I conjecture, then, that the author died between 465 and 469 A.H.[7] His birth may be placed in the last decade of the tenth or the first decade of the eleventh century of our era, and he must have been in the prime of youth when Sultan Maḥmúd died in 421 A.H. (1030 A.D.). The _Risála-i Abdáliyya_,[8] a fifteenth century treatise on the Muḥammadan saints by Ya`qúb b. `Uthmán al-Ghaznawí, contains an anecdote, for which it would be hazardous to claim any historical value, to the effect that al-Hujwírí once argued in Maḥmúd’s presence with an Indian philosopher and utterly discomfited him by an exhibition of miraculous powers. Be that as it may, he was venerated as a saint long after his death, and his tomb at Lahore was being visited by pilgrims when Bakhtáwar Khán wrote the _Riyáḍ al-Awliyá_ in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Footnote 1: Julláb and Hujwír were two suburbs of Ghazna. Evidently he resided for some time in each of them. Footnote 2: Notices occur in the _Nafaḥát al-Uns_, No. 377; the _Safínat al-Awliyá_, No. 298 (Ethé’s _Cat. of the Persian MSS. in the Library of the India Office_, i, col. 304); the _Riyáḍ al-Awliyá_, Or. 1745, f. 140_a_ (Rieu’s _Cat. of the Persian MSS. in the British Museum_, iii, 975). In the _khátimat al-ṭab`_ on the last page of the Lahore edition of the _Kashf al-Maḥjúb_ he is called Ḥaḍrat-i Dátá Ganj-bakhsh `Alí al-Hujwírí. Footnote 3: _Nafaḥát_, No. 376. Through al-Khuttalí, al-Ḥuṣrí, and Abú Bakr al-Shiblí the author of the _Kashf al-Maḥjúb_ is spiritually connected with Junayd of Baghdád (ob. 297 A.H.). Footnote 4: Ibid., No. 375. The _nisba_ Shaqqání or Shaqání is derived from Shaqqán, a village near Níshápúr. Footnote 5: _Nafaḥát_, No. 367. Footnote 6: Ibid., No. 368. Footnote 7: The date 465 A.H. is given by Ázád in his biographical work on the famous men of Balgrám, entitled _Ma´áthir al-Kirám_. Footnote 8: See Ethé’s _Cat. of the Persian MSS. in the India Office Library_, No. 1774 (2). The author of this treatise does not call al-Hujwírí the _brother_ of Abú Sa`íd b. Abi ´l-Khayr, as Ethé says, but his _spiritual_ brother (_birádar-i ḥaqíqat_). In the introduction to the _Kashf al-Maḥjúb_ al-Hujwírí complains that two of his former works had been given to the public by persons who erased his name from the title-page, and pretended that they themselves were the authors. In order to guard against the repetition of this fraud, he has inserted his own name in many passages of the present work. His writings, to which he has occasion to refer in the _Kashf al-Maḥjúb_, are— 1. A _díwán_ (p. 2). 2. _Minháj al-dín_, on the method of Ṣúfiism (p. 2). It comprised a detailed account of the Ahl-i Ṣuffa (p. 80) and a full biography of Ḥusayn b. Manṣúr al-Ḥalláj (p. 153). 3. _Asrár al-khiraq wa ´l-ma´únát_, on the patched frocks of the Ṣúfís (p. 56). 4. _Kitáb-i faná ú baqá_, composed “in the vanity and rashness of youth” (p. 60).