Exploring the elite world in the Siyar al-Awliyā’: Urban elites, their lineages and social networks

Composed by Amīr Khwurd around the middle of the fourteenth century, the Siyar al-Awliyā’ presents a coherent history of the Chishti spiritual order (silsilah) in the Indian subcontinent from the early thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth century. Historians have mined the text for information on Sufis and Sufism while ignoring its special attributes. This article makes a historiographical and methodological intervention by showing how a Sufi biographical compendium (tazkira) can be used to write a history of the Muslim society and an incipient Chishti fraternity.