Hazrat Imam Bari Sarkar (Peer Syed Abdul Latif Kazmi Qadri)
Hazrat Imam Bari Sarkar (1617 to 1705), (Shah Abdul Latif Kazmi), was born in 1026 Hijra (1617 AD) to a sayyad family in Karsal, District Chakwal. He was one of the most prominent Sufi saints of the Qadriya order. He was eight years old when His father, Syed Mehmood Shah, shifted his family from Karsal to Aabpara Islamabad. At that time, it was a barren land. Additionally, Syed Kasran in the Tehsil of Gujjar Khan is considered to be his Birthplace. His father, Syed Mehmood Shah, was a farmer.
Peer Syed Abdul Latif Kazmi Qadri is idolized as the patron saint of Islamabad. Today, he is mostly visited by Sunni & Shia Muslims of the Subcontinent who believe in saints. The life of Bari Imam is known essentially through oral tradition and saint’s booklets and celebrated in qawwali songs of Indian and Pakistani Sufism.
Syed Mehmood Shah, His Father was a farmer. Hazrat Imam Bari Sarkar helped his father in farming up to the age of 12. After that he was sent to Ghorghushti in Campbellpur (Attock), Punjab, Pakistan) where he stayed for two years to learn Fiqh, Hadith, and other Islamic teachings, because at that timeGhurghushti was a well-renowned place of Islamic learning
Later he married and had one daughter, but unfortunately, both his wife and daughter died prematurely After their passing, he began wandering the forests of theKhyberpakhtunkhwa, where he spent twenty-four years as an ascetic
Hazrat Imam Bari Sarkar also went to Central Asian states of that period and to learn about Islam and perform hajj he visited the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Madina. He then decided to settle in the Noorpur Shahan area after returning back to the subcontinent. At that time, this area was known to be a dangerous place (locally known as Chorpur (place of thieves) due to its reputation as full of bandits and killers who used to attack and rob trade caravans passing through this area headed towards Central Asian countries. Over time, he succeeded in teaching these people about love, peace and harmony. Later Shah Abdul Latif came to be known as “Bari Imam”
It is presumed that he spread his teaching orally Because he did not write any book. Hazrat Bari Imam was renowned in his own life for being an ascetic who subjected himself to great self-humiliation in the public sphere, “living among the pariahs and consciously exposing himself to the disdain of the people.
Hazrat Bari Imam is also known as the saint of miracles. some of the most popular miracles ascribed to him are his having caused water to gush forth from rocks and his having brought back to life the dead water buffaloes of a poor countryman who had earlier provided the saint with milk during his ten years of spiritual seclusion
Shrine
A silver-mirrored shrine of Bari Imam is located in Noorpur Shahan in Islamabad. It was originally built by Aurangzeb, the Mughal emperor, who revered Bari Sarkar, in the 17th century It has since been renovated many times and is now maintained by the Pakistan Government.
Until the 1960s, the shrine was famous for its urs celebration, when the death anniversary of the saint was commemorated and which was attended by hundreds of thousands of people each year.
