Person · died 851 AH / 1447 CE, buried at Panduah · Sufi saint of Panduah — son and successor of Shaikh Alaul Haq

Shaikh Nuruddin Nur Qutb-ul-Alam

The Panduah saint who, in the Riyazu-s-Salatin's account, converted Raja Ganesh's twelve-year-old son to Islam with chewed betel from his own mouth, had him enthroned as Sultan Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah, and — in his own recorded words — turned back a Jaunpur army he had himself summoned, once its target had converted.

"In order to intercede on behalf of an oppressive infidel, I cannot stand in the way of a Musalman sovereign, especially of one who has come out at my desire and request." — printed p. 115; the English translation of the original Persian, not the original-language text itself.

What the sources did with her afterwards. A footnote (citing Blochmann, J.A.S.B. 1873, p. 262) records that his father Alaul Haq's tomb and a short biographical sketch survive at Panduah, and that Nur Qutb-ul-Alam himself "died in 851 A.H. or 1447 A.C., and lies buried at Panduah," succeeded by his sons Rafiuddin and Shaikh Anwar — a transmitted line the Riyaz treats as still traceable, not erased, though it is preserved only through this later compiled history rather than any surviving writing of his own.

Draft. This entry is an unreviewed first draft. It has not yet been checked by a subject reviewer — see sources and method.

The intercession and the conversion

When Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi of Jaunpur marched on Bengal at the saint's own earlier request, Raja Ganesh ("Kans") came in terror to Nur Qutb-ul-Alam and begged him to intercede. The Riyaz gives the saint's reply as direct speech: "The Saint replied: 'In order to intercede on behalf of an oppressive infidel, I cannot stand in the way of a Musalman sovereign, especially of one who has come out at my desire and request.'" When Kans offered to submit to any condition, "The Saint said: 'So long as thou dost not embrace the Musalman religion, I cannot intercede for thee.'"

Kans's wife stopped his own conversion, so he brought his twelve-year-old son Jadu instead: "I have become old, and desire to retire from the world. You may convert to Islam this son of mine, and then bestow on him the kingdom of Bengal." The text continues: "The saint Qutbu-l-'Alam taking out from his own mouth some chewed betel, put it into Jadu's mouth, and making him pronounce the creed of the Musalman faith, converted him to Islam, and naming him Jalalu-d-din, had the fact proclaimed in the city, and caused the Khutba of the kingdom to be recited after his name."

The saint then went to Sultan Ibrahim and asked him to withdraw, since the jihad he had summoned him for was "enjoined against infidels, not against Musalmans" — now that Kans's son had converted. When a court qazi tried to test him and failed, the Riyaz records the saint's own warning to him: "'To view with contempt saints and to try to test them, ends in nothing but discomfiture. Before long, thou shalt die in a wretched plight.'" Sultan Ibrahim returned to Jaunpur and, the text says, both he and the qazi died shortly after.

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