I set off for Delhi in the morning with William Dalrymple’s The City of Djinns in my bag. There’s something satisfying about carrying a book about a city into the city itself. You begin to look at things a little differently, as though the streets might reveal something you’d have missed otherwise.
On the flight, I was reading Dalrymple’s account of his visits to the shrine of Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya and the qawwalis that fill its precincts. I read about the music, the devotees and the curious way Delhi’s medieval past continues to live alongside its present. I had no idea that, by evening, I’d find myself in the very place I’d been reading about that morning.
Delhi had other plans for me during the day. There were meetings to attend and official work to get through. By the time I was free, it was approaching Maghrib. On the way back, almost on a whim, I asked the driver to drop me at Nizamuddin.
I was hungry, too. Delhi is hardly the place to ignore that particular need, so I found myself some proper Mughlai nihari and tandoori. It was a satisfying meal, and for a little while I could forget the day’s official business. Then I started walking towards the shrine.
I hadn’t checked the calendar. I hadn’t planned the visit. As it turned out, it was the annual urs of Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya.
The place was packed. People filled the narrow lanes, moving in every direction, while the sound of qawwali rose above the general commotion. The singers were praising the Prophet Muhammad (SAW), and the crowd seemed to respond with its whole being. Hands clapped, heads swayed, voices joined in. Some people sang along; others simply stood and listened. There was an ease to it all, a feeling that nobody needed to explain why they had come.
I was delighted. There I was, in the very place Dalrymple had described, on a night when the shrine was celebrating its saint. A book I’d been reading on an aeroplane that morning had, quite unexpectedly, led me into the scene itself.
For a moment, The City of Djinns wasn’t a book at all. It was the place around me.
What I noticed, too, was the mixture of people. Muslims and Hindus moved through the same crowded lanes, sharing the occasion in their own ways. There were families, devotees, curious visitors and people who had perhaps been coming here for years. Nobody seemed particularly interested in drawing a neat boundary between the sacred and the ordinary. The past wasn’t locked away in a monument or a history book. It was right there, in the music, the faces and the simple act of people coming together.
As I moved away from the main shrine, I came across the Urs Mahal, a space associated with the urs celebrations. The atmosphere inside was rather different. The crowd was still there, but the gathering had a more formal character. The shrine’s senior custodians, the mujawirs and other elders, sat on a raised platform, listening to the qawwals. There was a certain dignity to the arrangement. This wasn’t just a musical performance in a crowded lane; it was a tradition being carried forward by people who understood its place in their lives.
I found a spot among the ordinary listeners, on the white sheets spread across the floor. I didn’t feel the need to sit on the raised platform. I was quite happy to be one of the people listening.
That evening, the refrain was Maula Ali, Maula Ali, Maula Ali.
The singers kept returning to it, each repetition adding something to the last. Anyone who has listened to qawwali knows how this works. A line is repeated until it seems to take on a life of its own. You stop listening to the words alone. The rhythm draws you in, and before long, the distinction between the people singing and the people listening begins to blur.
The crowd was absorbed. Some sat quietly, others swayed or joined in, and the refrain seemed to hold everyone in its grip.
I found the choice of praise particularly interesting. Ali occupies a special place in Shia devotion, yet here he was being celebrated with great feeling at the shrine of a Sunni Sufi saint. It didn’t strike me as a contradiction. Reverence for Ali, love for the Prophet and devotion to the awliya have long found room within the wider vocabulary of Muslim spirituality. The emphasis and the forms of expression may differ, but these traditions often draw upon a shared reservoir of love and reverence.
I was enjoying the music, but I was also enjoying the fact that I didn’t have to stop and classify everything. I could simply sit there and listen.
Nearby, children were playing. They ran about, laughed and got on with their little games while the qawwals sang and the adults listened. I found that oddly reassuring. The urs wasn’t a historical spectacle put on for visitors. It was a living occasion, part of the ordinary life of the people who came there. Those children might not remember every song they heard that evening, but they would remember being there. Perhaps, years later, they would bring their own children.
Outside, though, another sight stayed with me.
The lanes were lined with old, dilapidated buildings. Their worn facades seemed to belong to a different Delhi, one in which the city’s Muslim neighbourhoods and institutions had enjoyed a different kind of social and cultural standing. It was hard not to notice the contrast between the history associated with the place and the condition of much of its built environment today.
There was a time when Delhi was the centre of an empire, when wealth, influence and patronage flowed through its streets. Much of that grandeur has long since disappeared. Buildings decay, neighbourhoods change, and communities lose the social position they once held. Yet the qawwali continues. People still gather around the memory of a saint who lived centuries ago. Children still play beneath old walls.
I found myself thinking that traditions can outlast the circumstances that gave them their original setting. The buildings may have lost their splendour, but something of the place’s spiritual life remains very much alive.
