JALÂLI. A Faqir from the Sufi Order of Suhrawardīya.
Jalali.-A class of Mohammedan Faqirs who take their name from their founder Sayyid Jalal-ud-din (Jalaluddin Surkh-Posh Bukhari), who was a native of Bukhara and a pupil of Bahawal Haqq (Bahauddin Zakariya c.1170 – 1262), the Suhrawardiyya saint of Multan, whose shrine is at Uchh in Bahawalpur territory (Today Uch Sharif in Punjab, Pakistan).
“This teacher,” says Mr. Maclagan; 1) “was himself a strict follower of the law, but his followers who call themselves Jalalis are in many ways backsliders. They pay little attention to prayer. They use large quantities of bhang 2), and are given to eating snakes and scorpions. They shave their beards, moustaches and eye-brows, and wear only a small scalp-lock (choli) on the right side of the head. They are branded with a special mark on the right shoulder, wear glass armlets, have a woolen cord round their necks; a cloth – on their heads, and are a vagabond set with no fixed dwelling-places.
There is a-section of the order known as the Chahl Tan, or ‘Forty Bodies,’ who are said to be derived from a luckless woman who, wishing’ to be a mother, swallowed forty philtres instead of one, and thus produced forty-children in place of one only. The Jalalis are said to be strong in Central Asia.
1) Panjab Census Report, 195 sq.
2) Bhang is a traditional hemp preparation used in Hindu religious rituals.
Source: The tribes and castes of the North-western Provinces and Oudh by William Crooke. Calcutta, Office of the superintendent of government 1906.
