Devotees at the Khanequah-e-Mujibia in Phulwari Sharif. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Feb. 15: When Syed Mohammad Sharfuddin Quadri comes for a pilgrimage to Khanequah-e-Mujibia tomorrow, it will be the 91st occasion in the life of the 109-year-old Padma Bhushan award winner from Calcutta that he has done so to mark the birth anniversary of Islam’s last prophet, Hazrat Mohammad.

Quadri, a practitioner in Unani medicine, is part of a group of over 40 Calcuttans, who, like thousands of people drawn from other states and even from as far as Bangladesh, will visit the shrine to perform ziarat (glimpse) of Prophet Mohammad’s hairs said to be preserved in the Khanequah-e-Mujibia.

The khanequah, located in Phulwari Sharif area of southern Patna, occupies a special place in the hearts of Muslims as it is in the class of the rare shrines such as the Hazratbal mosque in Kashmir and Ajmer Sharif which are believed to have preserved strands of Mohammad’s hair.

Muslim pilgrims throng in hordes at such places, particularly on the occasion of his birth anniversary which is celebrated as a three-day urs festival. “I first visited this holy khanequah in 1920. I have been visiting it every year without fail since then,” Quadri told The Telegraph, adding, “Allah ka shukra hai abi bhi sharir layak hai (It is God’s mercy that I am still fit to be at his service).”

The centurion hakim originally belonged to Gaya district of Bihar. He shifted to Calcutta in 1935. The prophet’s birthday provides him the opportunity to visit the Phulwari Sharif khanequah and bond with his roots. Quadri, who still looks remarkably fit, begins his day at the break of dawn with namaaz and treats about 100 patients free of cost at his dispensary at Haji Mohsin Square near Wellington Square in central Calcutta.

Parvez Akhtar (50), another local resident and Muslim devout, said: “I have been seeing hakim sahib (Quadri) besides a huge number of people from Bangladesh and almost all parts of India visiting the khanequah during the urs for as long as I can remember.”

Historians, however, doubt the claim about the prophet’s hair being preserved in the shrine. “Be it the Hazratbal mosque or the Phulwari Sharif shrine, there is no historical evidence to support that the shrines have preserved the original pieces of Mohammad’s hairs,” said Imtiaz Ahmad, an expert in medieval history and director of the Khuda Bakhsh Khan Library. “The existence of Mohammad’s hair in the shrine is more a matter of faith than historic fact,” he added.

But then religion itself is more a matter of faith. “Muslims believe that Mohammad’s hair is preserved in the shrine and our faith cannot be judged on historical yardsticks,” said Mohammad Taufiq, a pilgrim from Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia district.

The ziarat has a special place for the Barelvi sunni sect of Muslims in India. The Deobandis, ahle-Hadith and others do not accord much importance to either the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday or paying respect to relics on grounds that it is not instructed by the Quran, Hadith or by the four great imams.

Belief has it that a Yemen resident and Mohammad’s contemporary got the pieces of the Prophet’s hair when the latter got his hair cut during his pilgrimage to Mecca and passed it off to one of his Arab residents. The khanequah officials say that a sufi saint, Fariduddin Ganj, procured the hair from the Arab resident, brought it to Arwal (Jehanabad) from where it was shifted to the Khanequah-e-Mujibia during the middle ages.

Bihar food and civil supplies minister Shyam Razak and other officials today inspected the arrangements at the urs fair. Chief minister Nitish Kumar is likely to visit the shrine tomorrow. Not to be left out, senior RJD leader Ramkripal Yadav visited it today and offered his party’s help to the visitors.

Given that Bihar is a major home to religious tourists, Nitish has made some specific efforts to improve amenities at religious places. The government has already built a Buddhist meditation hall in Patna and is in the process of constructing a Buddhist museum at Vaishali where the “holy relics (ashes of Buddha’s body)” will be shifted from the Patna museum.

Sensing the importance of the shrine, Bihar’s tourism department has been building a double-storied 75 room-rest house on its premises to accommodate the visitors. “We are happy that chief minister Nitish Kumar has been building the rest house. It will attract more visitors,” said Izhar Ahmad (64), a local resident.