Who is known as the father of Qawwali in India?

Explanation

Amir Khusrau (1253-1325) was a poet, musician and scholar who lived in Delhi during the time of the Delhi Sultanate. He is regarded as the father of qawwali, the devotional music of the Sufis, and is credited with shaping it into the form that is still performed today.

Amir Khusrau was born in Patiali, in present-day Uttar Pradesh, to a Turkish father and an Indian mother. He served as a court poet under several rulers of the Delhi Sultanate, including Alauddin Khalji and Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq. He was a devoted disciple of the great Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya of the Chishti order, and he is buried next to his master at the Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi, where qawwalis are still sung every evening. Qawwali developed from the Sufi practice of sama, listening to music and poetry as a way to come closer to God. Amir Khusrau combined Persian, Arabic, Turkish and Indian musical traditions to create it. He is also credited with creating the tarana and with contributing to the development of the khayal style, and tradition credits him with inventing the sitar and the tabla, although many historians question this. He wrote poetry in Persian and in Hindavi, the early form of Hindi and Urdu, and is called the "Tuti-e-Hind" (Parrot of India).

Why not the other options?

• ✗Tansen was the great Dhrupad singer at the court of Akbar.
• ✗Kabir was a 15th century Bhakti poet and saint, whose dohas are still sung.
• ✗Bulleh Shah was an 18th century Sufi poet of Punjab, whose poetry is often sung in qawwali and Sufi music, but he is not the father of qawwali.