User:Shah Inat

 SHAH INAYATULLAH "MIYUN SHAH INAT"

Shah Ïnayatullah, popularly known as "Miyun Shah Inat" belonged to a branch of Rizvi Syeds which separated from the main family stock at bakhar in Sindh Sometimes during the 14-16th Centuries A.D. and came down to settle at Nasarpur, the historical town in the present Hyderabad district.His father, Shah Nasruddin, was a respectable religious man who in his advanced age became a follower of shah khairuddin of sukkur (d.1027 A.H./1618 A.D.), the renowned saint of Qadiriyyah order, thus changing from the suhrawardiyyah order to which the Rizvi Syeds traditionally belonged, to the Qadiriyyah order. According to the family tradition, it was due to the blessings of shah khairuddin that Shah Inayatullah was born to Shah Nasruddin in an advanced age. The birth date of the poet is not recorded, and it may be inferred that he was born during the decade of the saint's death (between 1613-1623 A.D.).

In accordance with the family tradition of the syeds in Sindh, Shah "Inayatullah must have received his basic education in some madrasah but the internal evidence from his poetry shows his advanced knowledge of Persian, Arabic and Islamic Philosophy. On the other hand, there is ample proof of his intimate knowledge of music, the Sufi saints, the life of villagers in Sindh and their folk-ways and folk-tales, and of various places particularly in the Sindh region and the adjoining country of Kachh. He seems to have travelled far and wide in these areas.

During the later part of his life, he saw the decline of the central Mughul Empire at Delhi and the rise of the leaders of the local Kalhora Dynasty with whom he had all his sympathies. In one of his baits, he eulogized the emerging leadership of Mian Nasir Muhammad (1692 A.D.) Who had established his authority over Chanduka, the present upper Dadu and Larkana districts. In another bait we find him appealing to Miyan Yar Muhammad, the son and the successor of Mian Nasir Muhammad, to recover for him the herd of camels taken away by one langah. No further reference is found to the subsequent kalhora ruler, Mian Noor Muhammad whom the poet's grandson Bilah shah, has mentioned in one of his verses. Our poet was already of an advanced age when Mian Yar Muhammad came to power, and most probably he died sometimes earlier during his Chieftainship (1901-1719 A.D.) Thus, "Shah Inayatullah or Miyun Shah Inat" as he has been affectionately called by his progeny and the people, was essentially a poet of the 17th century A.D. He was a classical poet in as much as he used the classical Sindhi idiom and employed the classical forms of Sindhi bait and waee or kafi in his poetry.Yet he heralded a new era in the domain of Sindhi poetry by combining the poetic contents of the age-old bardic tradition and of the more cultivated spiritual thought of the Sufi-saint poets.Prior to this, Sindhi poetry had been nurtured by the country bards and the professional minstrels to commemorate the valour of the heroes in wars or the munificence of the generous in peace and entertain the people by composing and singing their fold tales and pseudo-historical romance. It was also employed by the sufis and the saints as a medium to express their spiritual ideas and experiences or convey their personal apporval or disapproval of the deeds of some contemprary individuals.These two streams had not yet come to a confluence: each followed it's own course. While the bardic tradition was more widely diffused, spiritual poetry had successively found its great exponents in the great Sufi poets reaching almost its climx both in form and expression, in the compositions of Qadi Qadan (d.1551 A.D.) and Shah Abdul Karim (d.1620/21 A.D.), the great grand-father of Shah Abdul Latif. They were the great predecessors of Miyun Shah Inat and we find their poetry essentially spiritual and didactic in content, little related to the life of the people or their traditional heroes, folk-tales and romances.

According to the family accounts, from his very childhood Miyun Shah Inat was fond of music and sat listening to the musicians  and the professional minstrels in the village assemblies. By birth he belonged to an orthodox Syed family and had imbibed the love of Islam, the holy Prophet and the great saints. He had listened to the musicians and the minstrels and was also conversant with the spiritual contents of the poetry of his predecessors.Combining the two traditions, he forged a new line as a saint-poet of the people singing about their heroes in war and peace and their traditional tales and romances as well as  about the traders, weavers and the monsoon rains on which depended the prosperity of the people. He also treated the spiritual themes of love and hope in his poetry and composed verses in praise of the saints and selfless devotees in the search of God.

The volume of his poetry that has reached us pertains to twenty two main topics covering all the above themes, each a chapter by itself, headlined in the extant mauscripts as "SURUD" indicating the specific mode in which each one was to be sung. Thus,a background of music tradition is implicit in the poetical compositions of Miyun Shah Inat, though due to a long lapses of time the conceptual pattern of music is lost to us and only the verbal text has survived.

Fortunately, the new era in Sindhi poetry heralded by Miyun Shah Inat, soon found it's greatest exponent in Shah Abdul Latif (b. 1689-d.1752) who was yet in his twenties or even younger when shah Inat died. According to the oral tradition current to this day, Shah Abdul Latif is said to have gone and met the elderly shah Inat more than once and they recited to each other some of their parallel verses on common themes. However that may be, there remains no doubt that young Shah Abdul Latif was strongly influenced by the form and technique used by Miyun Shah Inat, and within the framework of his own poetic genius he adopted them even to the extent of using some of the same idioms and expressions though with a more precise skill and insight. No doubt Shah Abdul Latif soared higher in the realm of ideas than Miyun Shah Inat who, as a pioneer, was mainly concerned with the contents of his new themes and experiments in the use of powerful idiom and fresh imagery to render the description more vivid and more poetic. But in so doing, he set the fashion and paved the way for the advent of Shah Abdul Latif, the immortal poet of Sindhi language and one of the greatest poets of the world.

SYED IRFAN ALI SHAH RIZVI