He was a man mysteriously attracted to God and walking in the way of the law.* His ancestors came from Multān, and settled in Qannauj, an old and famous city of Hindūstān. After devoting himself to the carrying out of the religious obligations imposed on devout Muslims he experienced a ^57. mysterious attraction to God, but none the less* left no jot or tittle of the pure law unobserved. At times, when overcome by religious ecstasy, he would blacken his face and, hanging the string of a bedstead round his neck, and would wander through the market-places uttering doleful and mournful cries; and he had many unusual observances such as these. One day, when he had completed the Friday prayers in the Masjid-i-Ḥayy, I waited on him. He got up and went to visit the old obliterated tombs of his noble ancestors, which were in the courtyard of the masjid, and at each* grave he recited the fātiḥah,* and told* one of his attendants who conversed with him the story of the life of the occupant of the grave, and after telling separately the stories of each of those holy men, he fell into a reverie, and when his reverie was over he put to that attendant a question from the Farā'iẓ.* The attendant replied, “If a man dies, and leaves as his heirs one son and one daughter, the son receives two-thirds of the property left by the deceased, and the daughter one-third.” The Shaikh listened to him with approval and then, without saying another word,* left the place. It afterwards became known* that the Shaikh observed that practice in ac­cordance with that tradition, pregnant with meaning, the sub­stance of which is that if a question from the Farā'iẓ be recited over a tomb, and a statement of the shares of inheritance be made, all the people lying buried there are, by virtue of the recitation of that portion of the law, forgiven their sins.* The Shaikh never failed to observe this practice on Fridays.