GHANI KHAN

GHANI KHAN and his brother Nabi Khan, Pathan horse dealers of Machhivara in present day Ludhiana district of the Punjab, were admirers of Guru Gobind Singh whom they had visited at Anandpur and to whom they had sold many good animals. When they learnt that, travelling in a lonely state after the battle of Chamkaur (1705), the Guru had come to Machhivara, they at once turned out to meet him and offered their services. They provided him with a blue coloured dress and carried him out of Machhivara in a palanquin disguised as a Muslim divine. They declared him to be Uchch da Pir, the holy man of Uchch, an old seat of Muslim saints in south-west Punjab.

They escorted him thus up to Hehrari, a village near Raikot in Ludhiana district, where a group of Sikhs relieved them. The Guru dismissed Ghani Khan and Nabi Khan with his blessings and a hukamnamd meant to be a letter of commendation which was reverently preserved by their descendants. The family migrated to Pakistan in 1947. Their house in Machhivara is now a gurudwara known as Gurdwara Uchch da Pir.

References :

1. Kuir Singh, Gurbilas Patshahi 10. Patiala, 1968
2. Padam, Piara Singh, and Giani Garja Singh, eds. Guru klan Sakhian. Patiala, 1986
3. Macauliffe, Max Arthur, The. Sikh Religion. Oxford, 1909