In his tackle to the twenty fifth version of Jahan-e-Khusrau at Delhi’s Sunder Nursery on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the annual music pageant that commemorates the Sufi poet-musician Amir Khusrau as imbued with the “perfume of the soil of Hindustan”.
Bestowed with the sobriquet of Tuti-yi-Hind, the ‘Parrot of India’, the thirteenth century mystic is seen as a father determine for North India’s syncretic Ganga-Jamuni tradition.
Khusrau made lasting contributions to Indian classical music and qawwali, and can be credited for growing Hindavi, a precursor to trendy Hindi and Urdu.
Khusrau, the ‘Indian Turk’
A lot of what’s recognized about Khusrau comes from his personal writings, that are interspersed with autobiographical info. Khusrau’s father got here to India from Central Asia within the early thirteenth century, because the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan ravaged Islamic Transoxiana (similar to components of Kazakhstan,Turkmenistan , Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan). He entered the service of Sultan Iltutmish (1211-36), and married the daughter of an Indian Muslim. The couple’s second youngster, Abu’l Hasan Yamin ud-Din Khusrau, was born in 1253.
“Khusrau was happy with either side of his lineage, and his life and writings symbolise a synthesis of the 2 totally different cultures,” Paul E Losensky and Sunil Sharma wrote of their introduction to Within the Bazaar of Love (2011), a group of Khusrau’s poems. The poet usually referred to himself as an “Indian Turk”.
It’s believed that Khusrau was born in Patiyali in present-day Etah district of Uttar Pradesh. However the poet himself by no means talked about his birthplace.
A poet for the sultans
Khusrau turned knowledgeable poet at age 20, and served as one till his demise. He began out within the service of princes and nobles, earlier than changing into a everlasting fixture within the court docket of the Delhi Sultan.
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“In mediaeval Islamic tradition, reward poetry was one of many principal means for a ruler to ascertain and propagate his cultural and political legitimacy,” Losensky and Sharma wrote.
The court docket poet relied on continued patronage of his patron and all the time confronted ample competitors. Khusrau served at the very least 5 Sultans — Muizuddin Qaiqabad, Jalaluddin Khalji, Alauddin Khalji, Qutbuddin Mubarak Shah, and Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq — and plenty of different highly effective patrons over 5 many years, which testifies to the standard of his poetry. He wrote in Persian, the language of the court docket, in addition to Hindavi.
Sultan Jalaluddin Khalji bestowed upon Khusrau the title of ‘Amir’. The mediaeval historian Ziauddin Barani wrote in Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi that Jalaluddin held Khusrau “in nice esteem”, and Khusrau “served as keeper of the Qur’an” in his court docket (trans. Losensky and Sharma).
Disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya
Khusrau was essentially the most beloved disciple of the Chishti Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya.
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“He (Khusrau) is the keeper of my secrets and techniques, and I shall not set foot in Paradise with out him. If it had been lawful, I ought to have instructed you to bury him in the identical grave with me in order that we two might all the time stay collectively,” the Pir is claimed to have mentioned. (Quoted in Mohammad Wahid Mirza’s The Life and Works of Amir Khusrau, 1929).
“He [Khusrau] was equally revered within the royal court docket in addition to the [Sufi master’s] khanqah. Neither the king nor the saint ever suspected the constancy and loyalty of Khusrau who frequented the 2 reverse camps with equal respect and honour,” scholar Saifullah Saifi wrote in ‘Sufi Poet Amir Khusrau: A Hyperlink between the Courtroom and the Khanqah’ printed in Regional Sufi Centres in India (2011).
Grasp and disciple died inside months of one another in 1325. When he heard of the Pir’s passing, Khusrau is claimed to uttered these phrases: “Magnificence sleeps on the mattress, her hair throughout her face. Come Khusrau, let’s go dwelling, night time has set over this place.” (trans. Losensky and Sharma)
Khusrau’s lasting legacy
Seven hundred years after his demise, the lyrical magnificence, subtle wordplay, and exploration of various themes in Khusrau’s poetry continues to enamour audiences.
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“On the one hand he wrote eulogies for kings and princes, then again he wrote riddles and jingles, phrase video games, homely songs for kids, housewives and lovesick maidens and drained outdated males,” Saifi wrote. In type and content material, Khusrau’s poetry borrowed closely from Persian and Turkic, in addition to native influences, making him some of the essential figures in propagating a syncretic Hindu-Muslim tradition — the so-called Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb.
He wrote extremely of Hindus. “The Brahmans of India have higher wealth of philosophical thought than what Rumi had revealed… As no one has tried to be taught from the Brahmans, their studying has not been revealed to the world,” he wrote in his masnavi Nuh Siphir. (Quoted in Indian Literary Criticism: Principle and Interpretation, ed. G N Devy).
Khusrau’s ghazals and qawwalis are immediately sung in each sacred and secular contexts, at Sufi dargahs and Bollywood musicals. His hottest compositions embody Chhaap Tilak, Zehal-e-Maskeen, and Sakal Ban Phool Rahi Sarson.
Nevertheless, his musical contributions doubtless go farther than this. Khusrau is claimed to be instrumental within the growth of recent Indian classical music — he’s credited with crafting dozens of ragas, creating ornate khayal music, and inventing the sitar and tabla, despite the fact that proof for that is restricted.
