I have written in the past about the movement of Afghan Pathans all across India at various stages in history…they settled everywhere from the areas surrounding Delhi, Rampur, and Bhopal to down south in the Deccan as well as in Sindh.
The Shirani tribe found its way through the Takhth-E-Suleman—the mountain range across Afghanistan and South Waziristan—from a small place called Darazinda to around the Delhi area in two distinct waves. One with Mehmood of Ghazni in 1025 and the other in 1517 with the forces of Ibrahim Lodhi. The Lodhi immigrants settled in the Behror district in a village called Goonti about 63 miles from the city of Alwar in India.
I have been trying to learn more about the second wave of the Shirani migrations and have been back and forth with my friend Omar Farooq Shirani, the local historian and muezzin in the area. Today I was thrilled to receive a set of exciting though eerie photos of a derelict and unremarkable mausoleum belonging to Mullah Mohammad Shah Shirani also known as Shirani Baba who lived and died in the area around the middle of the 16th century.
A brief biography of Shirani Baba in a 19th-century social history of the area is interesting though anecdotal. It describes him as one of the Afghan tribesmen who moved from the Kabul area to the region of Goonti. He was apparently a pious man who loved horses and would often take them grazing near the “Katli” Lake. Apparently, the lake had rolling green hills around it and he found this an apt spot for both his love of horses and the solitude for quiet reflection. He was a follower of the Chishti Sufi order and was known for his gentle ways “uncharacteristic of his hot Pathan blood”. Soon many inhabitants from the area would give him their horses to tend to and train. He became a master horse trainer and was considered honest and trustworthy. He was a quiet, pious man.
By the end of his life, he became a prominent sufi teacher in the vicinity, faithfully practicing the teachings of his order along with many students. He lived and died near the Katli Lake where he would often meditate next to a well. He was an old man when he died and a mausoleum was built for him by a fellow Pathan family of Madan Khan Qaimkhani and Rustum Dil Khan Qaimkhani, both of whom were also his disciples.
It is very likely that Mullah Mohammad Shah Shirani was the first couple of generations of Shiranis who arrived in India in 1517 with the Lodhi forces and stayed behind in 1526 after the Battle of Panipat. Almost two hundred years later, his family members would move with Aurangzeb’s forces to the Deccan where they settled across the region including ending up in the court of Sikander Jah, the first Nizam of Hyderabad. From there they moved again in the 1790s into a small vassal called Dewalghat in the erstwhile Berar district of the North Deccan.
