Bebe Nanaki Ji

Bebe Nanaki, also called Bibi Nanaki, was the elder sister of Guru Nanak. According to the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism she was the daughter of Kalyan Chand (Baba Kalu) and Mata Tripta, and was born in 1464 at her mother's home in the village of Chahal, in what is now Lahore district in Pakistan. She was five years older than her brother. The sources the Encyclopaedia lists for her life are the janam-sakhis and later Sikh chronicles.

Key moments

• 1475: she married Jai Ram, an official at the court of Nawab Daulat Khan Lodhi at Sultanpur. SikhNet adds that she was eleven at the marriage and joined her husband at Sultanpur when she turned sixteen. The couple had no children.
• She was the first to recognise her brother's spiritual eminence and became his devotee. She arranged his marriage, and she treated his sons, Sri Chand and Lakhmi Das, as her own.
• It was through Jai Ram that Guru Nanak found work in the Nawab's provision stores at Sultanpur. After he left that service to preach, he kept visiting her there.
• 1518: on one such visit she sensed that her death was near and asked him to stay. She died in his presence, as she had wished. Three days later Jai Ram died, and Guru Nanak performed the last rites for both.

She is remembered as the first Sikh. SikhNet records the words with which she is said to have addressed him, "Mera veer, mera peer", my brother and my guide. Gurdwara Bebe Nanaki Ji at Sultanpur Lodhi, built in the 1970s, honours her memory. The house where she lived is in private hands, so the Gurdwara was raised as a public monument instead.