Waris Shah

Waris Shah was an eighteenth-century Punjabi Sufi poet of the Chishti order. He was born in 1722 at Jandiala Sher Khan, in what is now Sheikhupura district of Pakistani Punjab, into a Sayyid family, and died in 1798 (Wikipedia's text gives 1722 to 1798, its infobox 1799). He studied under Hafiz Ghulam Murtaza of Kasur and settled at Malka Hans, a small town between Pakpattan and Harappa, living in a room attached to a mosque. He is buried at Jandiala Sher Khan, where an annual urs is held.

Key moments

• 1748: Wikipedia says he witnessed Ahmad Shah Abdali's first invasion and the Battle of Lahore of 1748, and criticised the conduct of Shah Nawaz Khan in it.
• 1766: he completes his version of the love story of Heer and Ranjha at Malka Hans. Mushtaq Soofi, writing in Dawn on 15 April 2016, says the poem's own verses give the date as 1180 Hijri, 1830 Bikrami and 1766 in the Christian calendar. Wikipedia notes that later poets added verses, and many verses now in circulation are considered forgeries.
• 1947: Amrita Pritam writes her poem Ajj Aakhan Waris Shah Nu, an epic on the Partition, written after she witnessed the violence while leaving Pakistan. In her autobiography Rasidi Ticket she writes that Sikhs held her guilty for invoking Waris Shah instead of Guru Nanak, and that many Punjab magazines filled with accusations against her (The Tribune, 2024).

Context. Waris Shah lived through Abdali's invasions, when Mughal power was declining. A Pakistani commentator in the Pakistan Observer calls Heer a masterpiece and says Waris Shah is known as the Shakespeare of Punjab.

What he is remembered for. Heer fuses a folk romance with Sufi thought and is traditionally recited in the bhairavi raga (Wikipedia). The Tribune quotes a Pakistani poet saying Pritam's poem is always mentioned when Partition is discussed in Pakistan, and reports that it is read at the annual Jashn-e-Waris Shah in Multan.