Sarmad

Dara Shikoh had become a disciple of Sarmad, the great Persian-language poet, sage and Sufi. His stature as a poet is often mentioned along with Ferdosi, Nizami, Saadi, Hafez, Jami and Omar Khayyam. Yet we know so little of this great Armenian who became a Sufi saint, and walked stark naked initially in the streets of Lahore, and then moved to Delhi, where he taunted the emperor Aurangzeb for his “murderous acts in the name of religion.”

Who was Sarmad? We know that he dwelled in an open space just next to where today stands the Badshahi Mosque. Many years later the great Ustad Daman was to also live there, and often, in a lighter mood, would claim that he slept where Sarmad used to sleep. According to the eminent Persian scholar and historian Henry George Keene:

“Sarmad was the poetical name of an Armenian merchant who came to India in the reign of the Emperor Shah Jehan. In one of his journeys towards Thatta, he fell so passionately in love with a Hindu girl (or boy, the sources are unclear) that he became ‘distracted and would go about the streets naked’.

“In the beginning of the reign of Aurangzeb, he was put to death outside the Jamia Masjid Delhi on account of his disobeying the orders of that emperor, who had commanded him not to go about naked. This event took place in the year 1661. Some say that the real cause of his execution was a verse he composed, the translation of which is:

‘The mullahs say that Muhammad (peace be upon him) entered the heavens, but Sarmad says that the heavens entered Muhammad’.

His tomb is close to the Jamia Masjid. It was him who said: ‘In the shadow of great mosques does evil propser.’” People flocked round Sarmad and many found him to be a man of great sanctity and supernatural powers. It was Dara Shikoh who brought the miraculous powers of Sarmad to the notice of his father, Emperor Shah Jehan. When Aurangzeb had usurped the throne, he taunted Sarmad about the succession of his favourite disciple, Dara Shikoh, to the throne, which he had promised him. Sarmad calmly replied: “God has given him eternal sovereignty and my promise is not falsified.” The supreme moment had at last arrived for Aurangzeb to wreak his vengeance on the harmless naked saint and scholar, and he immediately ordered his execution. It is said that when the condemned man was being led away from the tribunal to the place of execution, he uttered, extempore, a long poem of immense beauty, the last lines of which are:

There was an uproar
and we opened our eyes from eternal sleep
Saw that the night of wickedness endured,
so we slept again