Multan

 Multan 

We waited at reception for our police escort. They turned up dead on time. We were introduced and details taken by tapping phones and photos with the aid of a tablet. There was a driver, a guard who sat in the back of the truck and the man in charge although he wore no insignia to advertise his rank. Then we set off.

Our first stop was at the Eid Gah Mosque, built in 1735. It didn't look much from the outside and the maktoum (caretaker) had to be called to unlock the gate.

                                       

A view of the whole facade.

A close up of the main arch. It was empty, not surprising if the gates were locked. It is still a mosque and is opened for religious festivals.

One of the minarets.

A detail of the decorations...

...of one of the arches...

...and more decoration. It might look like rows of squiggles but it is Arabic on the right and Farsi (Persia) on the left and hence the difference in the scripts.

Adjacent to the mosque is the Sufi shrine of Ahmad Saeed Kazmi. Although the shrine looks old, he died and it was built in 1986. 

A view of the decoration and the dome.. His son was interred in a side chapel in 2016.

The chandelier.

We drove through the fish market. I wanted to stop but our excort said that it is only fish and that we shouldn't stop. I like to investigate the different colours, shapes and sizes (perhaps not the smell) and would have been quite happy to have a wander but it wasn't going to happen. We got to the new entrance to the Shams Tabrizi shrine. The entrance appears to be at a different angle than the shrine. The original entrance is in line with the shrine but it was too small and congested. Therefore it was replaced with this new wider entrance, plus enough space for more souvenir and religious item sellers plus a wide central aisle for pilgrims and visitors.

A closer view of the shrine. We took off our footwear as expected and entered. Our police guard stood outside whilst the man in charge walked in and stood just inside watching us. I noticed that no one approached him to ask him to take off his shoes.

Shrines are typically built where an important person was born, died or lived, and since so many of them seem to have travelled a lot, there can be shrines all over the muslim world. His is alleged to have been the spirital instructor to Rumi (Mewlana Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi) and taught him in seclusion in Konya (Turkey) for 40 days.

His connection to Multan is that during his travels, he arrived here in peasants clothing and went to the market to seek alms. Everyone refused him except a butcher who gave him a piece of fresh meat. He then went around asking someone to cook it for him. Everyone refused. Allah looked down on him and raised the tempersture and the piece of mest cooked in his hands. That is also the reason why \multan is one of the hottest places in Pakistan.

The facade of the inner entrance to the shrine, now shut.

Another view.

The inner mausoleum for Shams Tabrizi although he died and was buried in Khoy, Iran in 1248. There are many quotes attributed to him that are still commonly known today.

The dome.

Once a shrine is erected, close relatives and descendents are often buried at the same site together with long serving maktouns. The different sizes of tomb reflects mother and baby or mother and child or children.

 detail f the roof decoration.

More relatives in the courtyard.

                                        
We drove around the corner to the Institue of Blue Pottery Development. We were shown how the clay is prepared and worked into a smooth paste. It is the pushed into a mould seen above and left to dry.

It is removed and any rough edges smoothed off.

The designers then add their skills. It is all done by hand with a fine brush. Although there are pictures of the designs, most of it is done by hand from memory. Any mistake can be easily scratched off and colouring re-applied.

The painted pot is given a final coat of glaze. It is left to dry...

...until it is ready for the kiln. The items are loaded onto a trolley, pushed into the kiln and fired at high temperature for 12 hours. Our guard must have been intrested as he took as many pictures as we did.

And of course, the finished product in the shop. Although blue and white is the most popular colour, other colours are available.

Next stop was a leather works. I was looking forward to this but it was slightly mis labelled on the schedule. It was a tannery. Rock salt was being unloaded from a truck buy hand, and the lumps of rock carried in baskets on porters heads into the tannery.

The rock is crushed by hand.

The hides and off cuts of skin are covered in rock salt and left for ten days.

The hides are stacked up on each other and periodically, they are re-stacked to ensure the rock salt is evenly distributed across each part of the hide. After curing, it is loaded onto a lorry, again by hand and taken to the factory where it is washed and processed to be cut and sewn into whatever leather product is required

There was a leather shop next door to display all the products that were available. Wallets, n=belts, hand bags, jackets and anything else and interesting when there is so much leather about, many of the shoes had plastic rather than leather soles.

