Every Thursday evening, after the maghrib prayer, qawwali begins at a small marble shrine in the warren of lanes called Nizamuddin Basti. Two men start a couplet. A drum picks up. The lead singer takes the line up an octave. By the third refrain a crowd of two hundred people — Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, tourist, journalist, beggar, bureaucrat — is sitting on the marble floor. The same form of music has been performed here every Thursday for seven hundred years. It was invented in this courtyard.
The man buried under the marble is Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. He died in 1325. The Sultanate has fallen and risen five times since then. His shrine has not moved.
The fourth Chishti
Nizamuddin was born in 1238 in Badaun, in modern Uttar Pradesh, and trained in the Chishti Sufi order at Ajodhan (now Pakpattan in Pakistan) under Baba Farid Ganjshakar. The Chishti silsila — chain of transmission — was the most important Sufi order in north India. Baba Farid was its third master. Nizamuddin became its fourth.
He moved to Delhi in 1265 and settled in a hamlet called Ghiyaspur on the Yamuna, well outside the walled Sultanate cities. His khanqah — a hospice that doubled as a teaching centre — became, over the next half-century, the spiritual centre of Delhi. He ate one meal a day, gave away whatever was donated, refused to enter the Sultan's court, and accumulated disciples who would shape Indian culture for centuries: Amir Khusro the poet-musician, who composed the first Hindavi qawwalis here; Hasan Sijzi the biographer, who wrote down his daily conversations in a book called Fawaid-ul-Fuad; Nasiruddin Mahmud, his last successor.
"Still, Delhi is far away"
The most famous story about Nizamuddin is his confrontation with the Sultan Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlaq in 1325.
Tughlaq was on campaign in Bengal. He had heard reports that Nizamuddin's khanqah was accepting donations meant for the imperial treasury — specifically, that workmen building the Sultan's new fort at Tughlaqabad had been moonlighting on the khanqah at night, by lantern light. Tughlaq sent a message: I am returning to Delhi. When I arrive, choose between this city and yours.
Nizamuddin received the message at evening prayer. His disciples panicked. The saint himself shrugged. He said, in Persian, four words that have outlived every Sultan of Delhi:
Hunooz Dilli dur ast.
Still, Delhi is far away.
Days later, near a village called Afghanpur outside Delhi, a wooden pavilion built to receive Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlaq collapsed on top of him. He died on the spot. Whether the pavilion was rigged by his own son Muhammad bin Tughlaq, who succeeded him, or whether the saint's blessing carried weight, has been argued by historians since the 14th century. The phrase is, in modern Hindi-Urdu, still in active use. It means: don't celebrate too soon. The hard part hasn't arrived yet.
The first Chirag — and the second
Nizamuddin died in April 1325, six months after Ghiyas-ud-din. His tomb at the khanqah site became the dargah you can visit today. But his story is incomplete without his successor.
When Nizamuddin chose a successor, he did not pick Amir Khusro, his most famous disciple. He picked a quieter man, Nasiruddin Mahmud. Nasiruddin led the Chishti order in Delhi for the next thirty years, through the chaotic reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq — the Sultan who moved the capital to Daulatabad and back, who issued copper coins as silver, who depopulated Delhi twice. Through all of it Nasiruddin's khanqah, three kilometres south of his master's, kept the order alive.
After his death in 1356 his disciples gave him the honorific that has stuck for seven centuries: Chirag-e-Dilli, the Lamp of Delhi. His shrine sits in the south Delhi neighbourhood that takes its name from him — Chiragh Delhi, just east of Greater Kailash.
The popular telling sometimes confuses the two. Nizamuddin Auliya is often called "the Chirag of Delhi" in tourist brochures. He is not, strictly. He is the master. Nasiruddin Mahmud is the Chirag. The line of light went through both of them: Nizamuddin lit the city; Nasiruddin kept it burning.
What is still there
The dargah of Nizamuddin sits in a maze of narrow lanes off Mathura Road. The complex includes:
— The saint's tomb (rebuilt in marble by Faridun Khan in 1562)
— A small mosque (Jamaat Khana Masjid) commissioned by Khizr Khan, son of Alauddin Khilji
— The tomb of Amir Khusro, sitting directly in front of his master's — the only disciple permitted that proximity
— The grave of Jahanara Begum, Shah Jahan's eldest daughter, who chose to be buried at her saint's feet rather than with her father at the Taj Mahal
— The graves of several Mughal princes and at least one emperor (Muhammad Shah Rangila, who watched Nadir Shah loot the Peacock Throne)
On Thursday evenings, between magrhib and isha prayers, qawwali starts. The first qawwali ever performed at Nizamuddin's khanqah, by Amir Khusro on the night Nizamuddin died, was a couplet that ends:
Gori sove sej par, mukh par dare kes.
Chal Khusro ghar aapne, sanjh bhayi chahun des.
The fair one sleeps on her bed, her hair across her face.
Come Khusro, let us go home — evening has fallen everywhere.
Khusro followed his master into death six months later. They are still buried four feet apart.
If you go: the dargah is open every day, free entry. Cover your head. Take off your shoes. Thursday evening qawwali starts after sunset. Don't photograph the inner sanctum or anyone praying without asking. Karim's is two minutes away.