Khwaja Ghulam Farid
The Sufi poet of the Cholistan desert, whose Saraiki kafis sing of rain, camels and the Beloved.
Khwaja Ghulam Farid was born at Chachran on the Indus, in the princely state of Bahawalpur, into a family of Chishti Sufis. Orphaned young, he was raised by his elder brother and became head of the order in his twenties. He knew Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Sindhi and Braj, but wrote his greatest poetry in the Saraiki speech of the south-west Punjab.
His Diwan contains some 270 kafis, short sung poems, and they are full of the Rohi, the Cholistan desert, which he loved and where he spent years in retreat: its sand dunes, its sudden monsoon clouds, its herdsmen and their camels. In his verses the desert becomes the place where the lover waits for the Beloved, and the coming of rain becomes the coming of God.
The Nawab of Bahawalpur was his disciple, and his shrine at Mithankot draws great crowds at his urs. Singers such as Pathanay Khan and Abida Parveen made his kafis known across Pakistan, and he is counted with Bulleh Shah and Sultan Bahu as one of the great Sufi voices of the Punjab.
In their words
Famous linesਮੇਡਾ ਇਸ਼ਕ ਵੀ ਤੂੰ, ਮੇਡਾ ਯਾਰ ਵੀ ਤੂੰ, ਮੇਡਾ ਦੀਨ ਵੀ ਤੂੰ, ਈਮਾਨ ਵੀ ਤੂੰ।
میڈا عشق وی توں، میڈا یار وی توں، میڈا دین وی توں، ایمان وی توں۔
You are my love, and you are my friend; you are my religion and my faith.
Kafi, in Saraiki
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