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| The Holy Mazar sharif of the Shah Jalal (R) |
The great saint Hazrat Shah Jalal is the greatest of the saint, religious preachers, medicants and ascetics who exerted their best effort to propagate the message of peace and love of Islam in Bengal.
In 1849, Mirza Firoz Shah, the grand son of Shah Alam, Emperor of Delhi came to pray homage to the shrine of Shah Jalal at Sylhet. The famous British Collector Robert Lindsay(1779-1783) on his appointment as Collector of Sylhet, had gone bare footed to the shrine and paid five gold coins as a token of respect. Then he allowed the audience of the subjects. He advised his sucessors to pay homage to the shrine on their successive appointments as collectors. In 1774, Lord Northbrook went to the shrine bare foot and bare headed on the occassion of his visit to Sylhet at the time of transfer of Sylhet from Bengal to Assam.
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Jalali Pigeons in the Holy Mazar Sharif |
Hazrat Shah Jalal was born in 1271 at a hilly town named Kunia near Taij of Yemen. According to incription his full name is Shaikhul Mashaikh Mokhdum bin Mohammad. His father Mohammad Ibrahim Qureshi belonged to Quresh family and was the chief of the Ajjad fort situated near Taij and was the teacher of Hadith of the Sultan of Yemen. His mother belonged to a Syed family. His mother’s name was syeda Hasina Fatima Binte Jalaluddin Surukh Bokhari. The father of Shah Jalal had died in a skirmish before his birth and his mother died after three months of his birth. Then the responsiblity of his bringing up was soldered by his maternal uncle Syed Ahmed Kabir. It is mentionable that the graves of maternal grand father, uncles and cousins of Shah Jalal are lying at Uch Sharif of Multan i.e. on the western part of the sub-continent and his shrine is on the eastern frontier. An unprecedented affinity is visible here. The resident and the place of meditation of Shah Jalal’s maternal uncle Ahmed Kabir was at Makkah.
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| pot of brass. which used for shirni. |
In his boyhood he accompanied his uncle to Makkah a hind being driven by a tiger complained to Syed Ahmed Kabir who thought that driving out of the tiger by slapping with three fingers of left hand was an adequate punishment for it. Hazrat Shah Jalal could learn the wishes of uncle by his spiritual power and performed such action as secretly desired by his uncle. Returned to uncle he reported the incident and the uncle proclaimed that he (Shah Jalal) had attained perfection and needed no longer to study under his guidance. He further asked him to go to India to propagate Islam. Then his age was thirty. He gave Shah Jalal fistful of soil and advised him to settle at a place where he would find soil similar to taste, smell and color of his soil and thence to preach Islam. Hazrat Shah Jalal assigned the responsibility of tasting soil to one of his disciples who was renowned later as Chasnipeer. As the soil of Sylhet resembled the soil Shah Jalal had carried, he made his settlement here.
------------- Continue--------------- REFERRENCES:
The History of Bangladesh by Dr.Md.Mominul Hoque –Dhaka 2008. (Page 251-256)
Photographs collected by Mishkat Ahmed.
