The Urs celebrations of the great Muslim Sufi saint Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti at Ajmer are famous all over the world - not only among Sufis or other Muslims. Sufism (also referred to as tasawwuf) is the inner, mystical dimension of Islam, which focuses on direct knowledge of God and the experience of mystical union or direct communication with ultimate reality . One can hardly overemphasise the importance of Sufi Islam as the key channel for Hindu-Muslim interaction in South Asia throughout the centuries, which resulted in an extremely fruitful cross-fertilisation of ideas, thoughts, sciences, and arts - and there is no place in South Asia where this is more evident than in Rajasthan's Ajmer and even more so during the Urs festivities.
The Indian city of Ajmer is often reverently referred to as 'Ajmer Sharif' ('Ajmer the Noble') and 'Madinat al-Hind' ('Medina of India') since it is home to the dargah (shrine) of Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti, which makes the city the most important centre of ziyarat (Muslim pilgrimage) in
South Asia.
Ajmer is a city of half a million souls located in the heart of India's Rajasthan state. Surrounded by the Aravalli Mountains, Ajmer, earlier known as Ajaymeru (in Sanskrit meaning 'Invincible Mountain'), and its fertile valleys are protected from the nearby sands of the Thar Desert. The green oasis has been an important settlement site for thousands of years and its fortress Taragarh is claimed to be one of the oldest hill forts of India, if not the world.
The city itself was founded in the first millennium CE by the Chauhan Dynasty. During their rule repeated waves of Turkic invasions swept across India. Ajmer was finally conquered by Mohammad of Ghor, who laid the foundation for the Delhi Sultanate, in 1193. Throughout its history the city changed hands many times: Mughals, Marwaris, Mewaris, Marathas, and, lastly, the British East India Company. That is why one finds the city today as an atmospheric potpourri of Turkic, Mughal, Rajasthani, British colonial, and modern architecture.
One of Ajmer's famed historical remnants is the Adhai Din ka Jhopra (literally translated as 'Two-and-a-Half-Days Hut'). The original structure was a Jain temple that was converted by the Delhi Sultanate into one of the most stunning mosques in all of South Asia.
Consisting of a quadrangle with a front screen wall of seven pointed arches, the mosque is considered as a masterpiece of the fusion of Indian and Islamic architecture. None of its forty heavily embellished columns that support the roof are alike. The mosque is also noted for its beautiful calligraphy in the Nashk and Kufic scripts.
