Saturday, January 26, 2008

A Reclusive Poet

By Aadil Shah/Pak Tea House and All Things Pakistan - Pakistan

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Abdur-Rehman (1650 – 1715 A.D) widely known as Rehman Baba was a great Pushtu Sufi poet who is regarded as the most read and quoted Pushtu poet of the larger belt of Afghanistan and the North Western Frontier Province of Pakistan.

There isn’t much known about his life due to the lack of eyewitness accounts yet a few legends portray him to be a reclusive poet, singing his poems near the Bara River while strumming a Rubab.

His poetry shows him to be a poet who had full command on fiqah (jurisprudence) and tasawwuf (Sufism).

A powerful Sufi touch in his poetry notwithstanding, he was not inclined to a particular order of Sufism and it is more likely that Rehman Baba was a free soul, with an individualistic practice of Sufism similar to that of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai in Sindh.

Thus he says:
“On the path which I travel to see my love, make holy Khizer and Ilyas my guides”

His tomb is at Hazarkhwani, in the suburbs of Peshawar.

[Click on the title of the article to read two poems translated into English]

[Go to Wiki to read about the Rubab http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubab].

No comments:

Saturday, January 26, 2008

A Reclusive Poet
By Aadil Shah/Pak Tea House and All Things Pakistan - Pakistan

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Abdur-Rehman (1650 – 1715 A.D) widely known as Rehman Baba was a great Pushtu Sufi poet who is regarded as the most read and quoted Pushtu poet of the larger belt of Afghanistan and the North Western Frontier Province of Pakistan.

There isn’t much known about his life due to the lack of eyewitness accounts yet a few legends portray him to be a reclusive poet, singing his poems near the Bara River while strumming a Rubab.

His poetry shows him to be a poet who had full command on fiqah (jurisprudence) and tasawwuf (Sufism).

A powerful Sufi touch in his poetry notwithstanding, he was not inclined to a particular order of Sufism and it is more likely that Rehman Baba was a free soul, with an individualistic practice of Sufism similar to that of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai in Sindh.

Thus he says:
“On the path which I travel to see my love, make holy Khizer and Ilyas my guides”

His tomb is at Hazarkhwani, in the suburbs of Peshawar.

[Click on the title of the article to read two poems translated into English]

[Go to Wiki to read about the Rubab http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubab].

No comments: