Mian Umar Chamkani, Sufi of Peshawar (Mian Umar Baba)

At a glance

• Mian Muhammad Umar Chamkani, also called Mian Umar Baba, was a Sufi teacher of Chamkani, a village about 7 km east of Peshawar. [6, 7]

• Pakistan's Department of Archaeology and Museums gives his years as 1671 to 1776, and says he died aged 105. [6]

• Elphinstone was told that Ahmad Shah took the name Durrani after a dream of "the famous saint at Chumkunee". [1]

• A Chamkani holy man, called Mian Umar in the Peshawar gazetteers, stood behind a failed plot against Timur Shah in 1779. The tribes would not let the king punish him. [1–3, 5]

• The shrine at Chamkani follows the Naqshbandi order. It was bombed in June 2010 and rebuilt. [7, 8]

Who he was, as his shrine tells it

The fullest modern account is a Dawn feature of 2018 by Sher Alam Shinwari, which relies on Professor Mohammad Hanif, a former dean of Islamic Studies at Islamia College, Peshawar, who wrote a doctoral thesis on him. [7] It calls him a Sufi saint, scholar, social reformer, poet and historian. [7] It says his grandfather came from Bajaur to Faridabad near Lahore, that his father Ibrahim Khan died there when Umar was seven, and that his maternal grandfather Saeed Khan brought him back to Chamkani, where his uncles Essa and Musa raised him. [7] Dawn credits him with writing in Arabic and Persian on religious and social questions, and with a verse history of Pashtun descent in Pashto, Da Pakhtanu Nasabnaama. [7] It says he corresponded with the Delhi scholar Shah Waliullah and preached to his disciples at his hujra, which he called Bagheecha, "the garden". [7]

The government heritage listing gives the same birth place and years, and says he is buried in the tomb at Chamkani, built in Mughal style. [6] That listing cites an anonymous entry in a 2011 UNESCO mapping of cultural assets, so it is a record of what is believed, not an independent check. [6]

The saint of Chamkani in Elphinstone

Mountstuart Elphinstone's Account of the Kingdom of Caubul says of the Durrani that they "were formerly called the Abdaulees, till Ahmed Shauh, in consequence of a dream of the famous saint at Chumkunee, changed it to Dooraunee". [1] He does not name the saint. The Peshawar gazetteer of 1883 gives the title only as one "assumed by Ahmed Shah Abdali", durr-i-durran, "pearl of pearls", or durr-i-dauran, "pearl of the age", and mentions no saint. [2] For the king's rise and the name Durrani, see Ahmad Shah and the Durrani state.

Elphinstone does not say that the saint of Chumkunee was Mian Umar. Only Hanif, quoted below, ties Ahmad Shah to him.

A town kept by a shrine

Raverty printed a Persian route survey made under Timur Shah by a writer he does not name. It describes Chamkani as a good-sized town named after the small Afghan tribe of that name. [4] The writer adds that it is also called Chamkani of Mulla Muhammad-i-'Aziz, "a God-fearing and holy man" whose large tomb stood near the town, that his descendants still held his place, that the people of the country round were their disciples, and that the revenue of the town and several villages was assigned to the shrine. [4] The survey names a different holy man from the one Dawn names, and the sources read here do not say why.

The same survey says Timur Shah dug a canal to bring water near Chamkani and called it the Nahr-i-Shahi, the king's canal. [4] Dani, the historian of Peshawar, calls the holy man of Chamkani "a darvesh of great sanctity" with a large following in the region. [5]

The plot of 1779

The best-documented event is a failed coup. Elphinstone dates it to 1779 and says it was undertaken by the "Sahebzadeh of Chumkunee, a dervise of great sanctity", to murder Timur Shah and put his brother Prince Sikandar on the throne. [1] The tool was Faizullah Khan, a chief of the Khalil tribe, who got the king's leave to raise troops for an attack on the Punjab, gathered mostly Khyber Afghans, and led them into the citadel of Peshawar, the Bala Hisar. [1] Timur Shah escaped to an upper room, and his guards, the Gholami Shahs, killed many of Faizullah's men. [1] Faizullah and his son were tortured and executed without naming their accomplices. [1] The king ordered the Sahebzadeh seized, "but the whole of the Afghaun chiefs at court interposing in his favour, no further inquiry was made". [1]

