Hazrat Shah Abdul Latif bhitai

Shah Abdul Latif, a great scholar, saint and spiritual poet, was born in Hala Haveli near the village Khatiyan Hyderabad District, Sindh in 1689. His ancestral roots are in Afghanistan. It is said that Shah's father, Syed Habib Shah, had migrated from Matyaru, his ancestral home in Sindh in Afghanistan Bhainpur to spiritually connecting with Bilawal, a local holy man. Abdul Latif got his early education in a Madrasa run by Akhund Noor M. Bhatti. He was versed in the knowledge of the Koran and the traditions. He always carried copies of the Qur'an, Masnavi Maulana Room, and his great grandfather Risalo of Shah Abdul Karim of Burli. The poet excelled in the Sindhi language. He was also proficient in Persian, Sanskrit, Saraiki, Urdu and Baluchi language. Shah was a missionary and believed in the practical learning. It is through his travels he acquired the background for most of his poems. He denounced extravagance, injustice and exploitation in all forms and at all levels, and praised the simplicity and hospitality. His spiritual and mystical poetry carries a message of love and universality of the human race. In 1713, the Sufi poet married Bibi Begum Saidha. It was a love marriage. His wife died at a young age, before she could no children. Shah never remarried. In 1742, Shah Abdul Latif decided to settle in Bhit, which means "The Sandy Mound." Having a great passion for music, one day he ordered the musicians to play music. They played continuously for three days. Then they stopped from sheer exhaustion, they found the dead poet. He died in 1752, and was buried in Bhit. A mausoleum was later built. Before his death, fearing that people would ignore his poetry, he destroyed all his writings by throwing them in the Lake Kiran. But at the request of one of his disciples, the Sufi poet asked his servant, Naimat Mai, who had learned most of his verses, to rewrite them. The message was duly recorded and compiled. A copy of the compilation known as "Ganj" was maintained at the mausoleum. The original disappeared sometime in 1854. It was in 1866, 114 years after the death of the poet, Ernest Trumpp, a German scholar who knew Sindhi like many other languages, "Risalo" a complete collection of poems, Shah Abdul Latif's, compiled together with two other Sindhi scholars.