Hazrat Haji Bahram saeb (r.a)

Khursheed Dar
khursheed.dar33@gmail.com

Some saints in Kashmir resist chronology. They refuse to be neatly arranged into birth, education, achievement, and death. They exist instead as whispers, rituals, food, and footpaths worn thin by devotion. Hazrat Haji Bahram Saeb (RA) belongs to that rare order of people whose presence survives not through records but through memory that still breathes.
His shrine stands at Najar Mohalla, Wahipora Langate—barely three kilometres from my home. Close enough to feel ordinary, yet distant enough to feel ancient. It does not dominate the landscape; it converses with it. Trees, stones, and silence seem to have agreed to speak softly around it. Nothing here seeks attention, yet everything invites reflection.
Hazrat Haji Bahram Saeb (RA) was a prominent disciple of Hazrat Sheikh Hamzah Maqdoomi (RA) and, as written sources suggest, also among the spiritual circle of Baba Naseeb-ud-Din Ghazi (RA). He belonged to the Najar family, though beyond this, history withdraws its hand. Nothing reliable is known about his childhood or domestic world. Perhaps that absence is deliberate. Perhaps a life committed to erasing the self leaves little behind for archivists.
Oral and written traditions agree on one point: he spent most of his life in Bonagam, a nearby village, absorbed in meditation and prayer on the banks of Nallah Pohru. He preached love and brotherhood—not from pulpits, but through conduct. For nearly four years, I studied scattered sources, sifting through fragments, reconciling silences, trying to understand a saint who actively resisted being understood.
According to Peer Hassan Shah Kohihami, Hazrat Haji Bahram Saeb (RA) never married. His brother, a carpenter by profession, took care of him. The image is telling—a mystic sustained by manual labour, prayer leaning quietly against craft. There was no romance of poverty here, only discipline. He lived simply—fiercely so.
He fasted often, sometimes continuously. He meditated through days and nights. He never consumed meat. Loneliness for him was not exile but method. He consciously avoided public attention and popularity—an ambition far more demanding than fame itself. His body, weakened by relentless fasting and meditation, became skeletal, almost a quiet protest against excess.
He wore khraw, the traditional Kashmiri wooden footwear, refusing comfort even in harsh weather. He never used warm water for ablution. His devotion was not symbolic; it was physical. Faith demanded the body’s full participation.
Oral tradition holds that Hazrat Haji Bahram Saeb (RA) performed Hajj on foot—twelve times. In Kashmiri, bah means twelve, and thus he came to be known as Haji Bahram. Historian Hassan also records this account. Twelve journeys across unforgiving terrains, undertaken without announcement or applause. In an age where spirituality is often measured by visibility, his faith chose invisibility.
A small but revealing anecdote preserved by historian Hassan illustrates his moral economy. A subedar, Hafiz Allah Khan, once offered him fifty rupees. He refused. When pressed repeatedly, he accepted only one rupee—not as charity, but as instruction. Saints often teach not by what they take, but by what they decline.
He ate what the land offered in scarcity—dried walnut catkins, locally known as dunimvur. Even food became a language of restraint. Historian Hassan records that he passed away at the age of ninety. Initially buried at Bingam Langate, his body was later brought to Wahipora Langate and reburied there. Even in death, the land reclaimed him.
At Bonagam Langate, a shrine still stands in his honour, while Wahipora Langate remains his final resting place. Both continue to be revered. Many tabarrukats associated with him once existed, but a devastating fire gutted the shrine. Everything turned to ash—except a large flat stone embedded in the wall, bearing an inscription now weathered and barely legible. Perhaps that, too, is symbolic: meaning survives even when words fade.
His urs, still observed in January, is marked not by spectacle but by cooking. Dunimvur is prepared as a special dish and offered as homage. Before the 1990s, when a bride entered the village, she was first taken to his shrine to seek blessings. During droughts, people gathered for Bandhar, a collective community meal, believing shared humility could invite mercy from the skies.
This is how Kashmiri Sufi shrines functioned—and in many ways, still do. They were not merely religious spaces but social correctives. They dissolved hierarchy, fed people equally, and taught restraint in abundance and patience in scarcity.
The real contribution of saints like Hazrat Haji Bahram Saeb (RA) was not miracle-making but community-making—cementing bonds of equality, brotherhood, and peace, not through proclamations, but through lives lived lightly upon the earth.
Khursheed Dar is a prominent writer and columnist of Kashmir.He writes about Kashmiri Sufism,Culture and society.

Article by © Khursheed Dar ( Pohrupeth Langate)