Kaka Sahib (Sheikh Rahmkar), died 1653

At a glance

• Kaka Sahib, whose given name is Sayyid Kastir Gul and whose honorific is Sheikh Rahmkar, was a Sufi teacher of the Khattak country near Nowshera who died in 1653. [1, 8]

• His grave at Ziarat Kaka Sahib, about seven miles from Nowshera by the gazetteer's count and about 12 km by Dawn's, is one of the three principal pilgrimage places of Peshawar district in the gazetteer of 1883 to 1884. [2, 3, 8]

• The poet Khushal Khan Khattak, his father and his elder brother are named as his followers, and one of Khushal's daughters is said to have married his son. [2, 8, 9]

• His descendants are the Kakakhel. Their own account makes them sayyids; the British gazetteers list them among the Khattaks. [1, 2]

• His death anniversary (urs) is still held each year in Rajab, and the 2022 one was counted as the 380th. [2, 11]

Names

He is called by several names, and the sources give different reasons for them. Dawn gives his name as Sayyid Kastir Gul, "Kasteer Gul" in its spelling, and says he earned the title Rahmkar, "the kindest", because he freed slaves and showed mercy to orphans and the poor. [8] The website of the family's Rahamkaria Virtual Foundation says his parents named him Kastir Gul, that Pashtuns call him Kaka Sahib, that the Mughals called him Sheikh Rahmkar, and that in the Punjab and India he is Sheikh Ji. It adds that some call him Zayray Kaka, "the pale", because long worship turned his face pale, and that the title Rahmkar was given to him by Akhund Panju of Akbarpura. [1] Dawn also records a nickname, Ziaree Kaka. [8]

The British wrote the name in several ways. The Peshawar gazetteer of 1897 to 1898 calls him Rahimkar, "the great Khattak saint", and in its list of fairs "Shekh Rahmkar (better known as Kaka Sahib)". [2] Henry Raverty, in his Notes on Afghanistan (1880), quotes a route book from Lahore to Kabul that he dates about ninety years earlier, under Timur Shah. It has a tomb of "Baba Rahm Kar" in a small village two kuroh south of Nowshera, a holy man whom "they also style the Shaikh of Alingar": "He was a pious man, and the Afghans, who greatly venerate him, are his disciples." The passage does not say why Alingar. [4]

What the sources say about his life

Almost everything about his life comes from his followers, and it is recent. The Rahamkaria Foundation site gives his birth as the first of Ramadan 983 AH and his death as Friday 24 Rajab 1063 AH, and says he grew up in the reigns of Akbar and Jahangir. [1] Dawn in 2015 gives his birth as the first of Ramadan "in 1576" and his death as 24 Rajab 1653. [8] The two agree on the day and month of his death. The numbering of the urs fits 1063 AH: the 374th was held in 2016 (1437 AH), the 377th in 2019 (1440 AH) and the 380th in 2022 (1443 AH). [1, 9, 11, 12]

The family's site says his father was Abak Sahib, whose real name was Bahadur Khan, his grandfather Must Baba and his great-grandfather Ghalib Baba, each also a saint with a shrine in the hills. [1] Dawn says he succeeded his father, Sheikh Bahadur Baba, as spiritual head, and that a legend brings his ancestors from Bukhara. [8] It also says he took religious education from his father and some scholars of his time and practised four Sufi orders, the Naqshbandi, Suhrawardi, Chishti and Qadiri. [8]

At the age of 30, according to a Dawn report of 2016, he left home for a secluded place in the mountains south of Nowshera, and the place became a centre of religious teaching, where he taught Quranic commentary (tafsir) and hadith to students from across the subcontinent. [9] The same report names pupils, among them Faqir Jamal Khan, Sheikh Abdul Latif Balkhi, Khwaja Akhun Yusuf Qandahari, Akhun Salak Baba and Sheikh Yahya Baba. [9] The family site describes him as thin, wheat-coloured, sparing in food and sleep, and says he was buried on a hilltop as his will asked. [1]

Tradition credits him with generosity on a large scale. Dawn quotes the late Bahadar Shah Zafar Kakakhel, in his book on Rahmkar Kaka Sahib, as saying he once paid masters to release 3,000 slaves and ran a free kitchen (langar) for thousands of pilgrims. [8] That figure is the book's, and no earlier record of it has been found.

