Person · Punjabi Sufi poet
Bulleh Shāh
Also known as Bulleh Shah, Bulla, Baba Bulleh Shah
Punjabi poet of Kasur whose kāfīs are sung on both sides of the border, by qawwals, folk singers and film composers alike. A Sayyid who took an Arain gardener as his master and was ostracised for it, he wrote against clerics, caste and the claims of respectability with more contempt than anyone before or since.
- Date
- c. 1680 – 1757
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Tradition
- Kafis; Punjabi Sufi tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
He is said to have learned dance from courtesans in order to win back his master's favour, and to have danced before him in a woman's clothes. The clerics refused to bury him in the main graveyard; the shrine that grew on the ground where they put him is now the town's chief monument.
Connections (3)
- Samadhi atBulleh Shah, Kasur
Bulleh Shāh's clerics refused him burial in Kasur's main graveyard, so he was put on the edge of the town and the shrine grew there instead; it is now Kasur's chief monument. His kāfīs are sung on both sides of the Punjab border by qawwals, folk singers and film composers, and they attack clerics, caste and the claims of respectability with a contempt nothing in Punjabi has matched since.
- Teaching lineageBābā Farīd
Bābā Farīd in the thirteenth century and Bulleh Shāh in the eighteenth are the two poles of Punjabi Sufi verse, and the language runs from one to the other: Farīd's slokas are the earliest substantial Punjabi literature and are in the Guru Granth Sāhib, while Bulleh Shāh's kāfīs are the form at its most popular and most impious. Both are sung rather than read, and both are claimed by Sikhs and Muslims alike.
- Contemporary capital withHeer (Wāris Shāh)
Wāris Shāh trained at Kasur under Hāfiz Ghulām Murtazā, in the town where Bulleh Shāh had lived and was buried a few years before the Heer was written. The two men are the Punjabi eighteenth century's pair: Bulleh Shāh in the kāfi, short and direct and aimed at the orthodox from inside a Sufi position; Wāris Shāh in the long qissa, arriving at much the same contempt for the clergy through narrative instead. Both are sung far more than they are read, and often by the same singers.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Bulleh Shah”. The subject’s own writings where they survive, and the standard biographical literature.
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