The building blocks of the account of Hazrat Shah Jalal (R)

Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim

In our research so far to build an evidenced-based account of Hazrat Shah Jalal Mujarrad (R), the 14th century Sufi saint of Sylhet, Bangladesh, we have identified the building blocks of the Saint's history. It is mentionable that the often available account of the saint contains contradictory facts and factual dead ends, where the facts can not be verified.

These building blocks are the characters that the saint came in contact with, the places that became important in the saint's account, the time the saint lived and worked in and the texts containing first hand experiences of the saint and other primary texts that gave an account of the saint.

We have identified the following heads of building blocks in the saint's history:

1. Characters;
2. Places;
3. Time;
4. Primary Texts.

The building blocks under the above heads are stated below. Please note that the list shall evolve as new building blocks are discovered as the research progresses.

1. Characters:

1. The king of Bengal Fakhr Oddīn, or Fakhr al-Din;
2. "Sikandar Khan Ghazi"
3. El Mostaasim the Calif in Bagdad;
4. Borhān Oddīn of Sāgirj;
5. Hindu king named Gaur Govinda ruled the Sylhet area; Gaur Govinda (also spelled Gor Govind or Gour Gobinda or Gur Govind) Raja Gaur Govinda
6. Sultan shamsuddin firuz shah;
7. Sultan shamsuddin firuz shah’s nephew Sikandar Khan Ghazi, or Sikandar Shah Ghazi
8. Sultan shamsuddin firuz shah’s sipahxalar (armed forces chief) Nasiruddin;
9. ibn batuta visited Bengal when Sultan fakhruddin mubarak shah was ruling at Sonargaon (1338-1349 AD).
10. Shaikh Jalaluddin Tabrizi (R);
11. Persian inscription of 918 AH/1512 AD issued in the reign of Sultan Alauddin husain shah (1494-1519 AD).
12. Shaikh Jalal Mujarrad ibn Muhammad (Formal name of Hazrat Shah Jalal (R));
13. Shaikh-ul-Mashaikh Makhdum Shaikh Jalal Mujarrad bin Muhammad (another Formal name of Hazrat Shah Jalal (R))
14. Shaikh Nurul Huda Abul Karamat;
15. Sultan Syed Ahmed Yesvi, Pir of Shaikh Jalal Mujarrad; spiritual disciple of Saiyid Ahmad Yasawi , one of the founders of the Central Asian Sufi tradition;
16. Hazrat Shah Jalal (R)'s father, Muhammad, a sufi of Yamen;
17. Hazrat Shah Jalal (R)'s maternal uncle Sayyid Ahamd Kabir Suhrawardy, a great saint; or maternal uncle Syed Ahmed Kabir in Mecca; maternal uncle Syed Ahmed Kabir in Mecca.
18. Hazrat Shah Jalal (R) met Shakh Nizamuddin Auliya at Delhi;
19. Shaikh 'Ali (d. 1562), a descendant of one of Shah Jalal's companions;
20. he became a spiritual disciple of Saiyid Ahmad Yasawi, one of the founders of the Central Asian Sufi tradition;
21. Hazrat Shah Jalal (R)'s mother, Syeda Hasina Fatimah, was descendants of Hashemite dynasty of Quraysh of Mecca
22. Hazrat Shah Jalal (R)'s father, Mahmoud bin Mohammed bin Ibrahim; was descendants of Hashemite dynasty of Quraysh of Mecca. was a contemporary of the Persian poet and Sufi mystic, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
23. Amir Khusrau (Ab'ul Hasan Yamīn ud-Dīn Khusrau (1253 – 1325)
24. Jalal al-Din al-Tabrizi
25. Burhan al-Din in China; Sheikh Borhān Oddīn of Sāgirj
26. Fakhr al-Din, whose capital was at Sonargaon
27. Muhammad Tughluq

2. Places:

1. Hadramaut, Yemen, the place where the saint is said to be born;
2. Srihatta or Jalalabad, the modern day Sylhet in Bangladesh where the saint spent the second half of his life and where the saint's shrine is located.

3. Time:

1. 1271 CE (?): the year the Saint was born;
2. c. 1300 (?): the saint journeyed eastward and reached India.
3. Unknown Year: the saint meets Hazrat Nizam al-Din Awliya (R) in Delhi.
4. 703 AH/1303 CE: the saint arrived Sylhet and along with the army of the Shamsuddin Firuz Shah, the ruler of Bengal, defeated Raja Gour Govinda of Sri Hatta (Sylhet) to end injustices by the king towards the Muslims in his kingdom.
5. 1345 CE: the year traveller Ibn Batuta visited the saint at his Khankah in Sylhet.
6. 1347 CE (?): the year the saint died.

4. Primary texts:

1. Battuta, IBN, Rihla, A Gift to the Observers Concerning the Curiosities of the Cities and the Marvels Encountered in Travels, (c.1377 CE);

2. Khusrau, Amir, Afżal al-fawāʾed (719/1319); 

variants: 'Afzal-ul-Fawa'id'; Afdalul Hawaade; ‘Afzal al-fawa’id’;

3. Sher, Shaikh Ali, Sharh-i-Nuzhat-ul-Arwah (Year).

4. Shattari, Muhammad Ghausi ibn Hasan ibn Musa, (d. CE 1617), Gulzar-i-Abrar (1613 CE)

biographies of mystics & learned men. 

Variants: Muhammad Ghausi Shattari of Mandu.

5. Haidar, Maulvi Muhammad Nasir al-Din, Suhail-i Yaman, or Tārīkh-i Jalālī (A.H. 1277/ CE 1860–61), a biography of Shah Jalal (R) in Persian.

Variants: Suhail e Yaman , Nasiruddin Haidar.

6. Khadim, Muhiuddim, Risalat written (1711 AD).

7. Unknown, Rauzat-us-Salatin (1721 AD).