Mian Muhammad Bakhsh

Mian Muhammad Bakhsh (c. 1830 – 22 January 1907) was a Punjabi Sufi poet from Khari Sharif in present-day Azad Kashmir; he wrote eighteen books in his lifetime of seventy-seven years and is especially remembered for Saif-ul-Maluk, his Punjabi poetic rendering of the tale of Prince Saiful Maluk.¹ The Urdu article states that his chain of tariqa is Qadiri, Qalandari and Hujwiri.² The Arabic article calls him a Punjabi poet and Sufi belonging to the Qadiri Sufi order.³

He was born at Khari Sharif during Sikh rule into a Punjabi Gujar Poswal family with roots in Gujrat.¹ There is considerable disagreement about his year of birth: Mahbub Ali Faqir Qadri's biography, printed as an appendix to Saif-ul-Maluk and followed by the Shahkar Islami Encyclopedia, gives 1246 AH (1830), other works suggest 1843, and Bakhsh himself states in Saif-ul-Maluk that he completed the work in Ramadan 1279 AH (1863) at thirty-three years of age, which places his birth in 1829 or 1830.¹ He received his early education at home and then studied religious sciences, especially hadith, at the madrassah of Hafiz Muhammad Ali in Samwal Sharif.¹

When he was fifteen his father Mian Shamsuddin, on his deathbed, presented him before the assembled students and notaries as his spiritual successor in the lineage received from Pir-e Shah Ghazi Qalandar Damriyan Wali Sarkar, addressing the founder of their order, Shaikh Abdul Qadir Gilani, and presenting his son to him.¹ At nineteen he moved into the khanqah, where he remained for the rest of his life, and he never married.¹ Although he had essentially been made a khalifah of his father, he later took the formal pledge of allegiance, bay'ah, with Ghulam Muhammad, the khalifah of Baba Baduh Shah Abdal in the same line.¹ The Urdu article likewise records his bay'ah to Sain Ghulam Muhammad of Kalrodi Sharif.²

Saif-ul-Maluk, whose full title is Safr-ul-Ishq (Journey of Love), was completed in 1863 and is considered his masterpiece; his other works include the romantic tragedy Mirza Sahiban, Sohni Mahiwal, Tuhfah-e-Miran, Tuhfah-e-Rasuliyah, Shirin Farhad, Panj Ganj, Hidayat-ul-Muslimin and a commentary on al-Busiri's Qasidat al-Burda.¹

He died on 7 Dhu al-Hijjah 1324 AH (22 January 1907) and was buried at Khari Sharif, not far from his ancestor Damriyan Wali Sarkar; many people still visit his tomb for spiritual blessings.¹ He is revered throughout the Punjab, Hazara and Azad Kashmir and is regarded as the bridge between medieval and early-modern Punjabi literature.¹

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