By SADIA DEHLVI
Shah Abdul Latif of Bhit is the first in a long line of Sindhi mystical poets. He is considered the most popular Sufi poet in Sindh, which has traditionally been the land of the Suharwardi Sufis. Compilation of his poems, ‘ShahajoRisalo’ contains thirty chapters named according to their sur, musical odes. Translation of Shah Latif’s mystic verse is available in many languages.
Shah Abdul Latif invented a number of new melodies akin to the folk ballads of the Indus Valley. Inspite of intense mystical feelings, Shah Latif maintains certain reluctance in unveiling the mysteries of Divine love. He speaks in illusions and oblique expressions. They can be characterized as heart beats of a longing soul.
Shah Latif immortalized the story of Sohni, the love-stricken damsel whose beloved Mahiwal grazed cattle on an island in the Indus. She slipped away from her husband and swam across the river every night to meet her lover, encountering all sorts of dangers. Sohni’s secret was finally discovered by her sister-in-law. One night, she replaced the baked jar that Sohni used for a float, with an unbaked vessel. Tragically, the girl drowned on the way to her beloved.
The poet uses the backdrop of the romantic folk tale of Sassi Punhnu to demonstrate mystical teachings of quest, separation and eternal union with the beloved. Sassi, the beautiful daughter of a washer man attracts people from all over the country, including the prince of Kecch in Baluchistan. The prince falls in love with her, and stays with her. His father sends some relatives to make him drunk and carry him away. Sassi, awakening at dawn, from the ‘sleep of heedlessness’, finds herself alone. She decides to follow the caravan to Kecch, but perishes in the desert after her voice, no longer the voice of a woman or a bird, has changed into the voice of love itself. In Rumi’s style, Shah Latif sings:
By dying live that thou may feel,
The beauty of the beloved,
Thou will surely do the righteous thing,
If thou will follow this advice,
Die that thou prosper,
Sit down: O woman,
Live after death,
Thou will unto Punhnu come,
They who so died before their death,
By death are not in death subdued,
Assuredly they live who lived,
Before their life of living was,
From age to age will live for aye,
They will not die again who died,
Before the dying came to them,
Thou did not know thy death was there,
In quiet questing for thy live.
Thou didst not hear,
O woman this: Die, why does thou behead thyself.
The lineage of Shah Abdul Latif’s family can be traced to Imam Zainul Abideen, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad. His ancestors came from Heart in Afghanistan, settling in Matiari in Sindh. Shah Abdul Karim of Bulri, the seventeenth century mystic and poet was Shah Abdul Latif’s great, great grandfather. Syed Habib Shah, Shah Latif’s father lived in Hala Haveli, a village close to the villages of Matiari and Bhit. Shah Abdul Latif was born in the year 1689 at Hala, which now falls near Hyderabad, Sindh in Pakistan. Later, the family moved to Kotri, where he spent most of his adolescence.
Although Latif did not have much of a formal education, he was well versed in the Quran, Hadith, and Mevlana Rumi’s Mathnawi. The young poet fell in love with the daughter of Mirza Mughal Beg, a proud scion of the Afghan rulers. Although Shah’s family happened to be Sayyids, who drew their lineage from the family of the Prophet, there was a difference in the social status of the families.
The ruling family was aristocratic, while the Shah came from a family of mystics. In 1713, some robbers assassinated Mughal Beg and decamped with all his riches. Reduced to poverty, the Mirza’s family agreed to give their daughter in marriage to Shah, who had by then gained fame as a poet.
In his early years, Shah wandered through the country with a group of yogis. Gradually, his disciples increased and the mystic migrated to Koti, in search of solitude. He made his khanqahat, a sand mound called Bhit, a few miles away from Hala where he lived in the last eight years of his life. Some days before his death, he retired to an underground cave like meditation cell, spending all his time in fast and prayer.
Shah Abdul Latif died on 14 Safar 1165 Hijri/1752 AD. His dargah at Bhit Shah is one of the most beautiful structures among Islamic monuments. On Thursday nights, devotees assemble to hear the musicians sing his lyrics that remain popular all over the sub-continent. The annual Urs festivities draw thousands of devotees, scholars, poets and musicians who immerse themselves in the works and melodies well known in Sindh.
