Mulla Mushk-i-Alam

Mulla Mushk-i-Alam, whose own name was Din Muhammad, belonged to the Andar section of the Ghilzai tribe and came from Shilgar in the Ghazni direction.¹ Kakar gives his birth year as 1790 and notes that his teacher, Mulla 'Abd al-Hakim, gave him the laqab Mushk-i-'Alam — "perfume of the universe" — after his period of religious training.¹ A wealthy man and the head of a leading family, he founded madrasas at his own expense, subsidised scholars and enjoyed wide religious influence among the Andar Ghilzais.¹

When Kabul rose against the British in 1879, Mushk-i-Alam became the spiritual leader of the movement and, in Kakar's account, the most influential of the leaders of the "National Party" who directed the rising.¹ With General Muhammad Jan Khan Wardak he was, in Lee's account, one of the two men instrumental in the siege of the British cantonment at Sherpur — too old by then, Kakar says, to lead the struggle in person, but central to its religious direction.² His house served as the movement's headquarters, and his son 'Abd al-Karim acted as paymaster and quartermaster-general of the Afghan forces.¹

After his accession, Amir 'Abd al-Rahman moved against the men of the rising. Lee recounts that the Amir accused Mushk-i-Alam and others of conspiring to restore Ayub Khan, and that those accused were arrested and poisoned in prison or put to death.² By the end of 1885 his eldest son 'Abd al-Karim had succeeded him as pir and had issued a fatwa against the Amir — so Mushk-i-Alam himself died in or before 1885, though the harvest list's date of 1886 also circulates.²

Edwards numbers Mushk-i Alam among the Sufi masters who led the religious side of the resistance in the Second Anglo-Afghan War.³ No source consulted names a Sufi order or a school of law for him: Kakar describes his learning and his madrasas without naming an order, and Lee's account shows his standing as a pir passing to his son without naming one either. A single scholarly attestation does not settle a school under this museum's rules, so his faith is recorded as unknown, with the attestation preserved in his record.