Journey
Guru Nanak's fourth udasi — west
West to Mecca, Medina and Baghdad. The most famous of the journeys and the least corroborated: no Middle Eastern record of it has been found, and the Baghdad inscription offered as proof is itself disputed. 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 (4)
- Mecca · c.1519 — Mecca, the feet and the qibla
The best-known story of all the journeys: Nanak asleep with his feet toward the Kaaba, rebuked, and answering that the questioner should turn his feet where God is not. There is no contemporary Middle Eastern record of the visit, and the story's force does not depend on one.
- Medina · c.1520 — Medina
Named alongside Mecca in the janamsākhi accounts of the westward journey and given no story of its own. The fourth udāsi is the most famous and the least corroborated of the five, and Medina is where that gap is widest.
- Baghdad · c.1521 — Baghdad, the inscription
A shrine outside the old city carries an Arabic inscription that some readings take as recording a visit by Bābā Nānak and a date. The reading is disputed and the stone has been re-cut; it is the only physical object anywhere that has been offered as evidence for the western journey.
- Panjā Sāhib, Hasan Abdal · c.1521 — Panjā Sāhib, the handprint
Hasan Abdal on the road back toward Taxila, where a boulder is said to carry Nanak's handprint from stopping a rock rolled down at him by the Sufi Walī Kandhārī, who had refused water to Mardana. The spring at the foot of the rock still runs.