Some more information of connection of Sai Baba of Shirdi and the Sufi mystic Zar Zari Zar-Bakhsh is given the book, Unravelling The Enigma, Shirdi Sai Baba in the light of Sufism. In the opening years of the fourteenth century the head of Chisthiyya order, the Sufi Khwaja Nizam al-Din Awliya in Delhi, wished to spread the Chisti message to new parts of India. He sent his disciple Khwaja Muntajib al-Din (mystic Zar Zari Zar-Bakhsh) to Maharashtra in South, along with the entourage of 700 Sufi divines.
He had settled in a village called Khuldabad near Aurangabad. The dargah (Tomb) of mystic Zar Zari Zar-Bakhsh is the most impressive one in Khuldabad, very near to another historic place rock-cut Kailas temple at ELLORA, visited by many tourist from all around the world.
Visitors to the dargah (Shrine, Tomb) of Sufi mystic Zar Zari Zar-Bakhsh are also shown a cave high on Hoda hill in which the Sufi mystic is traditionally said to have meditated in the thirteenth century. It is quite a large dry cave, which today has the walled entrance, and is high enough inside to sit comfortably up to five people. When Meher Baba, the twentieth century Sufi Master, took a group of disciples in 1952 to Khuldabad, he pointed out the cave commenting that this same cave was also used by Sai Baba of Shirdi for meditation when he was a young man. Naosherwan Anzar, a disciple of Meher Baba further recalls:
Once on a visit to Ellora Caves, Meher Baba took his mandali (group) to a nearby small village named Khuldabad. Here on a hill stands the shrine of mystic Zar Zari Zar-Bakhsh, who lived there 700 years ago. Meher Baba asked his men to bow down and pay their respects at the shrine. Later Meher Baba told them that Zar Zari Zar-Bakhsh was a ‘ Perfect Master’ [qutb] and was the master of Sai Baba of Shirdi. Surprised at the revelation, one of the members of mandali asked Meher Baba, how this was possible when Sai Baba lived in our time and the Sufi master lived 700 years ago. Meher Baba then explained that Sai Baba had been a disciple of Zar Zari Zar-Bakhsh in previous incarnation. During that time Sai Baba served his Master with Love and devotion and the master’s grace descended on him. This grace carried through Sai Baba’s subsequent incarnations until he became the ‘Perfect Master’ we now know as Sai Baba.
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