Syed Ibrahim Khan (1548-1628) was an Indian Sufi Muslim poet who became a devotee of the Hindu deity Krishna.

[1] In his early years, he became a follower of Krishna, learned the bhakti marga from Vitthalanatha and began living in Vrindavan, where he spent the rest of his life.

Hazari Prasad Dwivedi claims in his book Raskhan was born Syed Ibrahim, and that Khan was his title.

[citation needed] According to one story, as contained in the medieval text Bhaktakalpadruma, he once travelled to Vrindavan along with his Sufi preceptor.

Later, when he read the Bhagwat Purana he was so deeply impressed by the unselfish love of the gopis for Krishna that he left his proud mistress and headed straight for Brindavan.

In the Bhavaprakash of the seventeenth century, we are told by Vaishnavite scholar Hari Ray, that Ibrahim Khan earlier lived in Delhi, where he had fallen madly in love with the son of a Hindu merchant.

One day, the story goes, he overheard one Vaishnavite telling another, 'One should have attachment to the Lord just as this Ibrahim Khan has for the merchant's son.

After sitting on the banks of the lake near the temple having not had anything to eat for three days, Krishna, the story goes, appeared to Ibrahim, addressing him as Raskhan or 'the mine of aesthetic essence', and accepting him as a disciple.

From that day onwards, Raskhan began living in Brindavan, composing and singing the Krishnaite Sufi poetry for which he is still so fondly remembered.

Raskhan's Khariboli writings are numerous, the five most important being the Sujana Raskhana, the Premavatika, the Danalila, the Astayama and a collection of Padas (rhymed couplets).

From here Raskhan starts an intricate description of the path of Love and surrender to God, in the process questioning all orthodoxies, all formalisms and all man-made divisions.

He ends his work with the following lines: Tearing his heart away from a haughty woman [i.e. the snares of the world] Miyam [himself] has become Raskhan once he saw the beauty of Premadeva [The God of Love].