A Sufi and a Warrior: Poles Apart but Identical

میں ماردیاں بگے شیر نوں

اوہدی ہیٹھ وچھاواں کھل

I will kill the white lion and put his skin under my feet

(War Dullah Bhatti)

Sufis are traditionally known as the loving souls that preach love for all. They are taken as the propagator of religious, social, ethnic, sectarian, cultural, and economic harmony. They are presented as the soothing spiritual doctors who provide cure for the spiritual ailment. Yes! They are so, but they are really more than this. They are always the resistant souls around who do never compromise on the evils of the self and the evils of the society. They are the messengers of peace and resistance at the same time. Messenger of peace for the oppressed masses and the messenger of the resistance for the local and foreign oppressors. The history of sufism shows, these sufis had always questioned and challenged the tyrants, oppressors and the unjust. In this respect sufis of the Punjab remained very close to the masses and had always felt the pulse of time and tried to set it right whenever found it in disorder.

Shah Hussain is one of them. Dara Shikoh in his book “Hasnatul Arifeen '' paints him  as a strong man whom nobody could ever check for his living outside the Shariah. Sheikh Mohammad Pir in his book “Haqeeqatul Fuqra” says that when Akbar and his Sheikhul Islam, Abdullah Sultanpuri, got information about this sufi, the King ordered his Kotwal (S.S.P) Malik Ali to arrest and present Shah Husain before him. But the Kotwal failed to arrest the poet. In those days the rebel of Sandal Bar area, Dullah Bhatti, was in prison and Akbar ordered that he should be publicly hanged in Nakhas area (now the area of Landa Bazar). Ali Malik was the executioner and when Bhatti was being hanged Shah Husain together with his party of dancing dervishes arrived at the scene. Sheikh Mohammad writes:

بوددرجستجوئے او ہمہ پیوست

نامراددربیادرد درست

کز قضا  نا گہ  امذ راں  اثنا 

 کردشہ حکم کشتن دولا

بود دولائے بھٹی آں طاغی 

 کز رہ  بغض  بو د او  باغی

بود در بوم خود زمیندارے 

مفسدے، رہنرے، ستمگارے

بود جمع  آمدہ  زغونمائش

خلق  لاہور  بر تماشائش

از  رہ   اتفاق     ناگاہاں 

بود آں جاحسین  ہم  بمیاں

“Ali Kotwal was in search of Shah Husain who was not found anywhere. The King ordered that Dhullah Bhatti, a landlord of his area, be hanged. He was a rebel and a tyrant. On the hanging day a big crowd of Lahoris gathered at the spot and suddenly Shah Husain also appeared on the scene.”

Thus, according to the story, Malik Ali Kotwal arrested Shah Husain for his nonconformist living. Shah Husain was much annoyed when Ali not only abused him but also threatened him with a disgraceful death. Shah Husain told him that what he intended to do to Husain would be done to Ali himself. So far nobody knew why Husain had arrived there, whether he was angry with Akbar and Ali over the hanging of Bhatti or whether he had been antagonized by the misbehavior of Malik Ali. But it so happened that after the hanging of Bhatti. Malik Ali lost the King's favour and he also was hanged in the way Shah Husain had predicted.

Husain was presented before the King who afterwards set him free. Later on prominent ministers and commanders used to pay respect to Shah Husain and sought his good wishes for their success in different campaigns.

Shah Husain was an anti-establishment man and because of the Sheikhul Islam’s performance not happy with the regime. It is possible that he had developed some romantic views about rebels like Dullah Bhatti or he might had some relations with the rebels. There does seem to have been an indirect link between Husain and Bhatti.

