Miyāṅ Ḥātim* was a profound sage who passed very many years in teaching. He was endowed with both inward and outward perfection. While he was engaged in acquiring knowledge he was overcome by religious ecstasy,* and, forsaking scholastic disputations, attached himself as a disciple to his teacher, Shaikh Azīzu-'llāh, a learned man of alamba,* who was of those who are truly wise in the way of God, and was one of the most highly regarded of the holy men of his time. He also spent some time in the service of Shaikh ‘Alāu-'d-Dīn Cishtī* of Dihlī, (may God sanctify his soul!) following his rule, and obtained from both of these holy men permission to perfect their students and disciples. At the time when he was first drawn towards God he wandered about for ten years, bareheaded and barefooted, in the waste country round about Sambhal and Amroha,* and during all this time his head touched not bed or bolster. He was a man who took keen pleasure in contemplating God and whom the singing of God's praises threw into an ecstasy of delight, and ever, as he spoke and smiled, the name of God was on his tongue. In his last years the intoxication of joy which he experienced in his love for God so overpowered him that to, listen but for a short space to the chanting of God's praises placed him beside himself. He had not the strength to listen to hymns.
When I, in the year 960 A.H. (A.D. 1553), being then in my
twelfth year, arrived in company with my father at Sambhal,
3. and there entered the service of the Shaikh, I learnt by heart,
in his hospice, the Qaṣīda-yi-burda,*
and thus gained admission
(to the ranks of his disciples), and there I also read, to my great
spiritual advantage and profit, part of the book Kanz-i-fiqh-i-