Baba Sheikh Farid Ji

Baba Sheikh Farid Ji (Fariduddin Masud Ganjshakar) was a Sufi saint of the Chishti order who lived in Punjab in the thirteenth century. Sri Guru Granth Sahib carries his bani among the verses of the Gurus and the Bhagats. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism dates his life 1173 to 1265 (569 to 664 AH); Wikipedia gives c. 1188 to 1266, so the dates are not settled between sources.

Key facts

• Born near Multan at Kotewal. His father, Shaikh Jamaluddin Sulaiman, had come from Central Asia during the Mongol incursions, and after his early death his mother, Qarsum Bibi, raised him (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).
• He became the devoted disciple of Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, himself a disciple of Muinuddin Chishti, and one of the founding figures of the Chishti order in India.
• He settled at Ajodhan on the Sutlej from about the age of 24 until his death. The ferry (pattan) there gave the town its later name, Pakpattan, the holy ferry. He ran a hospice where travellers received food, shelter and teaching, and lived by hard discipline. His principal successors were Nizamuddin Awliya, Jamaluddin of Hansi and Alauddin Ali Ahmad Sabir of Kaliyar.
• Wikipedia calls him the first major Punjabi poet, citing Jamal Malik, and credits him with making Punjabi a language for literary use.

In Sri Guru Granth Sahib: the Encyclopaedia says his bani consists of four shabads and 112 shaloks (Wikipedia gives 123 or 134 hymns, depending on how verses are counted). Guru Nanak left a shabad in Raag Suhi as a corrective to Farid's lyric in the same measure, which the Encyclopaedia says looked gloomily at the soul's future, and Guru Amar Das and Guru Arjan Dev continued some of Farid's themes. Guru Arjan Dev's compilation of the Adi Granth in 1604 gathered the verses of fifteen saints alongside those of the Gurus, Farid among them (The Tribune).

Whose words?: the Encyclopaedia, by Gurbachan Singh Talib, notes that Macauliffe and others doubted Farid's authorship because of the language, and argues the language is authentic Multani Punjabi. Prof Pritam Singh, in a book reviewed in The Tribune, concludes that Farid Shakarganj of Pakpattan was the sole author of the Farid bani. Other scholars attribute the verses to Sheikh Ibrahim, a successor sometimes called Farid Sani, and Wikipedia cites a linguist's argument that the language looks later.

Remembered for: a voice of dispassion toward the world (vairagya), which the Encyclopaedia names as the main theme of his verses, and which the Gurus took into the Guru Granth Sahib. His shrine stands at Pakpattan.