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.
DAYAL, BABA (1783-1855), founder of the Nirankari sect of the Sikhs, was born at Peshawar on Baisakh sudi 15, 1840 Bk / 17 May 1783. He was the only son of Ram Sahai, a banker, and his wife Ladikki, daughter of Bhai Vasakha Singh of Rohtas. He lost his father while he was still an infant. He learnt Gurmukhi from his mother and Persian and Pushto at a maktab (elementary school kept by a Muslim maulawi). His mother, a devout Sikh, nurtured him in the best traditions of the faith and took him out daily to make obeisance at the local Gurdwara Bhai Joga Singh. After the death of his mother in 1802, Dayal migrated to Rawalpindi where he opened a grocer`s shop and also started preaching a message of simple living, commonly addressing congregations at Gurdwara Peshaurian and Gurdwara Bhai Ram Singh.
