Ajmer Sharif Dargah

Why is in news? PM hands over Chadar which would be offered on the Urs at the Ajmer Sharif Dargah

The Urs festival is an annual festival held at Ajmer in Rajasthan which commemorates the death anniversary of Sufi saint Moinuddin Chishti.

Khwaja Moinuddin Hasan Chishti was born in Sijistan (modern-day Sistan) in Iran in 1141-42 CE.

After Muizuddin Muhammad bin Sam of Ghor had already defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in the Second Battle of Tarain (1192) and established his rule in Delhi, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti started living and preaching in Ajmer.

His instructive discourses, full of spiritual insights, soon drew the local populace as well as kings and nobles and peasants and the poor from far and wide.

His shrine in Ajmer has been visited by rulers like Muhammad bin Tughlaq, Sher Shah Suri, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Dara Shukoh and Aurangzeb.

Khwaja Moinuddin Dargah was popular because of the piety and austerity of its Shaikh, patronage of royal visitors, and the popularity of his spiritual successors.

It attracted a lot of travellers as the shrine was located on the trade route linking Delhi and Gujarat.

The shrine was built by Mughal King Humayun in honour of this saint.

Sultan Ghiyasuddin Khalji of Malwa funded the earliest construction to house the tomb in the late fifteenth century.

The Dargah complex of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti was built in Indo-Islamic style of architecture.

A golden crown offered by Nawab Haider Ali Khan of Rampur sits on top of it and a lotus adorns the dome.

Moinuddin Hasan Chishti earned the name Khwaja Garib Nawaz, or cherisher of the poor.

Chishti Order (Chishtiya):

Chishtiya Order was founded in India by Khwaja Moin-Uddin Chishti.

It emphasised the doctrine of the unity of being with God (waḥdat al-wujūd) and members of the order were also pacifists.

They rejected all material goods as distractions from the contemplation of God.

They abstained from connection with the secular state.

Recitation of the names of God, both aloud and silently (dhikr jahrī, dhikr khafī), formed the cornerstone of Chishtī practice.

The Chishty teachings were carried forward and popularized by disciples of Khwaja Moin-Uddin Chishti like Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, Fareeduddin Ganj-e-Shakar, Nizam uddin Auliya and Naseeruddin Charagh.