AHMAD, SHAIKH (1564-1624), celebrated Muslim thinker and theologian of the Naqshbandi Sufi order, was born on 26 May 1564 at Sirhind in present day Patiala district of the Punjab. He received his early education at the hands of his father. Shaikh `Abd al-Ahad, and later studied at Siaiko, now in Pakistan. About the year AD 1599, he met Khwaja Muhammad al-Baki bi-Allah, who initiated him into the Naqshbandi order. Shaikh Ahmad soon became a leading figure in that school and wrote numerous letters and treatises on many fine points of the Sufi doctrine such as the concepts of prophecy {nubuwwah) and sainthood (walayah) and the relationship between shari`ah, i.e. religious law, and tariqah, the mystic path.
AJIT SINGH PALIT (d. 1725), adopted son of Mata Sundari, the mother of Sahibzada Ajit Singh . Little is known about the family he came of except that Mata Sundari took him over from a goldsmith of Delhi and adopted him because of his striking resemblance with her son, Ajit Singh, who had met a martyr`s death at Chamkaur. She treated him with great affection and got him married to a girl from Burhanpur. Emperor Bahadur Shah, considering Ajit Singh to be Guru Gobind Singh`s heir, ordered, on 30 October 1708, the bestowal of a \'khill`atupon him as a mark of condolence for the Guru`s death.
