________________ Shaikh Muhammad Qazin Shuttari of Basarh 423 mystic, Shaikh Shahabuddin Suharwardi, and fifth in line of spiritual succession from Shaikh Nizamuddin Kubra (d. 628 A. H.), the founder of the Firdausia Order. Travelling widely in Persia and Iraq he came to India, met the three saints of Manikpur including Makhdum Husamuddin (d. 853 A. H.), saw Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi at Jaunpur (d. 840 A. H.), paid a visit to Bibir and Bengal and then went to Mandu where he finally settled down and died in 890 A. H. He wrote a book Lataif-i-Ghaibi as we learn from hll chief disciple, the saint of Basarh, in which he deals with the doctrines of this Order, especially the principles of affirmation(Isbat) and negatiod (Naft). Seekers of truth and koowers of God, we are told by the pioneer of the Shuttari Ordur and the author of the Lataif-i-Ghaibi, are of three types, Akhyar, Abrir, and Shuttar. The title Shuttar literally means clever, fast going, abandoning taking sides, etc. The Shuttari Order, also called Ishqia, Bustamia or Taifuria Firdausia, is the way of those mystics who turning aside from everything except the vision of God's beauty attain God within the shortest possible time, profiting, directly by spiritual grace and rapture rather than, as in the case of other Orders, through austerities and self-mortifications. iv. Sources for the Study of the Shuttari Order Though Abdul Fazal in his Ain-i-Akbari does not include the Shuttari Silsila in his list of 14 Orders in India, he admits that his list is not exhaustive and he mentions the Order in more than one place and says that his famous father, Sbaikb Mobarak, profited by the instructions of men of the Shuttari Order.Abdul Fazal's sister's son and the editor of bis epistolery compositions, gives us valuable information in his rare Tazkira, Akhbar-ul- As fia, still in MS, about some of the saints of the Shuttari Order including Shaikh Abdullah and his chief disciple, Shaikh Abul Faiz Muhammad Bin Ola alias Qazin Shuttari of Bania-Basarh in Vaishali district of North Bihar. Another contemporary of Akbar, the historian and traditionist, Shaikh Abdul Haq of Delhi, and a contemporary of Jahangir and Shabjaban, Shaikh Abdul Rahman Chishti of Amethi (Oudh), the respective authors of the standard biographical dictionaries of saints, namely Akhbar-ul-Akhyar and Mirat-ul-Asrar (Kujhwa MS.), have noticed some of the important saints of the Shuttari Order including Shaikh Zahur Hazur Hamid Hazur (b. 835 A. H.=1431 A. D.), who lies buried at Ratansarai in Gopalganj district, and his spiritual directors, the saint of Basarh and his son, Shaikh Abul Fatah Hadiatullah Sarmast of Tankol (Hajipur) in Vaishali district. Maulana