I left the Urs Mahal with the refrain of Maula Ali still running through my head. I was in good spirits, and I might well have called it a night there. But I still had Maghrib and Isha to pray, so I made my way towards Bangla Wali Masjid, the well-known centre of the Tablighi Jamaat in India.
The contrast was striking. I had just come from an evening of Sufi qawwali, where Ali had been praised with a fervour that filled the room. Now I was heading towards a mosque associated with a movement known for its emphasis on prayer, religious discipline and the imitation of the Prophet.
Little did the Tablighis know where I had been that evening.
I performed my wudu and went upstairs. The mosque was full of men, students and visitors from different parts of India and beyond. Many had travelled considerable distances to spend time with fellow Muslims and participate in the movement’s activities. There was something moving about that simple arrangement. People who might otherwise have had little in common had come together because they wanted to devote time to their faith.
The place was full of activity, but there was an earnestness about it, too. I could understand the appeal of a movement that asks people to set aside much of the noise of everyday life and return to the basics: prayer, remembrance of Allah, good character and the example of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW).
A preacher was addressing the gathering. He spoke about brotherhood, about cultivating love for the Prophet, and about making the Prophet’s example a guide for everyday life. I listened and found myself moved once again.
It struck me as rather wonderful that, within the space of an evening, I had encountered two very different settings in which Muslims expressed their devotion. At the Urs Mahal, there had been music, repetition and the possibility of being swept along by a refrain. At Bangla Wali Masjid, there was preaching, communal discipline and a reminder to put faith into practice.
The outward forms were different. Yet I could recognise something familiar in both.
In each place, there was a desire to draw closer to the Prophet, to keep his memory alive and to make his life a source of spiritual guidance. That desire took different forms, and the differences between the two traditions were real. But I didn’t feel the need to turn them into a contest.
Then it was time for Isha.
I joined the congregation with one small difference in my practice that made me a little self-conscious. I follow the Hanbali and Salafi form of Witr. I pray three rak‘ahs consecutively, without sitting for a separate tashahhud after the first two, and I raise my hands for the supplication of qunut in the final rak‘ah.
The supplication begins, Allahumma ihdini fiman hadayt—O Allah, guide me among those You have guided.
It is part of the well-known supplication taught by the Prophet to his grandson Hasan ibn Ali. I have always found something particularly tender about this dua. It brings together the Prophet’s guidance and his relationship with his family, reminding us of the affection he had for Hasan and Husayn and the place they occupy in Muslim memory.
And so there I was, among Hanafi Tablighis, having just listened to a qawwali centred on Maula Ali, and now praying Witr according to a practice more commonly associated with Hanbalis and Salafis.
I did wonder whether anyone would notice. Would somebody look over and identify me as the Salafi-looking fellow in the congregation? The thought amused me. I was among people whose religious habits might differ from my own, yet we were standing together in prayer, invoking the same Lord and following the guidance of the same Prophet.
I finished my prayer feeling entirely at ease.
I don’t mean that the differences between Muslim traditions are unimportant, or that centuries of theological debate can be brushed aside with a pleasant evening. These traditions have their own histories, arguments and understandings of religious practice. But there’s a difference between recognising those disagreements and allowing them to determine how we encounter one another.
That evening, I had listened to the praise of Ali at a Sufi shrine, heard a Tablighi preacher speak about love for the Prophet, and prayed according to my own understanding of the Sunnah. I had found something worthwhile in each experience. I didn’t need to resolve every theological question before allowing myself to appreciate what I had encountered.
Perhaps that was the real pleasure of the evening: the freedom to listen, reflect and worship without feeling that every difference demanded a verdict.
None of it had been planned. I had left for Delhi that morning with a book in my bag, expecting little beyond a day of meetings. I returned to my hotel after midnight with the sound of qawwali still in my ears and a head full of thoughts I hadn’t anticipated having.
The next morning, I would catch my flight home and return to the usual demands of work and everyday life.
But for a few hours, Delhi had allowed me to move between worlds that are often described as opposites: the shrine of a medieval Sufi saint and the mosque of the Tablighi Jamaat; the ecstatic repetition of qawwali and the quiet discipline of prayer; the praise of Ali and a supplication taught by the Prophet to his grandson.
I hadn’t arrived intending to make a point about religious diversity. I had simply followed the evening where it took me.
And perhaps that’s what I’ll remember most about Delhi. Not that its differences disappeared, but that I could encounter them at close quarters, recognise them for what they were, and still feel at home.
I had gone looking for Nizamuddin, carrying a book about a city of jinns. I came away with something less easily described: a night of music, prayer, unexpected connections and the quiet pleasure of discovering that the world of one’s own faith is often wider than the boundaries one encounters in argument.
Shakeel Maqbool, ICAS, UPSC CSE 2014 batch, currently working as Controller Accounts and Internal Financial Advisor,J&K, MHA
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