Saiyid Niamatullah But-saken

Saiyid Niamatullah But-saken a sufi saint of Qadiriya tarika who flourished in Bengal in the late sixteenth century. He was the son of Hazrat saiyid ibrahim danishmand Malikul Umara, ruler of Taraf under the Hussain Shahi sultans and a renowned sufi saint of Qadiriya tarika, who had his khanka in Sonargaon. It appears that Saiyid Niamatullah was a claimant to the spiritual leadership of the Sonargaon khanka after his father's death. But with the accession of his elder brother Saiyid Arif Billah Muhammad Kamel as the spiritual successor of his father to the gaddi (the seat), he left Sonargaon and established his khanka at a place in Shahr Khilgoan area of Dhaka subsequently known as Dilkusha.

Tradition goes that once the local Hindus in a procession were passing by the side of his khanka with the idol of Devi Durga for sacrifice into the nearby Kamalapur river, a tributary of the Sitalakshya. The gradually increasing sound of the band and flute in the procession interrupted the meditation of the saint, and by the beckoning of his finger the idols were instantly shattered to pieces. From that time onward Saiyid Niamatullah was popularly designated as But-saken signifying a destroyer of idols (iconoclast).

Saiyid Niamutallah lies burried in a tomb inside a rectangular building to the adjacent northeast corner of Dilkusha Mosque in Dhaka. This was once the site of Dilkusha garden and family graveyard of the nawabs of Dhaka. Of the three five-stepped decorated masonry tombs in a row, the middle one is reported to belong to Saiyid Niamatullah. The other two tombs are presumed to belong to some of his contemporary saints. [Muazzam Hussain Khan]