Sayyid or Khattak

The people of the shrine and the British disagree about who he was. The family site says there are "different denotations" among the people: some call him a sayyid, some a Khattak, some "Seenay", and that most agree he was a sayyid, a descendant of Imam Jafar al-Sadiq through Ismail. It explains the Khattak label as a result of his forefathers having settled in Khattak country. [1] It cites older books for the sayyid descent, among them a genealogy (shajara) and works dated 1285 AH, 1321 AH and 1908. These have not been checked here. [1]

The Peshawar gazetteers describe the Kaka Khel as one of three classes "amongst the Khattaks", beside the Khan Khel, the chiefs' relatives, and the Fakir Khel. [2, 3] Abdul Hai Habibi, in his introduction to Khushal's Swat Nama, calls him "Shaikh Rahamkar Kaka Sahib Khatak". [7]

Khushal Khan Khattak and his family

The gazetteer's account puts him close to the best-known Khattak family. The Fakir Khel, it says, descend from the elder brother of Khushal Khan, "who retired from the world at the instigation of Rahimkar", and have since had a name for holiness, so that they are trusted to keep valuables in times of public danger or feud. [2, 3] Dawn names the brother as Faqir Jamil Baig, or Jamal Khan, and says Khushal and their father Shahbaz Khan were also his followers. [8, 9] The family site says Jamil Baig left the lordship and comforts of life to follow Kaka Sahib, wrote Pashto and Persian, and composed a Manaqib Kakasahib, a book of his master's virtues. [1] Habibi lists "Khushal Khan's brother, Jamil Beg" among the companions of the preacher Akhund Tsalak, with Rahamkar Kaka Sahib. [7]

Dawn says one of Khushal's daughters married Kaka Sahib's elder son, Sheikh Ziauddin, called Shaheed Baba. [8, 9] The family site gives the same marriage. [1] Dawn also says Khushal wrote verses about Kaka Sahib's life and his bond with him. [9] The verses themselves have not been located. How deep the link went rests on these local accounts and the gazetteer's single sentence.

The shrine

The shrine stands in rugged hills in the village that took the name Ziarat Kaka Sahib. [8] Dawn describes a white mausoleum with mosaic and floral work inside, built by his descendants and followers in the early seventeenth century. Around it are the graves of family members and disciples, a mosque, a kitchen, a library and rooms for guests. [8] Both gazetteers call it "well-known" and place it among the Khattak shrines, with those of Sheikh Babar, Mirza Gul, Faqir Sahib and Habak Sahib. [2, 3] The frontier officer Enriquez, writing of Jalozai in The Pathan Borderland, traced a chain of disciples: Mirza Gul was a pupil of Sheikh Baba of Dag, and Sheikh Baba was "a disciple of the celebrated Kaka Sahib". [5] The family site names Mirza Gul and Sheikh Babar among his pupils and says he allowed each to treat particular diseases. [1]

The gazetteers list three principal pilgrimage places in Peshawar district: the jhanda fair at Peshawar, Kaka Sahib in the Khattak country and Pir Baba in Buner. [3] The gazetteer of 1897 to 1898 says popular belief held the place to be the scene of many miraculous cures, that the Kaka Khel were respected among the wildest tribes of Afghanistan, and that a Kaka Khel had been killed only once, by the Khaibaris, who were made to pay a large fine. [2] It names Kaka Khel pirs in the hills of the Adam Khel Afridis and on the Swat river. [2]

Colonial writers also tell a story against the saint's family. Wylly, quoting Warburton, says the Zakha Khel Afridis, who had no shrine of their own, received a holy Kaka Khel mian who asked for safe conduct, found he was just the man they wanted, killed him and made his tomb their shrine. [6] It is a British joke at the Zakha Khel's expense, and Wylly gives no date or name. It sits oddly with the gazetteer's remark that the Khaibaris paid a fine for killing a Kaka Khel. [2, 6]