The mausoleum of Hazrat Bahauddin Zakariya. It was completed in 1262 and is decorated with some exquisite mosaics. It was a dull day with a lot of smog so the photo doesn't do it or any of the other buildings any favours but pictures on the internet show them off in their full glory.

The entrance to the mausoleum. There are relatives buried on the right. On the left is a polio vacination team. They are here permanently as it is a populr place to visit. They are aiming to cover all the population with a polio vaccination. Vaccination programmes are only fully effective when the majority of a popualtion is inoculated, so there is a continual push towards the95% plus goal.

The tomb inside and note the place with the two wooden panels where there should be a stone tomb.

The dome of the mausoleum.

                                        

The green boxes around the shrine sites are there to receive donations. They are padlocked with a green strip over the padlock to show that they have not been tampered with.

The maktouns were collecting the donations. The strip is checked and cut. The three padlocks are unlocked and the top opened. 

The paper notes donated by the faithful are scooped up and thrown into a sheet held by another two maktouns. They move onto the next donation box and the empty box is padlocked shut and new green strips applied.

Amongst the stalls selling souvenirs or religious items is one that sells something else. It is bird fed. There are a lot of people visiting and it is a popular activity to feed the birds. It has no religious significance except perhaps charity. The birds recognise an easy meal and their are flocks of them everywhere...

...and with so many, they are a nuisance, and when walking barefoot around religious sites, you need to be careful where you step.

This is a familiar scene in many places. These are offerings. After visiting a shrine, pilgrims leave a little piece of cloth tied to a tree or here, to some bars on a window.

Just a couple of hundred metres away is the Hazrat Shah Rukn-E-Alam in an even larger shrine, completed in 1324. He was originallt buried in Hazrat Bahauddin Zakariya but his grandson complained that he couldn't bend his knee if his grandfather was there. Thus the empty place in that shrine and the construction of this shrine to which his grandfather was moved.

This is also a departure from Islam. Tombs are final resting places and are protected by Allah. They should not be moved.

A closer view of the structure.

The entrance to the shrine.

Inside the shrine. It is decorated with tinsel and paper chains for urs, the death annversary of the individual. The annual urs event here attracts over 100,000 people every year.

Looking up at the dome.

The tomb itself.

Just another 100 metres further along the crest of the hill is the Damdama Art Gallery.

Lots of local art especially of the mughal period such as these pictures of the royal court.

And in one dated 1873, a picture of the Eid Gah mosque which was my first mosque of the day.

                                        

Looking out of the window, the distance was blurred by smog but I could clearly see some birds sitting in the trees waiting for an easy meal.

We had lunch at a local hotel. The police escort came with us. We would buy them lunch but they wanted money to buy their own lunch. It was a feebly disguised request for cash. They would take the cash and walk out. They was a discussion and they walked out without any cash and without eating a meal.

We walked through a bazaar past leather and camel leather dealers, cobblers nd other back street trades.

We reached the local bazaar with their wares on display, partly obscured by a family of four on a motorbike.

A detil of the shoes on display.

Guess what he is selling. It seems just one item, half litre, white plastic bottles.

                                       

The town hall building.

Inside was a diplay of pedal powere rick shaws.

One side of the courtyard.

In one of the workshops was the Naqqash Camel Skin Lamp factory and shop. I thought camel skin was thick but with carefull preparation and cleaning, it is thin and white. It is wrapped around a mould. Offcuts are ground into a paste to fill in any gaps, holes or to smooth off ridges.

                                                  

The completed blank, which when dried turns a cream colour. It is robust, thin and surprisingly light in weight. I looked coverfully for places where the skins had overlapped but could find none. Then the blank can be painted with any picture within the gift of the designer.

There are many different shapes and patterns on offer. They have been used to carry liquids or ghee but now, mostly it is just lamps.

More products on display.

I watched a short film on the process of making a lamp. In the background are the third and fourth generation who own and run the business.

Then is was a walk through another bazaar. The escort police said that we had already been to a bazaar and didn't want to go so a discussion ensued. Twotransgender people that I hadn't noticed until my guide pointed them out. To the left is our escort, following us at a walking pace.

My guide pointing out another escort following some foreign tourists through the bazaar.

No. it wsn't a cold day but this merchant had several leather jackets thrown over his shoulder and was touting them in the market.

Local fast food in the market. And despite having more of the afternoon, we got the hint that our escort had had enough of following us through bazaars and wanted to go. For them, it was job and finish. So we returned to the hotel and curfew whilst they had the rest of the day free.