- Lived:
- c. 1143, Sīstān (the Iran–Afghanistan borderlands) → Ajmer, Rajasthan, from around the 1190s–1200s until his death in March 1236 (6 Rajab 633 AH, converted)
- Field:
- Sufism — the mystical tradition within Islam; transplanter of the Chishtī order to India
- The Big Idea:
- Religion proves itself by what it feeds, not what it conquers. He set up in a just-conquered Hindu city an open kitchen, open music and an open door — and the institution he seeded has now outlived every empire that ruled over it.
- In their words:
- "Develop river-like generosity, sun-like bounty and earth-like hospitality" — a counsel the Chishtī tradition attributes to him; nothing written by his own hand survives
- If you remember one thing:
- A Persian migrant who arrived in India in his fifties, fed whoever came, and turned no one away — and eight centuries later his tomb is still the most famous of India's shrines where Hindus and Muslims stand in the same queue.