The three-day Urs celebrations of the great Sufi Saint of Sindh, Hazrat Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, started in Bhitshah Town on Tuesday with enthusiasm and fervour. The Sindh government has made extraordinary security measures for people participating in the Urs, including Rangers and police personnel, installation of walk-through gates and closed-circuit cameras at the Urs venue.
Thousands of people from different parts of Sindh and other provinces of the country have started reaching the Sufi saint’s shrine to pay homage to him. Different stalls of sweets and other goods have been established. The Sindh government had already announced a public holiday for today in the province on the occasion of the Urs.
Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai was born on 18 November 1689. He was a noted Sindhi Sufi, saint, and poet, widely considered to be the greatest Muslim poet of the Sindhi language. His collected poems were assembled in the compilation Shah Jo Risalo, which exists in numerous versions and has been translated into English, Urdu, and other languages. His work has been compared frequently to that of the Persian poet Rūmī. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, described Shah Latif as a “direct emanation of Rūmī’s spirituality in South Asia.
According to most scholars, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai’s lineage goes back to the Hirat. He however, used the term “Shah” as a title. His family had migrated to Sindh during the era of Timur. Another Sufi poet, Shah Abdul Karim Bulriwaro, whose mausoleum stands at Bulri, about 40 miles from Hyderabad, was his great-great-grandfather. His verses in Sindhi are existent and his anniversary is still held at Bulri, in the form of an Urs.
His father, Shah Habib, lived in Hala Haveli, a small village, about forty miles from Matiari and not far from the village of Bhitshah. Later on, he left Bhitshah and moved to Kotri Kabir, where Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai spent some part of his adolescent life.
Bhittai was raised during the golden age of Sindhi culture. His first teacher was Akhund Noor Muhammad Bhatti although he was largely self-educated. Although he received little formal education, the Risalo provides proof that he was well-versed in Arabic and Persian. The Qur’an, the Hadiths, the Masnawi of Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi, along with the collection of Shah Karim’s poems, were his constant companions, copious references to which are made in the Shah Jo Risalo. He is also known for his calligraphy, and made several copies of the Qur’an.
In his poems, he writes about Sindh and its neighbouring regions. He mentions distant cities such as Istanbul and Samarqand as well as Sindhi sailors (Samundi) and their navigation techniques and voyages as far as the Malabar Coast, Sri Lanka and the island of Java.
Most of the information on the life of Bhittai has been collected from oral traditions. A renowned Pakistani scholar, educationist, and a foremost writer of plays, dramas and stories, Mirza Kalich Beg, has collected details about the early life of Shah Bhittai from the dialogues with old folks still living at the time, who knew these facts from their fathers and grandfathers for they had seen Shah Latif in person and had even spoken to him.
