Hasanabdal as Sacred Landscape: The Legend of Guru Nanak, Mughal Heritage and the Making of Punja Sahib

Abstract

Hasanabdal is often introduced to travellers as a stop on the Grand Trunk Road and as the home of Gurdwara Punja Sahib. That introduction is true and incomplete. The town sits inside a much older landscape of Buddhist remains, Sufi memory, Mughal gardens, tombs and step wells, and it was only in the nineteenth century that a Sikh shrine of monumental ambition rose beside those earlier marks. This article reconstructs Hasanabdal as a sacred landscape rather than as a single building. It retells the encounter between Guru Nanak and Baba Wali Qandhari as the narrative that still organises Sikh feeling about the place. It describes the Mughal neighbourhood of Wah Garden, the baolis, the Tomb of the Hakims and the platform of Lala Rukh. It follows the making of the gurdwara under Hari Singh Nalwa and its later reconstruction under the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee. It argues that Punja Sahib cannot be understood if it is lifted out of this layered ground. The hand print, the spring, the tank, the grey sanctuary and the surrounding Muslim monuments belong to one valley of memory even when they belong to different communities of faith.

Keywords: Hasanabdal, Guru Nanak, Baba Wali Qandhari, Punja Sahib, Mughal monuments, Sikh heritage of Pakistan, sacred landscape, Attock.