KHUSRAW, AMĪR (AH 651?–725?/1254?–1325? CE), was a distinguished Indo-Persian poet, musician, and panegyrist. His father, Sayf al-Dīn Shamsī, was most probably a slave-officer in the court of the Delhi sultan Iltutmish (r. 1211–1236). Orphaned at an early age, Khusraw was brought up in the household of his maternal grandfather, ʿImād al-Mulk, another high-ranking nobleman and a former Hindu Rajput who must have converted to Islam following the establishment of Turkish rule in India in the early thirteenth century.

Almost every aspect of Khusraw's life and work has been mythologized to the point where it is difficult to separate the true historical personage from his current popular image. He is today hailed as a great patriot and is counted among the foremost Ṣūfīs of India. Credited with the composition of many lyrics used for qawwālīs, a genre...