Haqiqat al-Fuqara: Poetic Biography of “Madho Lal” Hussayn (Persian)

Abstract

Sufi mystic Shah Hussayn was born ca. 1539 into a Muslim weaver family. When he was about ten years old, he was initiated into the Qadiri Sufi lineage by Shaikh Bahlul Darya’i, who lived in Chiniot, a village outside Lahore. He lived as a mendicant student, wandering in the empty lands outside the city walls by day and returning to stay at the shrine of Lahore’s patron saint, Ali Hujwiri, by night. At the age of thirty-six he had a profound spiritual experience while studying the Quran, when his teacher Sa’dullah recited the verse, “the life of the world is nothing but play and pleasurable distraction.”¹ Hussayn immediately resolved to throw off all constraints of piety and instead to live like a child at play, abandoning hypocrisy and ambition as well as fear of social disrepute.