Khwaja Ghulam Farid

Khwaja Ghulam Farid (1845–1901) was a Sufi poet and saint of the Saraiki country, born at Chachran Sharif in the old Bahawalpur state, on the banks of the Indus. The son of Khwaja Khuda Bakhsh, he lost both parents while still a boy and was raised and taught by his elder brother, Fakhr Jahan. He belonged to the Chishti-Nizami order, and became the custodian of the shrine at Kot Mithan, across the river from his birthplace. In 1876 he made the pilgrimage to Makkah. He was called the poet of seven tongues — Saraiki, Urdu, Persian, Sindhi, Punjabi, Braj Bhasha and Arabic — but his fame rests on his Saraiki verse: the kafis of the Diwan-e-Farid, sung still at shrines and festivals, where the desert of Rohi, the tall red date-palms, the cranes in flight and the long wait for the Beloved carry a longing that is at once earthly and divine. He also left an Urdu divan of ghazals and prose works in Persian. He died in 1901 at Chachran and was buried at Kot Mithan, where his shrine still draws devotees from across the Saraiki country, and his yearly urs keeps his kafis alive in song.