Place · Sufi khanqah · India
Maner Sharif, Patna district
Also known as Maner Sharif, Patna district, Yahya Maneri & Sharfuddin Maneri
The Khanqah of Makhdoom Yahya Maneri (1263-1381) at Maner Sharif in Patna district, Bihar, 30 kilometres from Patna — the great Firdausi Sufi khanqah of eastern India. Yahya Maneri was the founder of the Firdausi silsila (sub-branch of the Suhrawardi order) in India. His 40-year retreat in a cave at the nearby Bihar Sharif and his correspondence collected as Maktubat-i-Sadi ('Hundred Letters') is the foundational Sufi theological text of Bihar. The Maner Sharif complex includes the Choti Dargah (smaller tomb of Yahya Maneri's son Shah Daulat, built 1619 under Jahangir patronage) and the Bari Dargah (larger tomb of Yahya Maneri himself). The current structures are 14-15 century with major 17-century Mughal additions. The annual Urs each 7 Shawwal draws over 500,000 Sufi pilgrims. The dargah is managed by the Maner Sharif Dargah Trust.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 25.647, 84.878
Connections (2)
- Silsila lineageBihar Sharīf
Maner Sharīf west of Patna is the elder seat of the Firdausi lineage and Bihar Sharīf its greatest khānqāh — the Barī Dargāh of Makhdūm Yahyā at one, and at the other his descendant Sharafuddin Manerī, whose hundred letters were copied across India. The Firdausis stayed small and stayed in Bihar while the Chishtis spread, which is why almost nobody outside the state has heard of them.
- Silsila lineagePhulwari Sharif, Patna
Phulwāri Sharīf and Maner Sharīf are the eighteenth-century and the medieval poles of Bihar's khānqāh tradition, about thirty kilometres apart around Patna. Maner holds the Firdausi lineage's elder seat and its Mughal-era domed tomb standing in a tank; Phulwāri added a madrasa to the khānqāh, so teaching and Sufi practice shared a compound — the arrangement most north Indian Islamic learning actually took.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Patna district”. Chishti tazkira literature; Carl Ernst and Bruce Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love (2002).
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