Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Farid ud-Din Attar, Conference of the 

Birds. Translated by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis 

(London: Penguin Books, 1984); Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, 

Persian Myths (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993).

sin

  See 

crime

 

and

 

punishment

; j

udgment

 d

ay

; 

theology

.

Sipah-i Sahaba

  See j

amiyyat

 u

lama

-

i

 i

slam

.

sira

  See 

biography

; 

folklore

.

Sirhindi, Ahmad

 

(1564–1624)  Naqshbandi 

Sufi shaykh of the late Mughal period in India 

who adamantly argued against Indian Sufi trends 

of pantheistic mysticism, advocating instead the 

implementation of sharia

Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi was born in Sirhind, 

in east Punjab, i

ndia

, in 1564. In his youth he 

received a traditional religious education from 

his father, the Sufi shaykh Abd al-Ahad, and he 

continued his religious training as an adolescent 

with teachers in Sialkot, India. His remarkable 

level of scholarship gained him an invitation to 

the Mughal emperor Akbar’s court in Agra, where 

he assisted Abu al-Fazl, the court historian and 

minister. In 1599 he went to d

elhi

, where he met 

Khwajah Abd al-Baqi, the first Naqshbandi 

saint

to come to India, soon after which he was initi-

ated into the n

aqshbandi

 s

UFi

 o

rder

. He quickly 

became a pir and a prolific writer on points of 

doctrine of the Naqshbandi branch of s

UFism

.

K  628  

shrine

---

Though his central concern was with Sufi thought 

on issues of religious renewal, prophecy, and 

sainthood, he is best known for advocating the 

strict implementation of 

sharia

 by the state and 

the purification of i

slam

 from what he viewed as 

Hindu accretions. He established the Naqshbandi 

Sufi lineage in India by founding the subbranch of 

the Mujaddidin, and he was named “the renewer 

of the second millennium” by his followers.

Sirhindi’s famous collection of letters, known 

as  Maktubat-i imam-i rabbani, is today a classic 

of Indo-Muslim literature, though at the time 

of publication it was proscribed by the Mughal 

emperor a

Urangzeb

. Sirhindi’s ideas were received 

by 17th-century Muslims with both enthusiasm 

and hostility. He sharply denounced the eclectic 

pluralism of Emperor Akbar’s din-i-ilahi, and his 

continued criticism of the inadequate role given 

to Islam in the politics of the state led to his brief 

imprisonment by Emperor Jahangir in 1619 in 

the Fort of Gwalior. Sirhindi condemned forms 

of Sufism that cultivated what he saw as extrem-

ism equivalent to the pantheistic mysticism of i

bn

al

-a

rabi

, and he attributed such trends to Hindu 

influence. From the informed perspective of his 

own mystical experiences, Sirhindi argued that at 

the final stages of mystical experience, which are 

understood by other schools of Sufi thought as 

annihilation,  fana (see 

baqa

 

and

 

fana

), and ulti-

mate union with God, the truth emerges that God 

cannot be comprehended intuitively. Hence, he 

argued that humans can know God only through 

His 

revelation

, and this can take place only 

through human submission to 

sharia

, the Muslim 

legal code based on revelation.

Sirhindi’s arguments necessitated his vocifer-

ous and uncompromising attitude toward Hindu-

ism and marked the shifting of Indian Muslim 

attitudes away from tolerance of Hinduism to the 

attitudes of strict nontolerance so characteristic of 

Aurangzeb’s reign. Sirhindi is interpreted by mod-

ern historians as the individual largely responsible 

for initiating Sunni revivalism in the subcontinent 

by his persuasive arguments against the pluralistic 

and pantheistic trends of his time. Sirhindi died in 

1624, and he is believed to be buried in the vicin-

ity of his mosque in Sirhind, which is a sacred 

place of pilgrimage for Indian Muslims.

See also h

indUism

 

and

 

islam

; m

Ughal

 

dynasty

.

Megan Adamson Sijapati