Sheikh Nizamuddin Aulia was a disciple of which of the following Sufi Saints?

Sufi orders in medieval India were organised into silsilahs, or spiritual chains, in which each master, called a pir, personally trained disciples known as murids at his khanqah, inducting the closest among them deeply into the order's teachings and practice.

The Chishti order's chain in India ran as follows: Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, who established the order in India, trained Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki. Bakhtiyar Kaki in turn trained Baba Fariduddin Ganj-e-Shakar. Baba Fariduddin Ganj-e-Shakar, a 13th-century master, personally trained Sheikh Nizamuddin Auliya at his khanqah in Ajodhan, making Baba Fariduddin Ganj-e-Shakar the direct master, or pir, of Nizamuddin Auliya.

• Kutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki died in 1235, three years before Nizamuddin Auliya was even born, so a direct master-disciple bond between the two is chronologically impossible; he belongs to an earlier link in the same chain.

• Makdoom Yahya Maneri belonged to the Firdausi silsilah centred in Bihar, a separate Sufi lineage with its own independent chain of masters and disciples in eastern India.

• Abdul Qadir Gilani founded the Qadiriyya order in Baghdad in the first half of the twelfth century, several decades before the Chishti order took root in India, placing him outside this chain in both time and place.

This direct discipleship is independently confirmed by standard educational references on medieval Indian history, which record Nizamuddin Auliya as trained directly by Baba Fariduddin Ganj-e-Shakar within the Chishti order.

Sheikh Nizamuddin Auliya's direct spiritual master in the Chishti lineage was therefore Baba Fariduddin Ganj-e-Shakar.