Muzaffar Shams Balkhi was born to a family from Balkh in Afghanistan, the date of his birth is unknown but may have been in the decade of the 720s/1320s. After an education in Delhi, he joined his father in Bihar Sharif. His intellectual disposition led him to become a disciple of Sharaf al-Din Ahmad Maneri (d. 783/1381) instead of Ahmad Carmpush, his father's poetically inclined but less well-educated guide. Muzaffar was sent back to Delhi again for further studies, and then the Tughlukid Sultan Firuz Shah appointed him a lecturer in the royal madrasa.
After a conversion experience, he returned to Bihar, where Sharaf al-Din Maneri continued his spiritual formation. He reached the stage when he felt liberated from all worldly attachments, except his wife, but exclaimed to his guide that he would divorce her. Approving of the sentiment, but not of the idea, Sharaf al-Din announced that his training was complete.
Muzaffar Shams Balkhi was incapable of staying in one place. He journeyed far and wide, spending time in Mecca and eventually dying at Aden in 803/1400. He received more than 200 letters from his spiritual guide Sharaf al-Din, of which only 28 are extant. There is an extant, though unpublished collection of Muzaffar's letters (Khuda Bakhsh Library, Patna, Pers. no. 2619, and Acc. no. 1859/2 (181 letters in each ms.); a third ms. in the private library of Balkhi Sahib, Patna) and a small diwan (ed. Patna, 1959). His compendious commentary on Radi al-Din Sanghani's Masharik al-anwar has not come to light.
Although he was the chief successor to Sharaf al-Din Maneri, he is more remembered as an intellectual than as a spiritual guide. He was succeeded in this latter role by his nephew Husayn.
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