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After
Islamic armies came in and conquered a region, the Sufis would
follow to promote Islam through mysticism and learning. In this way
Islamic armies and Sufis worked like two sides of the coin, or like
the stick and the carrot, the negative and positive images of
conversion.
Sufis were closely aligned with Arabic, Afghan and Mogul invaders
and rulers in India, whether Mahmud of Ghazna, Mohammed Ghori,
Alaudin Khalji, Tamerlane, Mohammed ben Tughlak, Jehangir,
Aurangzeb, or Ahmed Shah Abdali of Afghanistan, to mention but a
few, whose armies killed thousands of Hindus and Sikhs and destroyed
numerous temples. While Sufis did not always participate in these
acts of destruction, they sometimes did fight in these armies and
certainly never raised much criticism against Islamic militance.
Sufis of all major orders, including the
Chishtis, were prominent in Mughal courts. In this regard Saiyid
Rizvi notes, "Members of the Chishti order traditionally
considered themselves to be the patron saints of the Muslim rulers
of India."
The brutal invader Muhammad bin
Tughlak erected a tomb over the remains of Shaikh Hamiduddin, a
prominent Chishti Sufi of the thirteenth century. Babur, the founder
of the Mughal dynasty, was allied with the Naqshbandis, while his
son Humayan was with the Shattaris. The Chishtis gained prominence
again after Akbar. After Aurangzeb the Naqshbandis, a more
conservative order, became prominent again.
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