Thread by @NafeesRehmanDr

A thread on the spiritual teacher and guide of Ahmad Shah Durrani whose influence and teachings contributed to what Ahmad Shah Durrani ultimately became i.e., the Dur-e-Durran and the king of Afghanistan!

#Saints #Sufis #Mystics

https://twitter.com/NafeesRehmanDr/status/1449064519825756162

Pir Sabir Shah Lahori and Ahmad Shah Abdali is said to have first met during the reign of Nadir Shah of Persia in the city of Mashhad. Ahmad Shah Abdali was at the time in the service of Nadir Shah and Pir Sabir Shah Lahori was visiting there as well at the time.

It is said that Ahmad Shah Abdali took leave from his work to visit the shrine of Imam Raza. When he arrived at the shrine of Imam Raza he saw that someone has erected a small tent there in the manner of the children to play there.

"Darvesh, what are these tents and why the child's play?" asked Amhad Shah. The man asked a question in reply "Are you Ahmad Abdali?"

When Ahmad Shah affirmed his identity the Darvesh, Pir Sabir Shah Lahori, said "This is a tent that will collapse when Nadir Shah dies.

"And that at that point, you will become king."

It is said that Ahmad Shah Abdali left one of his men to keep an eye on the tent and himself went back serve Nadir Shah.

Later when Nadir Shah was killed, Ahmad Shah Abdali separated his men from the Nadir Shah's army and went to

Mashhad where he met the man he had assigned to keep an eye on the tent. The time and date of the collapse of the tent exactly coincided with the death of Nadir Shah, and Ahmad Shah Abdali was convinced that he would become king.

Sajjad Nejatie records a couple of other variants
of the same event. Like in one case, Pir Sabir Shah asked Ahmad Shah for some cloth so that he may sew few tents and coverings and recite a litany to enable the latter to sit upon the throne of sovereignty in the near future.

Pir Sabir Shah sewed miniature tents and would recite prayers while playing with the tents like a child whenever the party of Ahmad Shah, that he had joined, would make a stop while on their way to Kandahar.

Before entering Kandahar which was still patrolled by forced loyal to Nadir Shah, the Afghans consulted among themselves on who is going to be their chief and Ahmad Shah Abdali was chosen after some deliberation. Pir Sabir Shah then placed the symbolic crown on his head.

Skipping some details here on if Ahmad Shah was chosen king before entering Kandahar, or if it was only after he entered Kandahar or if there was a grand Jirgah at Kandahar that confirmed his election and his right to the throne of the new Sultanate.

There are multiple theories exploring the reasons behind Ahmad Shah adopting the epithet "Durr-e-Durran" (Pearl of Pearls). One suggests that it came from Pir Sabir Shah calling Ahmad Shah "Durr-i-Dauran" (Pearl of time). But there is also another explanation offered by Nejatie

that given the religious inclinations, profound devotion to Sufism and Islamic mysticism, Ahmad Shah might well have chosen the epithet "Pearl of Pearls" because of its metaphysical important in the the Islamic mystical thought.

Acc. to the treatise On the Reality of Love (Fī ḥaqīqat al-ʿishq), the first creation of God was a pearl (gawhar) of a lustrous (tābnāk) quality that was named “Intellect” (ʿAqal). In The Red Intellect (ʿAql-i surkh), we read of the gawhari shab-afrūz, or “the

night-illuminating pearl,” which, in Suhrawardī’s cosmology, represents the Sphere of the Moon, i.e., the Tenth Intellect.

The renowned Andalusian mystic Ibn-Al-Arabi also refers to the First Intellect (A-Aql Al Awwal)- as a white pearl (Al-Durra Al-Bayza).

Acc. to Rukn-Al-Yaqin, Ahmad Shah himself, in his quest for gnosis, had entered the spiritual realm, received divine inspiration, and had attained the epistemic level of Haqq Al-Yaqeen (divine certitude) the loftiest levels of Witnessing (Muntaha-i-Tabaqat-i-Shuhud).

This is a topic very well researched by Nejatie and is going to be presented in another thread but the point was to narrate the religous, mystical, Sufi motivations behind adopting the epithet of Durr-i-Durran, which also resulted in the change of name of the Abdali to Durrani.

Pir Sabir Sabir Shah accompanied Ahmad Shah Durrani to Peshawar when the added the today's Pakhtunkhwa to his kingdom.

Here they met another saint Mian Umar on whose advice Ahmad Shah chose Afghanistan as the name of his kingdom.

dawn.com/news/1435834

Pir Sabir Shah Lahori is said to have returned to Lahore in the late 1740s where he engaged in his old "child's play" by erecting miniature tents in the Bazar of Lahore, doing litany to bring the rule of Ahmad Shah to Lahore.

https://twitter.com/Pashz7/status/1428236536609267712?s=20

But when the Mughal governor learnt of what Pir Sabir Shah was doing, he put him to death, according to Ganda Sing. Pir Sabir Shah is buried around the Badshahi mosque in Lahore. (HT @Pashz7)

Source.