Place · Sufi dargah · India
Matka Pir Dargah, New Delhi
Also known as Matka Pir Dargah, New Delhi, Sheikh Abu Bakr Tusi Haidari Qalandar
The 13-century Matka Pir Dargah at Pragati Maidan in central New Delhi — the shrine of Hazrat Shaikh Abu Bakr Tusi Haydari Qalandari, a Qalandari Sufi who died in Delhi in 1272 during the Mamluk sultan Balban's reign. The dargah's distinctive tradition is the devotional offering of earthen pots (matka — water pots) filled with water, that pilgrims leave at the shrine as a mannat (vow fulfillment). The accumulated pots form a visual signature of the dargah. The 'Matka Pir' name refers to this pot offering tradition rather than the saint's name. The adjacent Mughal-era Indraprastha Park is a modern public park on the Yamuna. The current dargah structure is 14-century with major 18-century additions and 1990s renovations. The annual Urs each November draws Sufi devotees from Delhi and nearby states.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 28.604, 77.244
Connections (2)
- Companion in the same setHazrat Shah Turkman, Old Delhi
Matka Pīr and Shāh Turkmān are two thirteenth-century Delhi dargahs that survive inside the modern city rather than as monuments beside it — one buried in the lanes behind Turkman Gate, the other standing in heaps of earthen pots near the Purana Qila. Neither belongs to a famous silsila, and both show what the ordinary texture of Sufi Delhi looked like beneath Nizāmuddīn and Mehrauli.
- Site withinDelhi
Matka Pir Dargah, New Delhi sits inside Delhi 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.
On these journeys
Sources
Chishti tazkira literature; Carl Ernst and Bruce Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love (2002).
Open Matka Pir Dargah, New Delhi in the repository →