Mu'in al-Din Chishti

Early life Born into a Sunni Persian background, Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī was born in 1143 in Sistan. He was sixteen years old when his father, G̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ al-Dīn (d. c. 1155), died, However, this is historically untenable as per consensus of genealogists. Majority of the sources place six to seven generations between Musa al-Kazim and Chishti, this would be a biological impossibility as it would mean each generation would have an average fathering age of fifty years. Nevertheless, hagiographical sources differ on his specific line of descent from al-Kazim, some state him to descended from a son named Idris, These assertations however are not collaborated by historians of the Alawiyyin family such as Ibn Inabah in his famed work, Umdat al-Talib or Kashf al-Ghumma, do not record figures with the names Idris or Abd al-Aziz as sons or grandsons respectively of Musa al-Kazim. Another source published by Ajmer Sharif claims an eleven generation gap between al-Kazim and Chishti, however traces it to Ibrahim ibn Musa al-Kazim through a son named Ahmad, though he had no son recorded as being named Ahmad.

Despite planning to continue his father's business, he developed mystic tendencies in his personal piety Muʿīn al-Dīn first travelled to Lahore to meditate at the tomb-shrine of the Sunni mystic and jurist Ali Hujwiri (d. 1072). He went on to have three sons—Abū Saʿīd, Fak̲h̲r al-Dīn and Ḥusām al-Dīn — and one daughter, Bībī Jamāl.

According to the various chronicles, Muʿīn al-Dīn's tolerant and compassionate behavior towards the local population seems to have been one of the major reasons behind conversion to Islam at his hand. Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī is said to have appointed Bakhtiar Kaki (d. 1235) as his spiritual successor, who worked at spreading the Chishtiyya in Delhi. Furthermore, Muʿīn al-Dīn's son, Fakhr al-Dīn (d. 1255), is said to have further spread the order's teachings in Ajmer, whilst another of the saint's major disciples, Ḥamīd al-Dīn Ṣūfī Nāgawrī (d. 1274), preached in Nagaur, Rajasthan. In a similar way, the later Mughal emperor Akbar (d. 1605) visited the shrine no less than fourteen times during his reign.

In the present day, the tomb of Muʿīn al-Dīn continues to be one of the most popular sites of religious visitation for Sunni Muslims in the Indian subcontinent,

Popular culture Indian films about the saint and his dargah at Ajmer include Mere Gharib Nawaz by G. Ishwar, Sultan E Hind (1973) by K. Sharif, Khawaja Ki Diwani (1981) by Akbar Balam and Mere Data Garib Nawaz (1994) by M Gulzar Sultani. A song in the 2008 Indian film Jodhaa Akbar named "Khwaja Mere Khwaja", composed by A. R. Rahman, pays tribute to Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī.

Various qawwalis portray devotion to the saint including Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's "Khwaja E Khwajgan", Sabri Brothers' "Khawaja Ki Deewani"and Koji Badayuni's "Kabhi rab se Mila Diya".