Journey
Guru Nanak's fifth udasi — within Punjab
The last journeys, close to home, ending at Kartarpur. Eminabad belongs here by date — Babur sacked it in 1520–21 — though the janamsakhis put it in the first udasi. The count itself is disputed: this follows the five-udasi scheme of the Puratan janamsakhi, while most reference accounts give four. Dates vary by several years between sources.
Stops (5)
- Saidpur / Eminābād · 1520–21 — Saidpur, and the Babarvani
Babur sacked Saidpur in 1520 and Nanak, by tradition present, answered with the Bābarvānī hymns — four compositions that describe a city's destruction without consoling anyone about it. They are among the earliest eyewitness verse about the Mughal conquest in any Indian language.
- Achal Batālā · c.1523 — Achal Batālā, the second Sidh Gosht
Where the tradition sets a further debate with the Nāth siddhas at the Śivrātri fair, and the same argument as on Sumer Parbat: the yogis display powers, and Nanak answers that the householder who works and shares has done more than the ash-smeared renunciant.
- Pākpattan (Ajodhan) · c.1523 — Pākpattan, collecting Farīd
The Chishti shrine at Ajodhan, where Nanak is said to have met Shaikh Ibrahim, Farīd's twelfth successor, and received the verses. 134 of Farīd's Punjabi compositions are in the Guru Granth Sāhib — the largest body of Muslim writing in a Sikh scripture, collected on this journey.
- Bahāuddin Zakariya & Rukn-e-Ālam · c.1524 — Multan, and the jasmine in the milk
The Suhrawardi centre of Bahāuddīn Zakariyā. The story told here is that the shaikhs sent out a bowl of milk filled to the brim — the city is full of holy men — and Nanak floated a jasmine flower on it and sent it back.
- Kartārpur Sāhib · 1524 — Kartārpur, the langar and the field
Where he settled for his last years, farmed, and built the practice the Panth rests on: the langar where everyone eats in one line, the sangat that meets to sing, and a successor chosen for service rather than by blood. He died here in 1539.