Ijaz Kakakhel
The annual Urs of the 17th century mystic, Shah Abdul Latif Bari Imam will conclude here today (Thursday) and chief gust on this occasion will be former finance minister Senator Ishaq Dar.
The annual five-day event has attracted thousands of devotees from all over the country who converge on the shrine on foot as a mark of respect for the mystic who always liked to walk rather than ride to his destination. The devotees have keep coming to the shrine in small groups locally called Dali, carrying replicas of the mausoleum, singing devotional songs and dancing to drum beat. The main Dali comes from Peshawar at the start of the festivities.
Actually, the three-day Urs (death anniversary) of Shah Abdul Latif Bari Imam Sarkar commenced on August 15 here at his shrine and will conclude here on Thursday, 17th August.
Earlier, the Committee on the Development and Management of Hazrat Bari Imam Sarkar Shrine/Complex has decided in its meeting to celebrate the Urs. The meeting was chaired by Senator Ishaq Dar and Tariq Bajwa, Tariq Mehmood Pasha, General (R) M. Afzal Janjua, Hanif Abbasi Ex-MNA, Raja Sarfraz Akram, Gauhar Zahid Malik Executive Editor Pakistan Observer, Chairman Capital Development Authority, Deputy Commissioner Islamabad, and others also participated in the meeting. The Urs for this year was being held with a gap of 16 years and it is also been decided by the Committee that hence onwards the Urs will be a regular annual feature on these dates.
Syed Abdul Latif Kazmi, often referred to as Barī Imām or Barī Sarkār (1617 – 1705), was a 17th-century Sufi ascetic from Punjab. He is venerated as the patron saint of Islamabad, Pakistan. Born in Karsal, Chakwal District to a sayyid family, he was one of the most prominent Sufi of the Sunni school of thought. Today, he is one of the most popular and widely venerated saints of Punjab. The life of Bari Imam is known essentially through oral tradition and hagiographical booklets and celebrated in Qawwali songs of Indian and Pakistani Sufism. A silver-mirrored shrine of Bari Imam is located in Noorpur Shahan in Islamabad. It was originally built by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, who revered Bari Sarkar, in the 17th century. It has since been renovated many times, and is now maintained by the Government of Pakistan. Until the 1960s, the shrine was famous for its Urs celebration, when the death anniversary of the saint was commemorated and which was attended by hundreds of thousands of people each year (in one particularly populous year, the attendance is said to have been 1.2 million people). As a result of recent renovations, shrine is now more spacious. Hence, most number of people can be accommodated in the area.
