Risalat-us-Shuhada

Risalat-us-Shuhada a treatise written in Persian by Pir Muhammad Shattari in 1633 AD. It deals with the life and martyrdom of shah ismail ghazi (r) along with some of his companions in Bengal. The booklet was discovered by GH Damant from Kantaduar, Rangpur, where one of the shrines of Shah Ismail Ghazi has been lying. He published the text and extract translation of the same in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta for 1874. Although the book was written in Persian, it is interspersed with verses from the holy Quran and traditions of the Prophet (Sm) which were obviously in Arabic.

The Risalat-us-Shuhada relates an account of Shah Ismail Ghazi's life from his birth at Mecca to his death in Bengal; beheaded at the order of the Sultan, ruknuddin barbak shah (1459-1474 AD). Abdul Lutif's Diary, written in 1609, refers to the shrine of Shah Ismail Ghazi at Ghoraghat and says that the saint lived in the time of sultan Shamsuddin Muzaffar Shah who ruled from 1491 to 1493 AD. Therefore, the evidence of abdul lutif goes counter to that found in the Risalat-us-Shuhada. The Risalat was written 24 years after the Diary of Abdul Lutif, there is no evidence that the writers were known to each other, or the one was acquainted with the book of the other. Both the books were written more than one hundred years after the known date of the death of the saint (according to Risalat the date is 878 AH/1474 AD), and as the date differs in both, no date can be said to be absolutely correct.

Several places in Bengal are said to contain the mortal remains of the saint Shah Ismail Ghazi. According to tradition, the head of the saint was buried at Kantaduar, Rangpur and his body at Mandaran in Hughli district. In Rangpur alone, there exist at present as many as four shrines of the saint, and according to Abdul Lutif's Dairy, the shrine of the saint lies in Ghoraghat, in the northeast corner of the old fort. The small canopy over the shrine of the saint was in a ruinous state in the time of Abdul Lutif, but it is now well-preserved in a pucca structure. [Abdul Karim]

Bibliography GH Damant, Risalat-ush-Shuhada of Pir Muhammad Shattari (Text and Eng Tr of extracts) in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1874; Abdul Karim, Social History of the Muslims in Bengal, 2nd edition, Chittagong, 1985; Abdul Lutif's Dairy, 1609, Journal of the Institute of Bangladesh Studies, XIII, Rajshahi, 1990.