Islamabad, Pakistan. Visit to Takht Imam Bari Sarkar and the legends of Loh-e-Dandi
After a hectic semester in my sophomore year, I was exhausted and wanted to travel and find some peace. The next day a friend of mine from Islamabad called me asking if I wanted to discover the outskirts of Rawalpindi and hike up the hills of Islamabad. I could not resist the opportunity and packed my bag the same day for Islamabad from Lahore.
Together with two of my other friends, we tracked up the Margalla hills from Quaid-e-Azam university and after two hours of hike, we reached a place name Takht Imam Bari Sarkar (Loh-e-Dandi). I never knew a place like this existed so close to the capital of our country. This place was filled with people chanting the slogan of ‘Ya Ali’ on their way. On asking one of the people, I got to know that these were the devotees of Shah Abdul Latif Kazmi also known as Bari Imam and this was the place where he did a ‘Chilah’ (Holy recitation of some specific verses of the Quran) for years in silence. One of the devotees inside the Chillah Gah said that he finds profound peace and happiness whenever he visits this place.
Indeed, the place was engulfed with mystic serenity and I was completely overwhelmed to see the Sufis and devotees all over the place filled with happiness on their faces.
Going back to the history, Bari Imam was a 17th-century Sufi ascetic from Punjab who was the most prominent Sufi of the Qadiriyya order. He learned fiqh, hadith, logic, mathematics, medicine, and other disciplines in his early ages and moved to different places including Kashmir, Badakhshan, Bukhara, Mashhad, Baghdad, and Damascus in the pursuit of spiritual knowledge. He got the title of Bari Imam (The leader of the earth) from his Pir (Sufi Mentor), Hayat-al-Mir (Zinda Pir). He is also described in regional lore as one through whom God performed many marvels to convince the local people of the truth of Islam; thus, some of the most popular miracles ascribed to him are his having caused water to gush forth from rocks. Mughal emperor Aurangzeb built the silver-mirrored shrine of Bari Imam in Noorpur Shahan and since then it is preserved by the government of Pakistan. It is now one of the famous tourist sites in the city and attracts thousands of local and international tourists every year. Capital Development Authority (CDA) has beautified the place and has put in steps which go all the way up the mountain to the Loh-e-Dandi.
Believers make wishes inside this cave and knot a thread or a lock with these strings
This man was one of the devotees of Bari Imam and has been making tandoor for the LANGAR for 10 years. LANGAR is a community kitchen which serves meals free of charge to all visitors—without making a distinction of religion, caste, gender, economic status, or ethnicity. Every day the LANGAR serves food to hundreds of people and the workers here are all devotees working for free.