Place · Muslim relic shrine · India
Hazratbal Shrine, Srinagar
Also known as Hazratbal Shrine, Muqaddas, Prophet's Moi, Prophet's Moi-e-Muqaddas, Srinagar
The Hazratbal Shrine on the north shore of Dal Lake at Srinagar, Kashmir — the Kashmiri Islamic shrine housing the Moi-e-Muqaddas (Sacred Hair) relic, a strand of hair claimed to be the Prophet Muhammad's, brought to Kashmir in 1635 by Khwaja Nur-ud-Din Eshai (a descendant of the Prophet) under the patronage of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. The relic was transferred to the Hazratbal Shrine around 1700 by Inayat Begum (daughter of Nur-ud-Din Eshai). The current Mughal-style white marble shrine structure is 1968 with major 2000s renovations after the 1963-64 relic theft and recovery crisis (the relic was stolen on 26 December 1963 and recovered on 4 January 1964, triggering a political crisis in Kashmir). The annual Urs of Hazratbal each 6 Mi'raj (depending on Islamic calendar) draws over 500,000 Muslim pilgrims. The shrine is managed by the Jammu and Kashmir Wakf Board.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 34.130, 74.840
Connections (3)
- Site adjacencyShah-e-Hamadan, Srinagar
Hazratbal on the Dal Lake and the Shāh-e-Hamadān khānqāh on the Jhelum are Srinagar's two great Muslim buildings and could not be less alike: white marble around a hair of the Prophet, and a wooden khānqāh built without a nail for the Kubrawi who brought shawl weaving, papier-mâché and carpet craft to the valley with his order. The theft of the Hazratbal relic in December 1963 shut Kashmir down for a week.
- Contemporary capital withJamia Masjid, Srinagar
Hazratbal and the Jamia Masjid are the two congregational centres of Srinagar and they are architecturally opposite: a domed marble mosque built for a relic in a valley that builds in wood, and a fourteenth-century timber hall on three hundred and seventy deodar columns. Both have been the site of mass political assembly, and both have been closed by authorities repeatedly.
- Site withinSrinagar
The Hazratbal Shrine sits on the northern shore of the Dal Lake in Srinagar and holds the Moi-e-Muqaddas, a hair of the Prophet Muhammad brought from the Hijaz in the seventeenth century and installed in the present marble building after a 1963 crisis in which the relic briefly went missing. Hazratbal is the most important Muslim shrine of Kashmir and its Friday prayers are a Srinagar political event in their own right.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Hazratbal Shrine”. Chishti tazkira literature; Carl Ernst and Bruce Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love (2002).
Open Hazratbal Shrine, Srinagar in the repository →