Khwāja Bande Nawāz

Khwaja Bande Nawaz, Gulbarga

A Chishti saint in the Deccan

Khwaja Bande Nawaz (also spelled Banda Nawaz, Bandhu Nawaz) is a Sufi saint of the Chishti order whose dargah is at Gulbarga, in the Deccan (now Kalaburagi district, Karnataka). He is the saint credited with carrying the Chishti silsila — the chain of spiritual transmission — into the Deccan, and Gulbarga's shrine is the origin point of Chishti practice in the region. He is remembered as having received the guru-bai'in directly from Nasiir-ud-Din Chiragh-i-Dihli (Nasiruddin Chiragh Dihli), the head of the Chishti order at that time; the transmission from the Delhi-area Chishti line to the Deccan is what gives Gulbarga its standing in Sufi history. The shrine also has a strong Deccani Persianate character, having been patronised through the centuries and preserving a tradition of Sufi music and poetry in Dakhni, the Deccan Urdu, as well as in Persian and Arabic.

The Urs, the annual festival on the saint's death anniversary, is the great public event. The date usually given for the saint is the 24th of Rabi al-Awwal (which earlier drafts of this entry gave as Rabi al-Akhir, an error; the Urs of Gulbarga falls in Rabi al-Awwal and the date should be confirmed from the shrine's own calendar). The Urs draws very large crowds, and Gulbarga is one of the important Sufi pilgrimage centres of the peninsula. The shrine's tombs, its courtyards, and its associated dargah buildings are a substantial complex, and the saint is held in high esteem across the Deccan and beyond by Muslims and by Hindus alike, as is common at the region's major Sufi shrines.

The Gulbarga tradition and the broader Bande Nawaz name are associated with a wider current of Sufi saints of the Deccan, and there is a distinct Deccani Sufi idiom in the poetry, the music, and the ritual of the shrine. The Bande Nawaz order, the sama', and the shrine's mazar traditions are the subject of a scholarly literature on South Asian Sufism; the standard works on the Chishti order and on Sufism in the Deccan are the basis used here, together with the Kalaburagi gazetteer. The institution of the khadim and the muhtalif — the hereditary caretaker lineages at the shrine — is a real part of dargah administration across the region.

Sources and what is still unverified

This entry is grounded in Annemarie Schimmel's work on Islam in the Indian subcontinent, in the standard scholarship on the Chishti silsila and on Deccani Sufism, and in the Kalaburagi district gazetteer. A human guardian from a Deccani Sufi or specifically Gulbarga source should supply and check: the exact date of the saint's death and the location of the Urs in the Muslim calendar, which the shrine's own calendar fixes; the khadim lineage at the shrine; the sama' tradition and the shrine's present music practice; and the state of the shrine's buildings. The specific dates "1321–1422" given in earlier drafts of this entry are the traditional chronology and should be treated as traditional. The "200,000+ pilgrims" figure should be cited only from a count. The correction from Rabi al-Akhir to Rabi al-Awwal in this entry is itself a point a shrine source should confirm.