Khwaja Bakhtiyar Kaki

Khwaja Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki was born in 1173 in Iran. He was the direct descendent of Prophet Muhammad through Imam Husayn. He was very young when his father died but his mother took great care of him and his education. He met and initiated in the Chishtiya Order by his Sufi Master Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti in Baghdad. He received the khilafat (completion of training) from Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti and was declared his spiritual heir at the young age of seventeen.Like his Sufi Master, he traveled extensively and met many great Sufis of his time. He chronicled most of those events in his journal. The journal has many interesting stories. On one of those stories, he wrote that one day he was sitting with his friend Qazi Hamiduddin Nagori on a bank of a river where he saw a big scorpion creeping fast. He said to him "there must be a reason behind this." Both of them followed the scorpion, which reached a tree and killed a big snake. They saw a man sleeping nearby. They approached him and found that he was a drunk. They stayed there and wondered why God bestowed upon such a sinner His mercy. Then they heard a voice saying, "If We only take pity on the pious, who would help the poor?"After the man woke up and was surprised to see the dead snake, we told him the story. He was ashamed and in a short time, he rose to become a great saint. God bestowed His Divine Knowledge upon him.He spent most of his time in fasting. His dependants passed their days in extreme poverty. Even though he was poor, he was a generous. Whatever he received, he gave it away to the poor. When he had nothing in the house, he would serve the people with cold water.Khwaja Bakhtiyar Kaki moved from Iran to India and settled in Delhi during the time of Sultanate of Delhi. The Turkish Sultan Shamsuddin Altutmish was his admirer and could have given him anything he wanted but he never demanded a thing from him. Once the Sultan wanted to grant him a large part of the land and his minister arrived with the Sultan's proclamation with the request to accept it; he declined the offer saying that the earlier saints of the Chishtiya order had never accepted such things, and he would not either.On his way to Delhi when he was at Multan, its ruler Qibacha Beg, came to see him. He said, "The Mongols are about to invade Multan and I have no power to face them. For God's sake, help me." Khwaja Kaki gave him an arrow and said, "After the evening prayer, appear on the tower of the rampart and shoot it with a bow in the direction of enemy, then watch what God does."The ruler of Multan did as he was told. When the arrow fell, the Mongol horde fled from the battlefield and Multan was left unharmed.He died in Delhi around 1230 and was buried in the Mehroli subdivision of Delhi.