, he felt. He blamed himself for not admonishing his servant more severely when he criticized Mulla Shah. Seeing Dara’s pain, Qazi Afzal, a religious scholar of the court, interceded with the help of Mulla Muhammad Said, a disciple of Mulla Shah. “The prince’s heart is very delicate,” they explained. Mulla Shah softened and gave leave for the prince to come to his home.51
Dara Shukoh waited until night to visit the Sufi master. For the prince to go by daylight would attract unnecessary attention. At the door he performed a kornish, the deep obeisance generally made before the emperor, and hesitated. Mulla Shah beckoned him inside the room where he was seated. Dara noticed that the lamp was dying out and he fixed the wick with his own fingers in order to better appreciate the pir’s luminous beauty. Impressed, from that moment, Mulla Shah took him on as a disciple. After some days had passed, he initiated the prince with a mystical vision. He first asked Dara to blindfold his eyes. Then he concentrated intensely upon the young prince, channeling his divine grace to him. That exhilarating infusion of the pir’s charisma revealed to Dara Shukoh the world of angels, otherwise invisible to humankind.52
Dara confided in his sister about these mystical experiences, though we do not know if he shared the story of his initial rebuff as told by Tawakkul Beg. Jahanara had acquired a great devotion to Mulla Shah, however she had not met him. Presenting a gift to the reclusive Sufi would be inappropriate, so she cooked some green leafy vegetables herself, which she sent along with bread and a note. For a month, Jahanara received no reply, though she heard secondhand that Mulla Shah had muttered his usual line about not having any dealings with worldly people and royalty. She persisted, sending him more letters. Dara Shukoh, too, made sure to speak highly of her. Eventually, Mulla Shah began to reply to the princess. He would advise her, through their correspondence, about specific prayers and spiritual exercises to perform.53
Imperial women did not, as a rule, meet unrelated men face to face, so Jahanara continued her relationship with her teacher without ever stepping out of her seclusion. She had caught a glimpse of him, probably through a curtain or latticed window, while he conversed with Shah Jahan. For now, she was content with a portrait of Mulla Shah that Dara Shukoh gave her, painted by a master artist. She committed his features to memory so that, even with eyes closed, she could visualize him.
Over the coming years, Dara Shukoh, and presumably Jahanara as well, worked with artists to produce several portraits of Mulla Shah and Miyan Mir. In many of these portraits, Dara is featured along with them. There is one surviving image, now in Tehran’s Gulistan Palace, that the prince might well have had made to commemorate his initiation as Mulla Shah’s disciple. Here, Dara kneels before his master, holding an unrolled scroll. Behind him stands a young courtier. The Sufi pir raises his hand, index finger stretched, while making a point, an open book or scripture before him. Another disciple sits farther away. The trio are seated on a mat outside a modest hut. Steps lead up a mound to the dwelling, and at their foot Dara’s groom sits by his waiting horse. Many of the compositional elements in this image resemble the painting of Jahangir’s visit to Chidrup—the riderless horse, the hut standing in for the cave, the distant city. Here, though, Dara is not a haloed emperor indulging his inquisitiveness, but a humble disciple.
A handful of single portraits of Mulla Shah are still extant. Does the portrait that Dara gave to Jahanara survive among these? We cannot be certain, though there are some possible candidates. In one painting, Mulla Shah is standing, shown in profile.54 His right hand holds a rosary, and with his left he holds a volume bound in crimson and gold—the Quran, perhaps, or his own collected poetry. His pose and the green background popular in Mughal portraiture evoke a common style of depicting Mughal royals and nobility. In another portrait, the seated shaikh, clad in bright yellow, leans lightly against a mauve bolster, his hands clasped around his knees.55 A golden nimbus frames his face. His snowy beard betrays his age, as does the green ascetic’s sash that he uses to support his posture.56 The accoutrements of his devotional work are strewn beside him: his armrest, rosary, books, pen case, and even a white kerchief, which in Mughal art is often associated with royalty. This image certainly reflects the special relationship between the shaikh and his imperial disciples. But in 1640, Mulla Shah would have been younger. In a third portrait, there is still some black in his beard. He sits here, too, gazing into the distance. A book and armrest are tossed nearby. The shaikh’s features are rendered in exquisite detail, but the backgrou
nd is only partially sketched out. Was it such a painting that Dara Shukoh commissioned for his sister during their trip to Kashmir?
