Friday 18 March 2016

Hazratji Tomb , Kandahar (1878-1880)

This photograph of Kandahar, taken from the Hazratji Tomb, is from an album of rare historical photographs depicting people and places associated with the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Located north of the center of the city and surrounded by the tombs of 19th-century Afghan rulers, the tomb is a shrine to Hazratji, a famous Kandahari saint. That his tomb is seven meters long attests to his reputation for holiness. The other tombs have tall marble stones at each end and are decorated with black and white pebbles. The photograph shows the walls and sentry towers of the city, sprawling across the background and fading into the distance to the right. Small shrines and graves occupy the foreground.



 Natives of Ziarat-e-Hazratji

 Ziarat generally means “visit” in Arabic, but here it refers specifically to religious pilgrimage sites found across the Middle East and North Africa and visited by Muslims of all persuasions. The remains of great religious teachers or members of bāyt ʻAlī (the family of ʻAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, the fourth Muslim caliph) are buried in such shrines. This monument to Hazratji, a famous Kandahari saint, is located north of the center of the city and is surrounded by the tombs of 19th-century Afghan rulers.

Source: Library of congress

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