Shaikh Sarmad is a relatively lesser-known name amongst the several legendary Sufi saints of India. His mausoleum, nestled within the narrow bylanes of Jama Masjid, does not receive nearly as many visitors as the dargah of Nizamuddin Auliya just a few kilometers away. Yet, his legacy reveals much not just about the history of Sufism, but the transitions and turbulence of the early modern period, India’s position in the Persianate world, and even Muslim participation in the nationalist movement. Syeda Saiyidain Hameed and Reyaz Ahmad have masterfully woven all these threads together in His Miracle, Not His Sin. A translated collection of Sarmad’s Persian quatrains (rubaiyat), the book also includes an essay by Maulana Azad titled Sarmad ‘Shaheed’.
The title ‘Shaheed’ (martyr) was ascribed to Sarmad because of the circumstances of his death. As the story goes, Sarmad was brought before a jury of Islamic clerics on charges of heresy in Delhi three years after Aurangzeb ascended the imperial throne. He was accused of rejecting the concept of the unity of God (tawhid), an essential pillar of Islam, amongst other minor faults like a refusal to clothe himself. Rather than repent and ask for forgiveness, Sarmad reiterated his convictions in front of the jury through a couplet which accused the chief judge, a Mullah Abdul Qavi, of hypocrisy. As a result, he was swiftly executed on the steps of the Jama Masjid. In death, he joined the ranks of other Sufis who had been similarly executed because of their unorthodox approach to religion. Sarmad even invoked one such saint, Mansur al-Hallaj, in his final couplet, and Maulana Azad in turn bestowed the title “Mansur the Second” upon him:
When Mansur was permitted to proclaim ‘I am Truth,’He was freed from the obligationOf blood money and prison sentence.
{{/usCountry}}When Mansur was permitted to proclaim ‘I am Truth,’He was freed from the obligationOf blood money and prison sentence.
{{/usCountry}}As Azad pointed out, however, Sarmad’s execution was not merely a religious act, but a deeply political one. After his takeover of the throne, Aurangzeb wanted to eliminate all the supporters of his brother, Dara Shikoh, and the unfortunate Sufi happened to be one of them. By making his martyrdom the primary theme of his essay, Azad also took the opportunity to compare the two brothers, and argue for a syncretic vision of India, one he thought was best exemplified by Dara. According to Hameed, this essay, written by him at the young age of 22, would become a foundational aspect of Azad’s ideals.
Like many other leading Muslim intellectuals of his time, Azad too was a strong proponent of Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb. This syncretic culture of north India was one where a poet like Mohsin Kakorwi could write praise poetry for the Prophet Muhammad using the imagery of Kashi and Mathura. Maulana Azad actually took up the task of writing this essay on the request of his colleague, Khwaja Hasan Nizami, whose oeuvre includes the texts with matching titles – Krishna Biti and Rasul Biti, the life stories of Lord Krishna and Prophet Muhammad respectively. At the same time, this book also alludes to the cosmopolitan Persianate world within which India was a significant centre. After all, Sarmad was originally an Armenian Jew from Kashan who arrived in India as a trader. Here, he met his beloved, a Hindu boy named Abhaichand. Love, one of the key components of Sufi thought and literature thus entered his life and he began his journey towards God.
Hameed and Ahmad have brought all these elements to the fore through a clever and incisive selection of Sarmad’s rubaiyat. One only has to scratch the surface to apprehend both the historical and literary value of his verses. In one rubayi, he mentions the Persian poets Hafiz and Omar Khayyam, signalling his literary influences and the milieu he was a part of. While in others, he speaks of the paradoxical nature of faith and humans’ inability to ever fully understand God:
SeparationFor a moment from my Beloved? Impossible. Unanimity in conversation? Impossible.An ocean He, My heart a goblet, a solecism! For the goblet to contain the ocean?Impossible.
Taken together, the quatrains are a rich introduction to the totality of Sufi intellectual and literary traditions.
The mastery of the selection is only dwarfed by the skilful translations, which have preserved the essence of Sarmad. Translating poetry is a strenuous task, especially from Classical Persian, where grammatical rules are sometimes modified to preserve rhyme and meter. Furthermore, Persian has no concept of gender, which makes the job of the translator even tougher. But, Hameed and Ahmad deal with these issues expertly. They are able to retain the meaning of every quatrain and ensure that all of the translations continue to sound as beautiful as their original form. Sometimes, they choose to depart from the traditional four-line structure of the rubayi, which only goes to prove the richness of Sarmad’s poetry. It is so multilayered and complex, that it becomes difficult to render it in English in four short lines.
The art of translation is also at work in the translation of Maulana Azad’s essay, done by Syeda Saiyidain Hameed. She preserves the argumentative, urgent quality of this work, allowing the reader to feel his political and personal commitment to the ideal exemplified by Sarmad’s story. Indeed, this book reveals as much about Maulana Azad as about the saint. Both men, separated as they were by several centuries, were born out of a culture of exchange and interaction. It was a culture built on tolerance, on inclusion, and on love. How else could an Armenian Jew from Persia have become an Indian legend? Aurangzebs have come and gone, but Sarmad and Azad’s legacy remains as significant as ever.
Rushnae Kabir is a PhD student at the Department of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania, where she studies devotional practices in South Asian Islam.