Portrait of Mulla Shah.
None of these surviving portraits give any concrete indication that they were in Jahanara’s possession. The princess’s autobiography does tell us, though, how these portraits might have been used. After studying her image of Mulla Shah “with the gaze of sincerity and eye of belief,” she readied herself to perform a special spiritual exercise, for which her pir had coached her via her brother. On the appointed day, she rose early and bathed. All day long she abstained from food, breaking her fast in the evening with some quince that Mulla Shah had sent. Then she supped on a frugal meal cooked in the house of the Qadiri Sufi Mulla Muhammad Said. After praying until midnight in her private mosque, she retired to her room. There she sat facing the direction of Mecca and concentrated on the portrait of Mulla Shah. A doubt flickered in her mind. Was she being disloyal to the Chishti order by accepting the guidance of Mulla Shah, a Qadiri? Then, suddenly, a state came upon her of neither sleep nor wakefulness. Here she saw the Prophet Muhammad, surrounded by his companions and saints. Mulla Shah was among them. He reverentially placed his head on the Prophet’s feet. “You have lighted the lamp of the Timurids,” said Prophet Muhammad to him. This vision not only dispelled Jahanara’s doubt, it confirmed to her that she and her brother, the only ones among Timur’s descendants to join the Qadiri order, had a unique spiritual role to play.57
Portrait of Mulla Shah.
Seated portrait of Mulla Shah.
At the end of her six-month sojourn in Kashmir, Jahanara made a special request of Mulla Shah. They had been corresponding repeatedly, but before she left for Lahore she wanted to see him in person. He rode his horse up to an elevated area by her path, dismounted, and sat under a mulberry tree with a red blanket thrown over him. She paused her elephant and gazed at him for a while from her howdah before resuming her journey. He never saw her directly; that would have been a severe violation of propriety. Jahanara, however, was overcome. “My eyes were blinded and out of intense longing (shauq) the hair on my body trembled,” she wrote. It is perhaps this incident that the princess commissioned to be memorialized in a painting. In a seventeenth-century portrait, her pir sits beneath a tree, his scarlet shawl having slipped off his shoulders onto the bolster behind him.58
* * *
DURING HIS REMAINING TIME IN KASHMIR, Dara Shukoh threw himself fully into learning from Mulla Shah as much as he could. One day, Mulla Shah asked the prince to choose if he wanted to learn Miyan Mir’s spiritual exercises, or his own. He explained that Miyan Mir’s method involved plenty of hardship and would necessitate abandoning the world. On the other hand, he had devised a vastly simplified practice, one that even Miyan Mir had endorsed. Dara requested that Mulla Shah impart to him these accelerated techniques of spiritual practice.59
In the prince’s later recollections, he credits divine providence as well as Mulla Shah’s ingenuity for his swift progress. It was God, Dara Shukoh believed, who “brought me to the intimacy of friendship with his own friend.” Regarding his teacher, the prince recalled, “this dear one showed me such kindness, so that that which a person would achieve under him in a month, I achieved in a day, and that which a person would achieve in a year, became possible for me in a month.”60
Mulla Shah had arrived full circle from his earlier hard-hearted rejection of the prince. A prolific poet, especially since Miyan Mir’s death, he now composed poetry especially for his royal disciple. In one poem, he invokes a motif that Sufi poets often use, contrasting the ruling sovereign with the true ruler: “The world ruler of the body’s globe isn’t an emperor / The world ruler is he who rules the heart // What is comparable to the first and second Lords of the Conjunction? / Our Dara Shukoh has become the heart’s Lord of the Conjunction.”61 Mulla Shah provocatively compares Dara with the prince’s Central Asian ancestor Timur, known as “Lord of the Conjunction,” as well as his father Shah Jahan. This Sufi, who outwardly had once prided himself on his independence from worldly concerns, now came to write much like a court poet would for his patron.
When the time came for Dara Shukoh to leave Kashmir, the prince paid one last visit to his pir. Mulla Shah arranged an occasion to ensure that the prince would remain involved with the Qadiri order. The Sufi teacher had invited several prominent people from the order to be present, and he introduced them to Dara one by one, praising their spiritual prowess and loyalty. Mulla Shah then gave a discourse on divine truth and gnosis. As the prince took his leave, the pir presented him with a letter that said, “Please guide my friends [namely, the disciples of the path], as your intellect is greater than that of the rest. I would be happy if you could guide them. If one of my faqirs crosses the limits of appropriate speech, please admonish and restrain him.”62 Even though Mulla Shah had known the prince for only a few months, he was effectively giving Dara Shukoh authority over the other members of the order. Once entrusted with this responsibility, the prince’s ties to the Kashmir-based Qadiris would only deepen.
