Pir Meher Ali Shah

 

 Hazrat Pir Syed Meher Ali Shah Gilani (Urdu:  was born 14 April 1859 (1Ramadan, 1275 A.H.) in Golra Sharif,^[ which is located midway between Rawalpindi andIslamabad, in present-day Pakistan. The time just before his birth saw the Indian Rebellion of 1857 fought between the British and the sepoys allied with seven of the Princely states. He is renowned as a Sufi saint, a great Hanafi scholar upholding the position of Hazrat Abdul Haqq Muhaddith Dehalvi, and especially for being at the forefront of the anti-Ahmadiyya movement. He wrote several books, most notably Saif e Chishtiyai, (The Sword of theChishtis), a polemical work regarding the unorthodoxy and the heresy of the Ahmadiyyamovement of Mirza Mehr Ali received his early education about the Qur'an at his family khanqah (Sufi hospice) and was given classes in Urdu and Persian in the local madrasah. He completed his intermediate level religious education here. His stay in this madrasah was for about two and a half years.After completing his education at Angah at the age of 15 from Mianwaddal family of Hafiz Rehmatullah, he decided to continue further studies in the United Provinces (U.P) of India. Therefore, Pir Meher Ali, in 1874 set out for higher education, to different parts of India such asKanpur, Aligarh and Saharanpur. His stay at Aligarh at the madrasah of Maulana Lutfullah of Aligarh was for two and a half yearsPir Meher Ali Shah reported that he loved seclusion since childhood, feeling uncomfortable in the midst of throngs of people, and finding deserted places serene. Quite often, he said, he would quietly leave the house at night after everyone else had gone to bed, and spend much of the night wandering the nearby wooded ravines. As he grew, he started experiencing a feeling of such unusual heat within his body that he was sometimes compelled — even on cold winter nights — to bathe in the ice-cold water of the canal, and also rub pieces of ice on his body. When he left his room late at night after finishing his studies, he used to experience the same kind of comfort from contact with the cold mountain air that a thirsty person normally derives from cool water at the height of summer. Sufis believe such heat is generated due to excessive amounts of Zikr or Dhikr, an Islamic practice that focuses on the remembrance of God.Ghulam Ahmad.