The Punjab government has declared March 11 (Saturday) as a public holiday in Lahore in honour of Hazrat Madhu Lal Hussain’s urs.
According to a notification issued by the Punjab Home Department, March 11 will be a public holiday in the Lahore District.
The holiday was declared to commemorate the urs, according to the notification.
On March 11, all educational institutions will also be closed.
Shah Hussain also known as Madhoo Lal Hussain, was a 16th-century Punjabi Muslim Sufi poet who is regarded as a pioneer of the Kafi form of Punjabi poetry. He lived during the ruling periods of Mughal emperors Akbar and his son Jahangir.
He was born in 945 AH (1538) in the Walled City of Lahore in what is now Punjab, Pakistan. His father was Sheikh Usman, he was a Dhudhi Rajput (a clan of Rajput), and by occupation, he was a weaver (in some of Shah Hussain’s poetic rhymes he used his pen name as Faqir Hussain Julaha which means “Humble/Poor/Saint Hussain the weaver”), his father, in his early age, enrolled him in a local school where he started to memorize the Quran.
His teacher was Hafiz Abubakar. It was 955 AH (1548) when at the age of 10, a renowned Sufi master Sheikh Bahlol Qadri (d. 983 AH/ 1575) met him who later became his mentor.
One day in the month of Ramadan his mentor asked him to fetch water for him from the river and there he met Al-Khidr (Green One) who blessed him Shah Hussain recited the whole Quran in Tarawih prayer while he memorized only 7 parts of the Quran, this miracle news spread in the city, Sheikh Bahlol, after some time, went to his town and directed Shah Hussain to regularly visit the Ali Hijwiri shrine in Lahore, Shah Hussain regularly at night stands in the river Ravi and recites the whole Quran until Fajar prayer and then visits to the shrine of Ali Hijwiri and till Zohar prayer recites whole Quran and he never missed a single congregation prayer, he also studied Tafsir Quran from a famous scholar Sheikh Saadullah Lahori in the year 981 AH (1573).
While he was studying the Tafsir, he suddenly went out of the mosque and abandoned the path of ascetic and stepped into the path of self-blamers and became self-blamer Sufi, he started to dance and drink in public, some slandered him, and some had faith in him.