As Dara bade farewell to Mulla Shah, he requested two favors of his pir. One was that he recite the fatiha to ensure that Dara would eventually depart from the world in a state of true faith. The prince may have believed that he would soon be called up for a military assignment. Mulla Shah acquiesced after admonishing the prince that the end of life for a Sufi was perforce devoid of sorrow and separation from the divine. The second request was that his master point out his faults and shortcomings. At the same time, the prince wanted him to disregard anyone who, perhaps jealous that Mulla Shah favored Dara, might allege that the prince had sought the company of other spiritual teachers as well. Mulla Shah reassured him, saying, “I am completely satisfied with you.… From the day that you came before me, every step that you have taken has been on the path of propriety, and in agreement with my wishes; nobody else has set forth on the path who has adhered to my wishes with such solicitude.”63
Through their correspondence, the sibling’s relationship with Mulla Shah thrived after they left Kashmir. The prince includes eleven more of his mentor’s letters in the Sakinat-ul-auliya. Mulla Shah starts each letter with the invocation, “May the good fortune of the divine vision be your lot.” His tone is warm and intimate, addressing Dara as a friend or spiritual companion rather than a junior disciple. He refers to the prince as, “You who are initiated into the divine mysteries,” mentioning in another letter, “I repose great confidence in your sagacity and farsightedness,” addressing him again as “my sincere friend whose equanimity of mind and love for truth is established.”64 In yet another missive, he calls Dara “emperor of the external and internal realms.”65
Dara Shukoh also quotes two letters that Mulla Shah wrote his sister, Jahanara. In one, the Sufi praises the prince, saying, “whatever [divine knowledge] you acquire from your brother, God has given him. He is a credit to all the great personages, past and present.” Though there was a precedent for women mystics in this Qadiri lineage, here Mulla Shah implicitly encourages Jahanara to defer to her younger brother’s spiritual authority.66
Shah Jahan and his family remained in Lahore for a while after the trip to Kashmir. Jahanara and Dara, fresh from the heady spiritual heights that they had recently achieved, continued their journeys of mystical perfection. Jahanara began to write a slender autobiographical book about her Sufi inclinations and her recent encounters with Mulla Shah. This, too, like her Munis-ul-arwah, she completed on the auspicious twenty-seventh day of Ramazan, the Night of Power and Destiny. She entitled it Risala-i sahibiya (Epistle of Companionship).67
We know that Dara Shukoh wrote mystical poetry, and though we do not have exact dates for his poems, it is likely that he composed many of these in the first flush of his devotion to the Qadiri order. His form of choice was the ghazal rather than the longer, narrative masnawi that Mulla Shah favored. Eventually he would write enough verse to compile a concise diwan of poetry. Hi
s poetic pen name, which he uses in the final couplet of each poem, is simply “Qadiri.”
The ghazal, in the hands of several of its masters, such as the thirteenth-century Indian poet Amir Khusrau or the sixteenth-century Iranian poet Urfi, often blurs the boundaries between earthly and spiritual love. Dara’s poems, in contrast, are univocally infused with devotion to God and to the saints of the Qadiri order. His couplets share a thematic unity whereas the ghazals of other poets often string together disparate verses like “pearls on a thread.”
In one poem, Dara equates Lahore, the residence of the late Miyan Mir, to the holy Kaaba of Mecca. Here he vividly expresses his desire to go to Miyan Mir’s mausoleum at Darapur, of the way a lover seeks to visit his beloved:
My passionate desire for Punjab has no respite,
For the imprint of the Friend is in Punjab.
When I step into his city on foot,
Out of respect I fashion my foot out of my head.
* * *
Until I circumambulate my own pir,
My turbulent soul is like quicksilver.
For this Qadiri, [the tomb at] Darapur has become his Kaaba,
For in it there is much to be revealed.68
Dara takes up the Kaaba motif again in another ghazal praising Mulla Shah:
As my Lord and master is the pir,
The Emperor Who Never Was Page 15