Chishti Order in the context of "Murshid"

Abu Ishaq Shami (ابو اسحاق شامی چشتی; died 940) was a Muslim scholar who is often regarded as the founder of the Sufi Chishti Order. He was the first in the Chishti lineage (silsila) to live in Chisht and to adopt the name "Chishti", so that, if the Chishti order itself dates back to him, it is one of the oldest recorded Sufi orders. His original name, Shami, implies he came from Syria (ash-Sham). He died in Damascus and lies buried on Mount Qasiyun, where Ibn Arabi was later buried.

Mu'in al-Din Hasan Chishti Sijzi (Persian: معین الدین چشتی, romanized: Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī; 1 February 1143 – 15 March 1236), known reverentially as Khawaja Gharib Nawaz (Persian: خواجه غریب نواز, romanized: Khawāja Gharīb Nawāz), was a Persian Sayyid Islamic scholar and mystic from Sistan, who eventually ended up settling in the Indian subcontinent in the early 13th-century, where he promulgated the Chishtiyya order of Islamic mysticism. This particular Tariqa (order) became the dominant Islamic spiritual order in medieval India. Most of the Indian Sunni saints are Chishti in their affiliation, including Nizamuddin Awliya (d. 1325) and Amir Khusrow (d. 1325).

Having arrived in the Delhi Sultanate during the reign of the sultan Iltutmish (d. 1236), Muʿīn al-Dīn moved from Delhi to Ajmer shortly thereafter, at which point he became increasingly influenced by the writings of the Sunni Hanbali scholar and mystic ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī (d. 1088), whose work on the lives of the early Islamic saints, the Ṭabāqāt al-ṣūfiyya, may have played a role in shaping Muʿīn al-Dīn's worldview. It was during his time in Ajmer that Muʿīn al-Dīn acquired the reputation of being a charismatic and compassionate spiritual preacher and teacher; and biographical accounts of his life written after his death report that he received the gifts of many "spiritual marvels (karāmāt), such as miraculous travel, clairvoyance, and visions of angels" in these years of his life. Muʿīn al-Dīn seems to have been unanimously regarded as a great saint after his death.

Khawaja Syed Muhammad b. Ahmad Ali al-Badaoni al-Bukhari, popularly called Nizamuddin Auliya (sometimes spelled Awliya; 1238 – 3 April 1325), also known as Hazrat Nizamuddin (lit. 'Holy Nizamuddin'), Sultan-ul-Mashaikh (lit. 'Lord of the pious') and Mahbub-e-Ilahi (lit. 'Beloved of God'), was an Indian Sunni Muslim scholar, Sufi saint of the Chishti Order, and is one of the most famous Sufis from the Indian subcontinent. His predecessors were Fariduddin Ganjshakar, Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, and Moinuddin Chishti, who were the masters of the Chishti spiritual chain or silsila in the Indian subcontinent.

Nizamuddin Auliya, like his predecessors, stressed love as a means of realising God. For him his love of God implied a love of humanity. His vision of the world was marked by a highly evolved sense of religious pluralism and kindness. It is claimed by the 14th century historiographer Ziauddin Barani that his influence on the Muslims of Delhi was such that a paradigm shift was effected in their outlook towards worldly matters. People began to be inclined towards mysticism and prayers and remaining aloof from the world. It is also believed that Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, the founder of Tughluq dynasty, interacted with Nizamuddin. Initially, they used to share good relationship but soon this got embittered and relation between Ghiyas-ud-din Tughluq and Nizamuddin Auliya never been reformed due to opinion disharmony and their antagonism resulted regular disputes between them during that era.

Khawaja Ghulam Farid (also romanized as Fareed; c. 1841/1845 – 24 July 1901) was a 19th-century Sufi poet and mystic from Bahawalpur, Punjab, belonging to the Chishti Order. Most of his work is in his mother tongue Multani, which later evolved into the Saraiki language. However, he wrote in many different languages including Punjabi, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Hindi and Persian literature but gained popularity for writing in his mother tongue Multani. His writing style is characterized by the integration of themes such as death, passionate worldly and spiritual love, and the grief associated with love.