Carl W. Ernst is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion at Pomona College in Claremont, California. A specialist in classical Sufism and Indo-Muslim culture, he is the author of Words of Ecstasy in Sufism, also published by SUNY Press.

"This is an extraordinary piece of scholarship. I like the constant sense of discovery that Ernst brings to his work, not only with regard to the literary archival material, which he has arrayed in painstaking detail, but also his enthusiasm about discovering new ways of seeing oral data in relationship to textual data, and textual data in relationship to ritual data."Reading this book has taken me far afield in my own thought, and I must end by remarking that, like the pilgrim to Khuldabad, I have come back from the experience much enriched and full of a certain spirit of renewal that I would not have imagined nor found before this trip. Eternal Garden marks a major, transformative advance in the study of institutional Sufism, especially, but not solely, in South Asia." — Bruce B. Lawrence, Duke University"One of the most exciting and readable contributions to the study of Islam in India to appear in years." — Middle East Journal"No other sacred space in Islamdom has been subjected to such thorough, penetrating, and illuminating historical research." — Digest of Middle Eastern Studies"The book may serve well as a useful text for advanced courses that seek to explore the complex interplay of Islam and politics in precolonial India … It will certainly be long regarded as an important contribution to the cultural history of Indian Sufism." — International Journal of Middle East Studies"An important contribution to the growing field of scholarship on South Asian Islam and the nature of Islamic society in South Asia." — Iranian Studies

• IllustrationsForeword by Annemarie SchimmelPreface and AcknowledgmentsPART I: Historical Orientation: Sufism and Islam in South Asia 1. Sufism The Sufi TraditionSufism in Islamic Society2. Historiographies of Islam in IndiaThe Problem of Nationalist HistorigraphyMedieval Islamic Views of IndiaMedieval Indian Views of Islam3. Religion and Empire in the Delhi SultanatePersian Kingship and the Indo-Muslim StateNon-Muslims and the SultanateSultanate and CaliphateSultanate Imperialism and Sufism4. The Textual Formation of Oral Teachings in the Early Chishti OrderFrom Oral Teaching to Written Text in SufismThe Foundation of the ChishtiMalfuzat Literature: Nizam al-DinThe Elaboration of the Malfuzat Tradition: Chiragh-i DihliThe Elaboration of the Malfuzat Tradition: Burhan al-Din GharibThe Problem of "Inauthentic" Malfuzat5. The Interpretation of the Sufi Biographical Tradition in IndiaPART II: Chishti Sufism at Khuldabad 6. From Delhi to the DeccanThe Historiography of Sufism in the DeccanSufism and the Turkish Conquest of the Deccan7. Burhan al-Din Gharib's Establishment and TeachingThe Khalifa of Nizam al-DinThe Sufi MasterTeachings and PracticesThe DisciplesSama': Listening to Music8. The Indian Environment and the Question of ConversionPART III: The Khuldabad Sufis in History 9. Political Relations of the Khuldabad Chishtis10. Political History of the Khuldabad Shrines The Bahmani SultansThe Faruqis of KhandeshThe Mughuls and Nizams11. Khuldabad as a Sacred Center in the Local ContextThe Khuldabad-Burhanpur AxisThe Local Saints of KhuldabadPART IV: ConclusionsPART V: Appendixes A. A Sufi Bookshelf: The Bibliography of Rukn al-Din Dabir KashaniB. A Fifteenth-Century Revenue MemorandumC. Mughul and Deccan Farmans from KhuldabadNotesBibliographyIndex of NamesIndex of Terms and Subjects