Urs celebrations: Devotees throng Syed Abdul Sattar Shah’s shrine

PESHAWAR: Devotees continued to visit the shrine of Syed Abdul Sattar Shah in Dabgari Bazaar on his 65th urs.

The week-long urs of renowned spiritual guide, Khawaja Syed Abdul Sattar (1859- 1954) started last Thursday and would continue till next Thursday.

The week-long event including three-day urs (22, 23 and 24 July) celebrations and would culminate tomorrow with a grand pray while devotees have already started pouring in from far and wide for paying tributes to the Sufi saint. A large number of people from all parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa thronged Bacha Jan’s shrine while folk singers rendered sufi poetry and yet some staunch devotees participated in Dhamaal (spiritual dance) with the sufi music. Folk singers, including AR Anwar, Nazir Gul Ustad, Hashmat Sahar, Anwar Khial, Ashfaq and Tahir Gul sang Pashto and Persian numbers while Ustad Shahid Ali sang some Urdu kalam.

Habib Chishti, a devotee of Bacha Jan, said Syed Abdul Sattar Shah was the spiritual follower of Syed Ali Tirmizi alias Pir Baba, Buner.

He stated that Bacha Jan received his early Islamic education from a village maktab. “Bacha Jan had mastered Persian and Arabic languages along with Islamic jurisprudence and ethos of Sharia. He was such a great scholar that Amir Hamza Khan Shinwari being his Khalifa conferred the title of Fakhr-i-Ilm, the pride of knowledge, on him,” Chishti recalled.

Pir Hafiz Syed Abdul Samad Shah, the great-grandson of Khwaja Syed Abdul Sattar Shah, said a final dua ceremony would be offered on the 25 July. Shah said that urs at the shrine of Bacha Jan was marked every year in the first week of Rajab, the seventh month of the Islamic calendar, on the pattern of Ajmer Sharif. The celebrations, he said, would include Quran Khwani, Naatkhwani, religious sermons and Qawwali.