The urs

The gazetteers describe the annual fair in some detail. The 1897 to 1898 gazetteer lists it as held at Ziarat on 16 to 24 Rajab, the anniversary of Sheikh Rahmkar's death, lasting eight or nine days, with crowds that its figure puts in the tens of thousands. [2] Offerings were divided among his descendants. On the seventh or eighth day the flesh of sheep and goats was buried, and the crowd scrambled for it while the Kakakhel and the keepers of the shrine threw stones. The idea, the gazetteer says, was that no harm could be done, "but there are broken heads at times". Water had once been sold at an anna a pot (ghara), and by then came by pipe from a stream about a mile and a half away. [2]

The earlier gazetteer, of 1883 to 1884, disapproves of such fairs. Hindus and traders set up booths, musicians, wrestlers and horsemen performed, gamblers and prostitutes worked the crowd, enemies settled quarrels with swords, and "four or five deaths from violence always occur". Before British rule, it says, these crowds were unruly and bloody. [3] The same book says in one place that the Kaka Sahib fair follows Ramadan and lasts three or four days, and in its table that it falls on 16 to 24 Rajab and lasts eight or nine; Rajab comes before Ramadan. [3] The 1897 to 1898 volume says "April". [2] The gazetteers do not reconcile these.

In recent years the urs has continued. Dawn's 2016 report describes flag-raising, the washing of the grave, a mela cheraghan (a fair of lamps) and earthen lamps around the shrine. [9] In 2019 Dawn described a week of celebration with thousands of visitors, a Sufi concert, swing rides and a volleyball tournament, and noted that women and girls took part in large numbers for the first time. [10] A 2015 report quotes a resident who said the urs had shrunk from a week to two days for security reasons. [8] The patron-in-chief of the Kakakhel told The News in 2019 that hundreds of people had embraced Islam at the saint's hands. [12] Religious scholars quoted by Dawn say he lived in the Mughal era, spread religious education and advocated peace and brotherhood. [10] The shrine is run by a council set up in 2003, with one member for each Kakakhel clan, and not by the government's Auqaf department. [8]

Aurangzeb and the Mughal court

Mian Feroz Shah Jamal Kakakhel, patron-in-chief of the council, told Dawn in 2015 that Aurangzeb once came to Nowshera to meet Kaka Sahib, who refused to see him in his own home, so a temporary palace was built, and its ruins are called Aurang Mahal. [8] This is a local tradition. Dawn gives no date, and no Mughal record of the visit has been found. The family site says only that the Mughals called him Sheikh Rahmkar. [1]

The 2012 bombing and the view of shrines

On the second day of Eid al-Adha, 28 October 2012, a remote-controlled bomb exploded at the main gate of the shrine. Dawn reported four dead and 32 wounded in its later count and AP, in the same newspaper, reported at least four dead. [13, 14] No group claimed it. AP wrote that Pakistani militants such as the Taliban had been blamed for earlier attacks and "claim visiting shrines is not allowed". [14] Hundreds of followers marched from the shrine and blocked the Grand Trunk Road for an hour. Mian Feroz Jamal warned that people would retaliate if shrines continued to be disgraced, and Qazi Hussain Ahmad, a former head of Jamaat-i-Islami, called the blast a conspiracy of anti-Islam elements. [13] The shrine itself was not badly damaged. [13]

The dispute over shrines is older than the bomb. The 1897 to 1898 gazetteer puts belief in cures down to "popular superstition" and the 1883 one is severe on the fairs, while his followers treat the same gatherings as devotion. For the wider setting, see Religion among Pashtuns.

What is not known

Nothing written by Kaka Sahib himself has been found. The birth date differs by a year between sources, and the family site's list of authorities has not been checked against the books it names. The visit of Aurangzeb, the count of 3,000 slaves, Khushal Khan's verses about him and the full chain of disciples rest on devotional or local accounts. The route book Raverty quotes and the gazetteers are the earliest outside records located. They show that under Timur Shah, and again in 1883, he was widely revered among the Afghans of the district.