Place · Sufi dargah · Pakistan
Data Darbār, Lahore
The shrine of Ali Hujwiri (c.990-1077) — 'Data Ganj Bakhsh', the earliest of the great subcontinental Sufi tombs — in central Lahore, Pakistan. Hujwiri was the author of Kashf-ul-Mahjub (The Unveiling of the Veiled), the first Persian treatise on Sufism, written around 1055 at the Ghaznavid court in Lahore. The treatise became the standard Persian introduction to Sufi theory for the next five centuries. The current shrine complex was expanded under successive rulers — the Mughals, the Sikhs (Ranjit Singh), and Pakistan after 1947. The 2010 Taliban suicide bombing killed 42 pilgrims; the shrine was rebuilt and expanded within the year.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Tradition
- Early Sufi tradition; Kashf al-Mahjub
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 31.579, 74.308
Connections (5)
- Companion in the same setHazrat Nizāmuddīn Dargah, Delhi
Data Darbār at Lahore and Nizāmuddīn at Delhi are the two oldest great Sufi shrines of the north-western plain, the one eleventh-century and Qādirī-claimed, the other fourteenth and Chishti. Both run langar at a scale no temple matches, and both sit inside cities that grew around them. Data Darbār's kitchen feeds several thousand people a day and has done so for centuries, which is why both shrines function as welfare institutions as much as places of prayer.
- Monastic foundationʿAlī Hujwīrī
ʿAlī Hujwīrī settled at Lahore under the Ghaznavids and wrote the Kashf al-Mahjūb, the first Persian treatise on Sufism composed in the subcontinent. His is the oldest of the great South Asian dargahs, and its langar has fed several thousand people a day for centuries. Muʿīnuddīn Chishtī is said to have sat forty days at the tomb before going on to Ajmer, and to have called him Ganj Bakhsh, which is the name Lahore still uses.
- Companion in the same setMiān Mīr
Lahore held two Sufi presences six centuries apart: ʿAlī Hujwīrī, whose eleventh-century shrine is the oldest great dargah in South Asia, and Miān Mīr, the Qadiri whom Dara Shukoh took as master and who refused Mughal patronage. One made the city a Sufi destination; the other made it, briefly, the place where a Mughal heir went to learn a version of Islam his brother would execute him for.
- Site withinLahore
Data Darbār, Lahore sits inside Lahore and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.
- Life routeMuʿīnuddīn Chishtī
Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti is traditionally said to have visited Lahore around 1190 CE on his journey from Khorasan toward Ajmer, stopping to pay his respects at the shrine of Ali Hujwiri (Data Ganj Baksh, d. 1077) — the earlier Persian Sufi whose Kashf-ul-Mahjub (The Unveiling of the Veiled, c.1055) was the first Persian treatise on Sufism and the foundational text of subcontinental Sufi literature. Moinuddin is said to have spent forty days in meditation (chilla) at the Hujwiri shrine, after which he composed the famous Persian couplet 'Ganj Bakhsh-e faiz-e aalam, mazhar-e nur-e Khuda' ('Treasure-giver of the world's grace, manifestation of the light of God'). The Lahore stop links the Chishti order to the earlier Persianate Sufi tradition of Punjab.
On these journeys
Sources
Data Darbar, Lahore
Open Data Darbār, Lahore in the repository →