The 799th Urs of Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti will be celebrated at the Data Darbar Complex today, in memory of the Sufi saint’s 40-day stay at the shrine of the city’s patron saint.
Chishti, also known as Gharib Nawaz (Benefactor of the Poor), is buried at Ajmer in India and is one of the famous Sufi saints. An estimated one million pilgrims are currently in Ajmer to celebrate his urs, according to Indian press reports.
The urs will be marked at Data Darbar starting at 7.30am with the washing of the cloister where he stayed at on his way to Ajmer from Iran in the 11th Century. It will be followed by a rasm-i-chadar poshi. The Auqaf Department secretary will start the proceedings, which will include Quran khwani and a mehfil-i-naat.
Data Darbar administrator Munir Ahmad said the department had not made any special preparations or allocated extra funds for the event. “Only the cloister where celebrations will be held has been decorated,” he said.
Munir said that security at the complex, which was targeted in a suicide bombing last year, was already very tight on Thursdays, its busiest night of the week.
He said that a special seminar on the teachings of Hazrat Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti, who was born in 1141 and died in 1230, was held on Tuesday from 10 am till Zohr prayers. This was followed by a mehfil-i-sama attended by renowned qawwali singers which continued into the evening, he said. A caretaker at Data Darbar said he did not expect a huge turnout for the brief celebrations of the urs because of the heat and because of security fears brought up by the shrine’s bombing last year.
“The celebrations will begin early and last just a few hours,” he said. “Many pilgrims don’t even know that we also celebrate Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti’s urs at the Darbar complex.”
Published in The Express Tribune, June 9th, 2011.
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