Sirhind: the shrine where nobody sings

The route

• Read the second history record before going. This town holds sites of the first importance to two communities within a short distance of each other, and their histories touch. This pilot states that and interprets neither.
• This research opened a colonial gazetteer and no Naqshbandi or Sikh source. Both are needed before either site here is described properly, and until then these records deliberately say less rather than more.
• Page numbers could not be fixed for the gazetteer passages; the scan's running heads give part and chapter rather than a page a reader can turn to.
• No logistics in these records have been checked by a person. Fares, hours, fees and the safety and hassle scores are deliberately empty rather than estimated. That is Phase 3's work, not a gap to be filled from a desk.

1. 1

   Rauza Sharif of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi روضہ شریف سرہند

   dargah · 1 hr 15 min · 30.6440, 76.3900

   Stand here. Inside the enclosure, and then out among the tombs around it — Rafi-ud-Din, the rauza chini of Khwaja Masum, Shah Zaman of Kabul, and the two called Ustad and Shagird.

   The order that forbids music, and the tomb that Kabul comes to

   What the board says: That the Rauza Sharif is the shrine of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, Mujaddid Alf-i-Sani.

   Shaikh Ahmad was born at Sirhind in 1563 and died there in 1617 at the age of sixty-four. His title, Mujaddid Alf-i-Sani, means renewer of the second millennium, and the Patiala gazetteer explains it plainly: he was so called because he was born after a thousand years had elapsed since the Prophet's death.

   He was a disciple of Baqi Billah of Delhi and founded the Naqshbandi Mujaddidi order in India, introducing the practice of zikr khafi — silent prayer. That is the fact to carry into the building. The gazetteer notes that the Naqshbandis 'absolutely forbid music and singing', which makes this shrine the opposite of almost every other major dargah in India: no qawwali, no drums, nothing to hear. A visitor arriving with the sound of Nizamuddin or Ajmer in mind will find the silence deliberate rather than empty.

   His tomb is the principal Naqshbandi shrine in India and was built in the reign of Shah Jahan. The urs falls on the 27th of Safar. The gazetteer records that pilgrims come from Kabul — the connection ran along the road this town sits on, and it is still the reason Sirhind matters far beyond Punjab.

   Around it stands a group of tombs worth an hour on their own. The mausoleum of Rafi-ud-Din, an ancestor of the Mujaddid; close to it the rauza of Khwaja Masum, his son, commonly called the rauza chini for its mosaic work; the mausoleum of Shah Zaman of Kabul, holding his begam's tomb as well; and two called Ustad and Shagird — master and apprentice — of which the gazetteer says frankly that it is unknown whose ashes they contain, only that one is said to have been built by a master mason and the other by his apprentice.

   What Sirhind means, to two communities, in the same square mile

   What the board says: Nothing. Each site's board tells its own history and not the other's.

   A visitor should know before arriving that this town holds two of the most significant sites in northern India for two different communities, within a short distance of one another, and that their histories touch.

   The Patiala gazetteer of 1904 records, in its account of Sikh sacred places, that Sirhind is 'the place where the two infant sons of Guru Govind Singh were buried alive in 1704' by Wazir Khan, the Subah of Sirhind, and that two fairs are held at the gurdwara there called Fatehgarh, the Fort of Victory. It notes in the same passage that east of Sirhind, near the Rauza of the Mujaddid, is the darbar of Mata Gujri, the Guru's mother.

   This record states that and does not interpret it. The events of 1704 are the act of a provincial governor, and the shrine of a Sufi teacher who died eighty-seven years earlier is a separate building with a separate history; the town holds both and a traveller will encounter both. Anyone going should go understanding what each place means to the people who come to it, and should expect that meaning to be present rather than historical.

   Nobody knows whose remains are in the Ustad and Shagird tombs. The gazetteer says only that one is said to have been built by a master mason and the other by his apprentice.

What is not known here

Every stop on this trail has its logistics recorded as unverified, which means this page will not show you an opening time, a fare or a safety score. That is deliberate. Nobody has walked this route or telephoned anybody for these records, and a number invented at a desk is worse than no number on precisely the questions where being wrong costs the reader something.

• Page numbers could not be fixed for these passages: the gazetteer's running heads in the scan give part and chapter rather than a page a reader can turn to. The passages were located by text search within the identified volume.
• The claim that the Naqshbandis 'advocate the use of fine clothes and luxurious food' appears in the same sentence of the gazetteer and is not carried here — it is a colonial observer's characterisation of a community rather than a fact about the building.
• The urs date is given as 27 Safar in a 1904 source and should be confirmed against the shrine's own calendar before anyone travels for it.
• The 1904 gazetteer is a colonial administrative source summarising events of 1704 in a sentence. It is used here only to establish that both sites exist in this town and are visited; it is not an adequate account of either.
• This research opened no Sikh source and no Naqshbandi source. Both are needed before this record can claim to describe either site properly, and until then it deliberately says less rather than more.