He was the great grandson of Shah Nizam-al Din, who was the successor of Shah Kalim Allah Jahanabadi.

Shaykh Yahya Madani (d. 1689) deputized Shah Kalim Allah (d. 1729), who came from the family of architects that designed the Taj Mahal. Shah Kalim Allah later composed the meditation manual Kashkul-i Kalimi, which documents the technical repertory of the Chishtiyya, a sophisticated combination of Arabic ritual formulae, Central Asian subtle physiology theory, and hathayogic body techniques. (recently translated into English by Scott Kugle)

Shah Kalim Allah established a school in Delhi that flourished under the leadership of the descendants of his successor Shah Nizam al-Din (d. 1730), until it was displaced in the aftermath of the ill-fated Revolt of 1857, when the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar—a disciple of Shah Nizam al-Din’s great grandson Kale Miyan—was exiled to Rangoon.

Just before the Revolt, a premonition prompted Kale Miyan’s successor Shaykh Muhammad Hasan Jili Kalimi to take his family to Hyderabad. There he deputized Sayyid Abu Hashim Madani, who became the Murshid (teacher) of Hazrat Inayat Khan.