"To settle in Ajmer, before dealing with the local secular ruler, Mu‘in al-din had to overcome the local deity, Shadi Dev, and Jogi Ajaipal, ‘who had no equal in the whole of Hindustan.” Mu‘in al-din’s encounter with Shadi Dev is not without interest. Having settled his opposition and converted him to Islam, Mu‘in al-din, at Shadi Dev’s suggestion, moves into his former temple. The take-over of ‘pagan’ sites is a recurrent feature of the history of the expansion of Islam. The most obvious precedent is to be found in the Muslim annexation of the Hajar al-aswad at Mecca. Jamali tells how Usman Harwani converts a group of fire-worshippers and moves into their temple for two and a half years after which he leaves them in the hands of the original priests who are now Sufi shaykhs. Sir Thomas Arnold remarks that ‘in many instances there is no doubt that the shrine of a Muslim saint marks the site of some local cult which was practised on the spot long before the introduction of Islam.’ “There is evidence, more reliable than the tradition recorded in the Siyar al-Aqtãb, to suggest that this was the case in Ajmer. Sculpted stones, apparently from a Hindu temple, are incorporated in the Buland Darwãza of Mu‘în al-dîn’s shrine. Moreover, his tomb is built over a series of cellars which may have formed part of an earlier temple… Tradition says that inside the cellar is an image of Mahadeva in a temple on which sandal used to be placed every day by a Brahman.“ The shrine still employs a Hindu family to prepare the sandal which is now presented on the grave of Mu‘in al-din. A tradition, first recorded in the ‘Anis al-Arwãh, suggests that the Sandal Khãna is built on the site of Shãdî Dev’s temple.” These relics of Hindu buildings and practice imply that there is some substance behind the Styar al-Aqtab’s story of Mu‘in al-din moving into Shadi Dev’s tomb. At the least it serves as a useful explanation to his followers of why Mu‘in al-din, else-where portrayed as a powerful evangelist, is-buried on ground sacred to the Hindus."