Khanyar began from Hazratbal

That on Monday water from the city’s sewage tank had to be used to douse the flames of Aastana e Dastageer after six decades of ta’ameer o tarraqqi is an eloquent commentary on both development of the capital city as well as the heritage catastrophe and s

Naeem Akhtar

Tragic that Kashmir waited for the grimmest Monday reminder to realize the loss that it has suffered over the decades in its truly glorious heritage. The Dargah of Dastgeer Sahib in Khanyar was in itself of course a jewel in the crown of Kashmiri civilization that was lost to our collective apathy More

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Work of Mourning

The slogans emanating from the crowd reinforced the layered memorialization which has withstood many forms of political violence

Athar Zia

7 am. The newspaper guy’s voice sounded wistful; “Dasgir’s Saeb’s shrine at Khanyar is burning”. My father grimaced painfully. My mother heard the news, unusually contained for a person who offered most of her prayers there. She did not utter a word. Her steaming cup of Chai turned cold while she turned More

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The Troubled Souls

As a Kashmiri Pandit and just like thousands of others of my brethren, we are speechless, grieving and now – very angry

Sameer Kaul, M.D.

If souls exist - and I think they do, an extremely troubled one today would be that of Syed Ghulamuddin Azad,  great preacher and mystic poet who, in 1182 Hijri, enshrined the revered and extremely spiritual memory of his grandfather Hazrat Sakhi Shah Mohammad Fazil Gilani (R.A) - or “Pir Dastageer More

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Time to introspect

We all have memory of our visits to the shrine

Sajad Gani Lone

The Dastgeer Sahab shrine existed from the last two hundred years. The records in our history suggest that the relics were gifted to the governor of Kashmir in the year 1806. And a shrine was erected thereafter. The shrine was further expanded in the year 1877.  The shrine showcased our architectural More

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From Kashmir to Kurdistan

Syed Salahuddin Ayubi (RA) and Syed Abdul Qadir Jeelani (RA) represent two strands of the revival

Dr. Javid Iqbal

While moving through the length and breadth of Gilan and Mazandaran (northern Iran—Shomal) where Ghaus-al-Azam was born, I would often get deeply lost in the thought of saint and his times during decade and a half of my Iranian sojourn,. Thought of the historical impact of the times on Hazrat Sheikh More

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Torrents of Tears

Z.G. Muhammad

Monday 6.10 A M: Stealthily stealing their way through peaks of Zabarwan hillock, virgin sunrays as usual out of their profound adoration had just kissed the golden spires of the minarets of the Shrine of Dastageer Sahib that something ‘beyond language’ had happened.   Something, I had More

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I lost my shelter

I mourned its loss as a threshold: a threshold of gatherings, a threshold to the past and the future

Abir Bazaz

The news came in the morning…searing its way into memory…bringing up the flames of Chrar, and the fire which rages and rages in our homeland. The first feeling: a sudden homelessness, a forced dispossession. I must confess that, for some strange reason, I remembered the Khanyar massacre…when more More

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