Panja Sahib, Hasan Abdal

Hasan Abdal lies on the Grand Trunk Road between Rawalpindi and Peshawar, at the foot of a hill with a spring. Sikh tradition says Guru Nanak came here with Mardana, who was thirsty, and asked the Sufi Wali Qandhari, who lived at the spring on the hilltop, for water. The pir refused three times and, angry, rolled a great rock down the hill at the Guru, who stopped it with his raised hand. The imprint of his palm is still in the rock, and a spring flowed from beneath it.

Hari Singh Nalwa built the first gurdwara here in the 1820s. Gurdwara Panja Sahib, built around the rock and its pool, is one of the most important Sikh shrines in Pakistan, and every Vaisakhi thousands of pilgrims from India and around the world come here.

In 1922 Sikhs lay down on the railway line at Hasan Abdal to stop a train carrying prisoners of the Guru ka Bagh morcha, so that the prisoners could be given food; two were crushed to death, and the saka of Panja Sahib is remembered with them.