XXIII. SHAIKH ABŪ-'L-FATḤ OF GUJARĀT.

He was the son-in-law of the reverend Mīr Sayyid Muḥammad* of Jaunpūr (may God sanctify his honoured tomb!), but he never saw the Mīr* and his connection with him by marriage did not occur until after the Mīr's death. He was a man of very high position and dignity, endowed with perfections. He was firm and unshaken in his adherence to the doctrines of the Mahdawī sect, holding to them resolutely, since, when he was in the honoured city of Makkah and in Gujarāt, the closest bond of friendship existed between him and Shaikh Gadā'ī.* In the time of Bairām Khān, the Khān-i-Khānān,* he came to Āgra in connection with some important business, but in a short time that terrible disaster* occurred, and the Shaikh returned to Gujarāt. When I was a student I waited on the Shaikh for half a night in the quarter of Shaikh Bahā'u-'d-dīn Muftī (may God have mercy on him!), on the far side* of the river at Āgra, on the introduction of Maulānā ‘Abdu-'llāh of Qandahār, the relative of Ḥājī Mahdī of Lāhōr. He was sitting alone in a bare room, busily employed in reading* this tradition of the prophet, (may God bless him and save him!):—“No number of people shall sit together to mention God but that angels shall surround them, and the mercy of God cover them, and tranquillity* come upon them; and God remembers them as men who are with Him.” He translated that saying and I received instruction in the ecstatic worship of the Ṣūfīs,* and was employed for some time therein, and experienced a wonderful and* strange accession of divine grace, and the (inner) meaning of the Qur'ān was disclosed to me, and for some time* my condition was such that I believed every sound and voice which fell upon my ears to be the mystic chanting of the Ṣūfīs. I saw some of the Shaikh's disciples who, to guard themselves from talking foolishly,* had (literally) glued their lips together, some of them (for the same reason) had pebbles in their mouths.

The year of the Shaikh's death, and where and when it occur­red, are not known. (May God remember him to his good!)