Baba Farid Jiਬਾਬਾ ਫ਼ਰੀਦ ਜੀ

Early life and the name Ganjshakar

Baba Farid Ji, born Fariduddin Masud in 1173 in the village of Kothewal near Multan, is one of the most beloved saints of Punjab, claimed with equal devotion by Muslims and Sikhs. His father, Jamal-ud-din Suleiman, was a religious scholar, and his mother, Maryam Bibi, is remembered in tradition as a deeply pious woman. The family had come to the Indus valley from Kabul in his grandfather's time, and traced its lineage to the second Caliph, Umar. Traditional accounts give his birth year as 1173, though some modern sources give 1188.

The title by which the world knows him, Ganjshakar, means Treasure of Sugar. Tradition says his mother encouraged the boy to pray by placing sugar under his prayer mat; once she forgot, yet he found sugar there all the same, and the experience deepened his spiritual fervour. As a young man he travelled to Multan for his education, studying the Quran and Islamic law.

Training under Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki

Seeking a spiritual guide, Farid first met Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki in Multan, where Kaki was passing through on his way from Baghdad to Delhi, and later became his disciple in Delhi. Kaki was the disciple and successor of Moinuddin Chishti, the founder of the Chishti order in India, and the Qutb Minar in Delhi is dedicated to him. The Chishtis emphasised love, humility, service to the poor, and remembrance of God through music and poetry.

Under Kaki's training, Farid practised severe asceticism: long fasts, night vigils, and deliberate poverty. He later moved to Hansi, and when Kaki died in Delhi in 1235, Farid became his spiritual successor. Rather than taking Kaki's place in Delhi, he chose the small town of Ajodhan in the Punjab.

Why is Pakpattan called Pakpattan?

Ajodhan, the town where Baba Farid Ji settled, is now known as Pakpattan, the Holy Ferry, named for the river crossing by which pilgrims reached the shrine on the Sutlej. There he established his hospice, which became a centre of spiritual life. He lived in extreme simplicity, owning almost nothing, and his doors were open to all: rich and poor, Muslim and Hindu.

The hospice's free kitchen fed travellers and the destitute. A 1623 Persian work, the Jawahir al-Faridi, describes Farid as the first to introduce the institution of the langar in the Punjab region; the Sikhs later adopted both the institution and the word. His teaching was direct and uncompromising. He warned against attachment to wealth and power, urging his followers to remember death and to cultivate love for God and compassion for people.

He wrote in the local Punjabi dialect rather than Persian or Arabic, making his message accessible to ordinary people, a choice that helped make him the first great poet of the Punjabi language.

What is in the Guru Granth Sahib?

Over a century after his death, Guru Arjan Dev Ji included 112 of Farid's saloks and four of his shabads in the Adi Granth of 1604, the Sikh scripture: an extraordinary honour for a Muslim saint, and a testament to how fully his spiritual vision aligned with the Sikh Gurus'. The verses stand in the ragas Asa, Suhi and Gauri. Some sources count the verses differently, but 112 saloks and 4 shabads is the standard scholarly count.

His verses return again and again to the themes of humility, the brevity of life, and the equality of all before the divine: the world as a thorny garden, death as the great leveller that buries princes and paupers alike, and the frailty of old age. His Punjabi is among the earliest literary Punjabi we possess, and for that reason alone he stands at the head of the Punjabi literary tradition.

Scholars continue to debate the authorship of the Farid verses in the Granth. Some, noting the absence of contemporary references to Farid composing so many verses and certain linguistic features of the text, argue they were composed by a later holder of the Farid title, Sheikh Ibrahim, a contemporary of Guru Nanak; others defend the traditional attribution. The question remains open among historians.

The Janam Sakhis, the traditional life-stories of Guru Nanak, tell of his visit to Pakpattan with Bhai Mardana, where he met Sheikh Ibrahim, the twelfth in spiritual descent from Farid, and gathered the saint's verses. Academic references to the shrine state the visit as fact; the long conversations the Janam Sakhis record belong to hagiographic tradition.

The dargah and the Bahishti Darwaza

Baba Farid Ji died at Pakpattan in 1266 at an advanced age. His white-marble tomb holds two graves: his own and his eldest son's. It has two doors: the Nuri Darwaza, the Gate of Light, and the Bahishti Darwaza, the Gate of Paradise. The Bahishti Darwaza stays padlocked all year and is opened only during the urs, for five days from sunset to sunrise; devotees believe that passing through it washes away sins. Women are not admitted to the tomb chamber, with rare exceptions.

The urs, his death anniversary, is observed in the first ten days of Muharram, so its Gregorian date moves each year. It is a six-day celebration of qawwali and devotional music with langar served all day and night. A World Health Organization study estimated about 500,000 attendees at the 2010 urs, with queues stretching five kilometres; some accounts put the figure far higher. The festival is at least 700 years old: in 1315 the poet Amir Khusrow recorded that the fiftieth anniversary of Farid's death was already celebrated as an urs.

The shrine has drawn rulers for centuries. Ibn Battuta visited in 1334; Tamerlane prayed there in 1398 and spared the town; Akbar visited in 1571; Shah Jahan devoted the region's revenues to its upkeep in 1629; and Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who took the shrine in 1810, pledged 9,000 rupees a year for it. Pakpattan lies about 180 kilometres from Lahore.

The Chishti lineage after Farid

Farid's chief disciple was Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi. At twenty, Nizamuddin came to Ajodhan and became Farid's disciple; he visited three times, spending each Ramadan in his master's presence, and on the third visit Farid named him his successor. The chain runs from Moinuddin Chishti to Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki to Farid to Nizamuddin to Nasiruddin Chiragh Dehlavi. Nizamuddin's own most loved disciple was the poet Amir Khusro, and his order, the Chishti Nizami, spread across India. A parallel Sabiri branch descends from another of Farid's disciples, Alauddin Sabir Kaliyari.

Farid's name lives on the map. Faridkot in Indian Punjab is named for him: legend says he spent forty days in seclusion near King Mokhal's fort at then-Mokhalpur, and the grateful king renamed the city. Its annual Agman Purb Mela is held from 21 to 23 September. Faridabad in Haryana and Faridpur district in Bangladesh are also named for him.

Legacy

Baba Farid Ji's legacy is twofold: as a saint and as a poet. In the Chishti Sufi tradition he is revered as one of its great masters; in Sikhism his verses are recited from the Guru Granth Sahib; and in Punjabi literature he is honoured as its founding voice.

Few figures in history are so completely shared between faiths: a measure of the universality of his message, that God is found not in ritual or wealth, but in love, humility and service.