Ajmer Sharif Dargah: A Shrine Where Faiths Meet

Up to 20,000 pilgrims visit this one tomb in Rajasthan every day. Many of them are Hindu. The shrine belongs to a 13th-century Muslim saint who taught that love mattered more than which religion a person followed.

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A Shrine Built Across Generations

From a saint’s grave to a dargah visited by every faith

1236

Chishti’s Death

Moinuddin Chishti dies at Ajmer; a simple tomb marks his grave.

1460s

Larger Construction

The Khalji rulers of Malwa begin building the shrine complex proper.

1532

The Marble Dome

The shrine’s white marble dome is completed, as it stands today.

1566

Akbar’s Pilgrimage

Emperor Akbar walks to the shrine barefoot, praying for a son.

The throughline: from Sultans to Mughal emperors to Hyderabad’s Nizams, rulers across centuries and dynasties kept adding to one saint’s shrine — and pilgrims of every faith still keep coming.

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Timeline

• 1143 (traditional): Moinuddin Chishti is born in Sistan, in present-day Iran.
• Early 13th century: He arrives in Delhi during the reign of Sultan Iltutmish, then settles in Ajmer.
• 15 March 1236: He dies in Ajmer. A tomb is built over his grave, which grows into today’s dargah.
• 1532: The shrine’s white marble dome is completed, a date still inscribed on its northern wall.
• 1566: Emperor Akbar walks to the shrine barefoot with his wife Mariam-uz-Zamani, praying for a son.

Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti and the Chishti Order Need to Know

• Ajmer Sharif Dargah is the shrine of Moinuddin Chishti, a Sufi saint who died in 1236 and is buried at Ajmer, Rajasthan.
• He is known reverentially as Khwaja Gharib Nawaz, meaning “Benefactor of the Poor.”
• He founded and spread the Chishti order of Sufism in the Indian subcontinent. It became the dominant Sufi order in medieval India.
• He was one of the first major Islamic mystics to formally allow music in devotional practice. This helped give rise to the qawwali tradition still performed at his shrine today.
• Later Chishti-affiliated saints, including Nizamuddin Awliya and the poet Amir Khusrow, built on his teachings in the generations that followed. Nizamuddin’s own shrine in Delhi is covered in a dedicated companion article.
• The Chishti order is one of several Sufi orders that took root in India. The Qadiriyya order is another, examined in its own dedicated article.

A Shrine Built Over Centuries Good to Know

• A simple tomb was first built over Chishti’s grave. Larger construction began in the 1460s, under the Khalji rulers of Malwa.
• The shrine’s white marble dome, as it stands today, was completed in 1532.
• Mughal emperor Akbar visited the shrine at least fourteen times during his reign.
• In 1566, Akbar walked to the shrine barefoot with his wife, Mariam-uz-Zamani, praying for a son. He later reconstructed the tomb’s inner sanctum in 1579.
• In 1568, after winning the Battle of Chittorgarh, Akbar donated a giant cauldron, or deg, to the dargah. At 6.1 metres across, it remains the largest deg of its kind.
• Jahangir donated a smaller deg and a silver canopy over the saint’s grave. Shah Jahan built a white marble mosque, the Jami Masjid, in 1637.
• The Nizam Gate, the dargah’s main entrance today, was donated in 1911 by the Nizam of Hyderabad.

Test Yourself

Please wait…

1. Moinuddin Chishti, buried at Ajmer Sharif Dargah, is known reverentially by which title?

Khwaja Gharib Nawaz

Sultan-ul-Hind

Data Ganj Bakhsh

Shah-e-Ajmer

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The Urs and Its Interfaith Visitors Great to Know

• Every year, the dargah marks Chishti’s death anniversary with the Urs festival, held in the Islamic month of Rajab.
• The Urs draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, far more than the roughly 20,000 who visit on an ordinary day.
• Pilgrims offer chadars, ceremonial sheets, over the saint’s grave, and qawwals perform through the festival.
• The shrine has drawn both Hindu and Muslim visitors since medieval times, a tradition that continues today.
• Women are allowed inside the dargah, unlike at some other shrines.
• Rulers from many different backgrounds paid their respects here, including Sultan Iltutmish, Sher Shah Suri, and several Mughal emperors after Akbar, among them Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb.

Legacy

• Ajmer Sharif Dargah remains one of the most visited Sufi shrines in the Indian subcontinent, drawing worshippers from across faiths.
• Centuries of royal patronage, from the Khalji rulers to the Mughals to the Nizams of Hyderabad, shaped the complex seen today.
• Its message of love across religious lines, central to Chishti’s own teaching, still defines the shrine’s identity.