Bibi Pak Daman

Bibi Pak Daman ("Lady of the Chaste Hem") in Lahore, Pakistan, is a shrine traditionally attributed to Ruqayya bint Ali, a daughter of Ali ibn Abi Talib and wife of Muslim ibn Aqeel, along with five companions said to be relatives of Muslim ibn Aqeel. Popular tradition holds that these women, fleeing after the tragedy of Karbala in 61 AH/680 CE, traveled from Arabia to preach Islam in the Lahore region, where they died and were buried together; some accounts describe the ground opening to receive them as they prayed. No independent historical evidence confirms this account, and some local historians instead trace the shrine to a 12th-century family, the daughters of Sayyid Ahmad Tokhta, whose piety later became conflated with the Karbala tradition. Regardless of the historical question, Bibi Pak Daman is one of the most visited Shia shrines in South Asia and is credited in local memory with the early spread of Islam in Punjab; the 11th-century Sufi saint Ali Hujwiri (Data Ganj Bakhsh) is said to have been a devotee. The shrine courtyard contains a gnarled waan tree that local legend holds grew from the staff or mount of one of the women.

Photographs

Front door of the Shrine of Bibi Pak Daman in Lahore, Pakistan, a mausoleum revered as the resting place of several women of the Ahl al-Bayt.

Photo by Mubashirtaqi147, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons