Various traditions and historical documents differ in his place of birth, and there is a gap of two centuries between the life of the saint and literature which attempted to identify his origin.

Local ballads and devotees continue to refer to him as Shah Jalal Yemeni, connecting him to Greater Yemen Specifically from the Hadhramaut region.

[3] Towards the end of this century, in 1571, Shah Jalal's biography was recorded in Shaikh ʿAli Sher Bangālī's Sharḥ Nuzhat al-Arwāḥ (Commentary on the excursion of the souls).

The author was a descendant of one of Shah Jalal's senior companions, Nūr al-Hudā, and his account was also used by his teacher Muḥammad Ghawth Shattārī in his Gulzar-i-Abrār of 1613.

Although this was composed 5 centuries after Jalal's death, Haydar's work consulted two now-lost manuscripts; Risālah (Message) by Muḥīuddīn Khādim from 1711 and Rawḍah as-Salāṭīn (Garden of the Sultans) from 1721.

[5] A number of scholars have claimed that the suffix from the Husain Shahi inscription refers to the city of Qūniyah (Konya) in modern-day Turkey (then in the Sultanate of Rum), and they stated further that Jalal may have possibly moved to Yemen in his later life.

He became a makhdoom, teacher of Sunnah and, for performing prayers in solitary milieu and leading a secluded life as an ascetic, al Mujarrad was post-fixed to his name.

[11] Jalal's maternal uncle, Syed Ahmad Kabir, gave him a handful of soil and asked him to travel to the Indian subcontinent.

He instructed him to choose to settle and spread Dawah in any place in India where the soil exactly matches that which he gave him in smell and colour.

[15] When word of this reached Sultan Firoz Shah, an army commanded by his nephew, Sikandar Khan and later his Sipah Salar (Commander-in-chief) Syed Nasiruddin, was sent against Gour.

Three successive strikes were attempted, all ending in failure due to the Bengali armies inexperience in the foreign terrain as well as Govinda's superior military strategy.

The famous traveller Ibn Battuta, then in Satgaon,[19] made a one-month journey through the mountains of Kamarupa, north-east of Sylhet, to meet him.

At the meeting in 1345, Ibn Battuta noted that Shah Jalal was tall and lean, fair in complexion and lived by the mosque in a cave, where his only item of value was a goat he kept for milk, butter, and yogurt.