Shah Hussain
Lahore poet who shaped the Punjabi kafi. His shrine hosts the Mela Chiraghan, the festival of lamps.
In their words
Famous linesਮਾਏ ਨੀ ਮੈਂ ਕਿਹਨੂੰ ਆਖਾਂ, ਦਰਦ ਵਿਛੋੜੇ ਦਾ ਹਾਲ ਨੀ। ਧੂੰਆਂ ਧੁਖੇ ਮੇਰੇ ਮੁਰਸ਼ਦ ਵਾਲਾ, ਜਾਂ ਫੋਲਾਂ ਤਾਂ ਲਾਲ ਨੀ।
مائے نی میں کہنوں آکھاں، درد وچھوڑے دا حال نی۔ دھوناں دھکھے میرے مرشد والا، جاں پھولاں تاں لال نی۔
Mother, to whom shall I tell the pain of separation? The fire of my master smoulders in me; when I stir it, the embers glow red.
Kafi, 'Mai ni main kinnu aakhan'
Shah Hussain was born in Lahore in 1538 into a family of weavers and studied the Quran as a boy. At thirty-six, the story goes, he heard a verse that said the life of this world is nothing but play and amusement, took it literally, gave up the strict life of a scholar and began to dance and drink and sing in the streets in red clothes. He was called Lal Hussain, the red Hussain.
He fell in love with Madho Lal, a Brahmin boy of Shahdara, who became his devoted companion; they are buried side by side, and the shrine is called Madho Lal Hussain. He wrote kafis, short sung poems of the soul's longing for God in the voice of a girl at her spinning wheel or by the river, and is counted the first great master of the form.
His urs in March is the Mela Chiraghan, the festival of lamps, when the whole of Lahore lights oil lamps and fires around his tomb in Baghbanpura near the Shalimar Gardens. Ranjit Singh used to come barefoot with his court to celebrate it.
Connected
The Sufi lineages
Teacher to discipleScroll sideways to see the whole tree →
Teacher to disciple, simplified. Dashed lines skip generations: the Qadiri saints of the Punjab belonged to Abdul Qadir Jilani's order but lived centuries after him. Darker boxes are poets and saints of the Punjab with their own pages. Mian Mir was a friend of Guru Arjan; Sikh tradition says he laid the foundation stone of the Harmandir Sahib.