LAHORE, March 12: A group of peace activists from Pakistan and India are reportedly planning to undertake a journey on foot later this month from Delhi to Multan through the route that sufi saint Nizamuudin Aulia had taken back in the 13th century. Enroute the group will pass through Sonipat, Panipat, Ambala, Ludhiana, Jallandher and Amritsar.

It is encouraging to see that Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research the organizer of the march, prefers to the path of the sufis. But it would be advisable to locate the routes travelled not only by Khwaja Nizammudin but by his immediate senior, Khwaja Bakhtiaruddin Kaki. Others who travelled the same route include: Baba Farid Shakargang, Bahauddin Zakaria and after him Amir Temur, Ibn-i-Batuta, Ghiasuddin Balban, Amir Khusro with prince Muhammad, Emperor Akbar, Sultan Bahu, Kirmani of Shergarh and Khwaja Noor Muhammad of Chishtian.

According to the news item, the group will march to Pakpattan, where Baba Farid, the murshid of Khwaja Sahib was based. This route runs through three states of India, Haryana, Rajisthan and the Punjabi Suba in which is located the district of Faridkot where now stands an Engineering University named after the saint.

The Bhatti chief of this area intended to build a fort and a city after his name. During the construction, Baba Farid reached there and was forced to join the labourers. He did the forced job in such a way that the Bhatti chief accepted Islam as his and his fort and city came to be known as Farid da Kot. Faridkot is very close to the Delhi-Multan route taken by Mughal invader Amir Temur, which passed through Depalpur, Fazilka, Abohar, Batthinda and Hansi — the last an ancient town in Haryana. Ibn-i-Batuta had also travelled the same track.

Hansi was an old seat of learning where Baba Farid stayed for a very long time. Four mazars of Muslim teachers and saints still stand there in dilapidated conditions. Jamaluddin was a contemporary of Baba Farid’s who had come from Delhi to practise mystic meditation. He was in the company of Khwaja Bakhtiaruddin Kaki in Delhi but was not happy with his other colleagues who were more interested in getting close to rulers. Khwaja Kaki had nominated Baba Farid as his successor and hoped that Farid would stay with him till his death. But somehow Farid had convinced his teacher to let him stay on at Hansi. Kaki said that on his death Farid should come from Hansi to take over the seat. And that was how it happened.

Farid went to Delhi after the death of his mentor and stayed there for some time. Again he had to face the same conspiracies of the so-called saints and scholars in the capital. The people of Hansi requested Baba Farid to grace the city and Farid obliged. But Hansi had seen many devastating fights between Muslims from Ghazni and the Rajputs of Rajputana. So Farid finally decided to move to a far off place in Punjab. This brought him to Ajudhan (now Pakpattan) and he permanently settled there. Waris Shah had paid tribute to Baba Farid as one of the Punj Pirs of Ranjha:

Shakarganj nein aan makan keeta, dukh dard Punjab da

thoor hae ni.

It was Pakpattan where when Khwaja Nizamuddin Aulia came to stay with his murshid that he was nominated as Farid’s successor by Baba Sahib himself. This also became the place visited by many scholars and saints coming from the central Asia.

Dr Hari Ram Gupta, an Indian scholar in his article on trade and commerce in the Punjab during the 18th century, points out many routes used by the local and foreign traders. One of these taken by traders from Kabul was via Dera Ghazi Khan, Khangarh, Bahawalpur, Bhatner, Hissar and then onto Delhi. Multan and Bahawalpur were industrial cities and as Gupta quotes, “Multan was an equally important market where over 40,000 metres of silk fabrics and 200,000 of silk and cotton mixtures were produced annually... silken goods were exported to Khorasaan.”

According to Burns, Multan had an extensive foreign trade with the regions west of the Indus. Bahawalpur was celebrated for its silk fabrics and Mohan Lal counted about 300 workshops of Hindu weavers there. Each workshop prepared six pairs of lungis in a month and a lungi’s price ranged from Rs10 to 300 a piece. — STM