Place · birthplace gurdwara · Pakistan
Nankāna Sāhib
Birthplace of Guru Nanak. The origin point of a sacred geography that from the start was argued out on the roads of other traditions — Nanak's udasis took him to Hardwar, Kashi, Puri, Rameswaram and Mecca.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Janamsakhi tradition
- Confidence
- Mixed / layered — The place is documented; its associated historical or cultural record and its named tradition are distinct layers.
- Location
- 31.450, 73.700
Connections (2)
- Journey legKartārpur Sāhib
From birth at Nankana Sahib to the working settlement at Kartarpur on the Ravi, where Nanak farmed for his last eighteen years and where langar and sangat took institutional form — everybody eating together in one line regardless of caste, and the community assembling to sing. Both sites are in Pakistan; Kartarpur has been reachable from India since 2019 by a visa-free corridor, which took seventy years to arrange.
- Guru Nanak lifeKartārpur Sāhib
Nanak was born at Talwandi, now Nankana Sahib, in 1469 and spent his last eighteen years farming at Kartarpur, where he died in 1539 — with the travelling in between. The two ends of the life are about a hundred and forty kilometres apart, and the institution he left was not a doctrine so much as a settlement with a free kitchen, a daily assembly and a successor chosen for merit rather than birth.
On these journeys
Sources
Nankana Sahib; Janamsakhi accounts
Open Nankāna Sāhib in the repository →