Shah Behlol, a prominent man of the Qadri Sufi order, had visited all sacred places in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq and Arabia. On his return he came to Lahore and spotted Husain at a mosque school. Later on he taught and trained Shah Husain and when Husain was twenty-six he went back to the ancestral area  in a Chiniot village which is adjacent to Dullah Bhatti’s Pindi Bhattian. He lived in Qilla Kingran and off and on came to Lahore and visited Shah Husain. In 983 A.H. Shah Behlol died. This is the time when Dullah Bhatti was hanged and Mohammad Ali, son of Behlol, also slipped away from this area and took refuge in Hyderabad Deccan which was not under the direct rule of Akbar. Haider Ali of Mysore was grandson of Mohammad Ali, who was a Sipra jat.

Behlol’s travels

 About one-fourth of the biography “Haqeeqatul Fuqra” is devoted to the travels of |Shah Behlol, the teacher of Shah Husain. He must have had great influence on Shah Husain. Shah Husain is the first Punjabi poet who referred to and exploited the Heer Ranjha romance for his poetic expression. Before Shah Husain only a Persian poet, Baqi Kolabi (d-1556 A.D.) had written a small poem about Heer Ranjha and before that the first ever reference to this story is found in “Muqamat-e-Daudi” written in Humayun’s period (1530-1556).

   The romance of Heer Ranjha had tremendous influence on Shah Husain and in the whole of his poetry no other love story (Iranian, Arab, or Indian) has ever been mentioned

ماہی ماہی کوکدی میں آپے رانجھن ہوئی 

   رانجھن، رانجھن مینوں سبھ کوئی آکھو ہیر نہ آکھو کوئی

(Heer), while calling the name of my beloved (Ranjha) I myself turned into Ranjha. Everybody should call me Ranjha. Nobody should call me Heer.

It seems that Shah Behlol was not only a link between Shah Husain and Dullah Bhatti but also a strong bond between the story of Heer Ranjha and Shah Husain. Heer Ranjha was a story from the area of Shah Behlol. The events took place in the period of Behlol Lodhi. But it was Shah Husain, under the influence of Shah Behlol, who first projected this indigenous material with great success.

So far as Dullah Bhatti is concerned, no official record of Akbar’s period ever mentioned his name. But when Noor Ahmad Chishti, while compiling his book “Tahqiqat Chishti”, met the guards of Malik, Ali Kotwal’s family graveyard in Miani Sahib in 1860, they also narrated the version given above with a small difference. They told Chishti that Dullah Bhatti was a court jester and because of his stubbornness he annoyed Akbar.

     Whether a highwayman or a jester, Dullah Bhatti has been made a great hero by poets since Akbar’s time. In our times Najm Hosain Syed had in his drama “Takht Lahore” made him as well as Shah Husain two heroes who were fighting on physical and intellectual fronts against the tyranny of the Mughal rule. Major Ishaq Mohammad also wrote a drama in Punjabi on Dullah Bhatti, titles “Quqnas”.

And the hero Dullah of folk war poem says,

ول ول ماراں مغلاں دیاں دھانیاں

دیواں پور دے پور اتھل

میں بدل بنا دیاں دھوڑ دے

تے کوٹیں عمر تھر تھل

میں ماردیاں بگے شیر نوں

اوہدی ہیٹھ وچھاواں کھل

میں چڑھ کے گھوڑا پھیر لاں میری جگ تے رہ جاؤ گل

کون،  کمینہ   بادشاہ

آوے دلے جوان تے چل

        “I lower the fortresses of the Mughals, I repulse the waves after waves of Mughal troops. I can raise clouds of dust and terrorize Umarkot (the birth place of Akbar). I will kill the white lion and put his skin under my feet. I will ride on my horse up to the enemy’s lines. And I will earn lasting fame. What means the king will ever dare to attack Dullah – the warrior.” ( War Dullah Bhatti)

 And about Bhatti’s a Persian proverb was coined which was current till the arrival of the British in the area. Mr. H.A.Rose in his “Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and Frontier” writes:

 “And there is a Persian proverb which says the Dogars, the Bhattis, and the Kharls are all rebellious people and ought to be slain”.