Person · c. 1841/1845 – 1901 · born 1845 · Sufi poet, writer of kafis (Chishti order)

Khwaja Ghulam Farid

خواجہ غلام فرید

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A Chishti Sufi poet of Chachran on the Indus, remembered by the district gazetteer of his own lifetime as one of the two best-known writers of the Multani kafi.

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The kafi the gazetteer chose to print

The Gazetteer of the Multan District, compiled 1901–02 and published under Edward Douglas Maclagan's supervision in 1902, singles out only two named kafi-writers for the whole district: Bulleh Shah of Kasur, and "another well-known writer of kafis... Mian Ghulam Farid, of Chachran, in the Bahawalpur State" (Gazetteer of the Multan District, 1901–02, p.114). The compilers then did something they did for almost no one else in that chapter: they printed a full kafi of his, in the Multani original, with their own line-by-line English translation, as "a specimen of this class of poetry."

The kafi they chose turns on a single refrain-line, given here exactly as the gazetteer printed it: "Rah tahkiki ailk Farid / Kar manzur te thi niasrdr" — "The true path is that adopted by Farid. / Accept it and be blessed" (Gazetteer of the Multan District, 1901–02, p.114). Its opening lines state the poem's argument plainly: "Ramajli siarn ghnir im janf, / Sabh ailrat hni .airi zaliilr" — rendered by the gazetteer as "So sure there is none else: / Every form sets forth God." The gazetteer's own gloss on the genre applies directly to it: kafis of this district "relate to the transitory character of existence," are "often expressed in an erotic strain," yet are "of an allegorical and Sufistic character" (p.114).

Chachran, on the Indus opposite Mithankot

The gazetteer places him at Chachran, "in the Bahawalpur State" — a river-bank town later renamed Chachran Sharif in his honour, on the east bank of the Indus directly across from Mithankot in what is now Rajanpur district (Wikipedia: Chachran Sharif, accessed 2026-09-27). English-language reference works give his death as 24 July 1901 at Chachran, and his burial across the river at Mithankot (Wikipedia: Khwaja Ghulam Farid, accessed 2026-09-27); his birth year is given inconsistently in the secondary literature as either 1841 or 1845, a discrepancy this entry has not resolved from a source it opened itself.

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