The Peshawar gazetteers of 1883 and 1898 tell it from the district's side and name him. "In 1779 an insurrection took place under the Chamkanni Mian Umar, a man of great sanctity", with the aim of dethroning Timur. [2, 3] They say the plot was traced to the Mian, "but the Pathan tribes would not allow him to be punished, out of the superstitious reverence they habitually paid to members of his class". [2] He fled to a hill between Yusufzai and Buner and was later allowed to return. The hill was still called his seree, or gift of land, and the gazetteers add that it was called Amankot because it had been a place of refuge for some Daulatzai Pathans of Buner, who fled there after a murder. [2, 3]

Dani, in 1969, takes the episode as a sign of "the importance of the Darvesh of Chamkani", who "could not be punished because of his following in this region". [5] He gives the aim as putting prince Sikandar on the throne. [5]

Elphinstone's account, the gazetteers' and Dani's agree on the plot, the date, the man's sanctity and his escape from punishment. None of these accounts says what became of Mian Umar afterwards, or gives a motive other than the dethronement.

Two dates that do not meet

The shrine's dates and the gazetteers disagree. The heritage listing and Dawn say Mian Umar died in 1776 aged 105. [6, 7] The gazetteers put a Mian Umar at the head of a conspiracy in 1779, three years later. [2, 3] Elphinstone and Dani do not give the name, only "Sahebzadeh" and "Shahzada". [1, 5] The sources read here do not say whether the gazetteers' Mian Umar is the saint buried at Chamkani, a later holder of his place, or a mistake in the name, and none of them gives a date of death for the man of 1779.

What followers say

Followers and the local tradition make larger claims, and Dawn reports them on the authority of Professor Hanif. He says Ahmad Shah Abdali visited the holy places of Pashtun Sufis when he came to the region, that his last call, at Mian Umar's hujra, "filled him with spiritual solace", and that he became a "staunch disciple". [7] He says the king took the name Afghanistan for his country on Mian Umar's advice, that Mian Umar sent 17,000 fighters to help Abdali's soldiers in the last battle of Panipat, and that through his closeness to Shah Waliullah he took a leading part in Indian politics. [7] Elphinstone, Raverty's survey and the gazetteers, in the passages cited here, mention none of these claims. They are reported as Hanif's and the shrine's account.

Local belief also holds that the water of a well in the mosque yard heals skin diseases because Mian Umar prayed over it. Hanif himself says "there is no documental proof of the healing water lake", and that he has set out in his thesis only a few of the saint's karamat, wonders, on the word of contemporary scholars. [7]

The shrine today

The shrine stands in Chamkani village. [7] Dawn reports an underground meditation cell, a mosque said to be 400 years old, and visitors numbering 1,500 to 2,000 a day, and 3,000 to 4,000 on Thursdays and Fridays, according to a disciple. [7] Because the shrine follows the Naqshbandi order, Dawn says, no mehfil-i-sama, a gathering with music, is held there. [7] The annual urs falls on the first Wednesday and Thursday of Rajab. [7]

Provincial Auqaf officials told Dawn that about 50,000 kanals of land are recorded as his, that some 33,000 kanals are held by lessees, and that litigation has run since 1986. [7] Raverty's survey already described the revenue of Chamkani and several villages as assigned to the shrine in Timur Shah's time. [4]

On 21 June 2010, according to the Express Tribune, Taliban militants set off a timed bomb near the shrine wall at about 3 am. [8] Police reported no casualties. [8] The newspaper called it the first attack on a shrine in Peshawar since the attack on Rahman Baba's shrine on 5 March 2009. [8] Dawn says the provincial government rebuilt it. [7]