Saraiki is an Indo-Aryan language of the Lahnda group, spoken by around 28 million people in central Pakistan, especially the areas of South Punjab, Southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Northern Sindh and Eastern Balochistan and the cultural region of Derajat. It was previously known as Multani, after its main dialect.
Khawaja Ghulam Farid was a 19th-century Sufi poet and mystic from Bahawalpur, Punjab, British India, belonging to the Chishti Order. Most of his work is in his mother tongue Multani, or what is now known as Saraiki. However, he also contributed to the Punjabi, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Hindi and Persian literature. His writing style is characterized by the integration of themes such as death, passionate worldly and spiritual love, and the grief associated with love.
Mithankot also known as Kotmithan orThe Land of Five Rivers, is a city in Rajanpur District in Punjab, Pakistan. Mithankot is located on the west bank of the Indus River, a short distance downstream from its junction with Panjnad River. Most of its inhabitants are Saraikis and Baloch. The city is noted for being the site of the tomb of the famous Sufi poet, Khawaja Ghulam Fareed.Kot Mithan is also the land, where all five rivers of Pakistan merges.
Christopher Shackle, is Emeritus Professor of Modern Languages of South Asia at the University of London.
Lahnda, also known as Lahndi or Western Punjabi, is a group of Punjabi language varieties, spoken in parts of Pakistan and India, classified within the Northwestern zone of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. It is defined in the ISO 639 standard as a "macrolanguage" or as a "series of dialects" by other authors. Its validity as a genetic grouping is not certain. The terms "Lahnda" and "Western Punjabi" are exonyms employed by linguists, and are not used by the speakers themselves.
Saraiki culture is the culture of the Saraiki people, residing in Pakistan and outside Pakistan.
Mehr Abdul Haq was a philologist from Pakistan.
The Kathia is a Muslim tribe of Pakistani Punjab.They are a branch of Panwar Rajputs. Many leaders of Kathia tribe were main participants in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 led by Rai Ahmad Khan Kharal.
The Punjabi dialects and languages or Greater Punjabi are the varieties of the Punjabi language, a Northwestern Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-European language family, widely spoken in the Punjab region and neighbouring areas of South Asia, split between Pakistan and India. They constitute a dialect chain of mutual intelligibility and have sometimes been referred to as the Greater Punjabi macrolanguage. Punjabi may also be considered as a pluricentric language with more than one standard variety.
The Saraikis are a multi-ethnic community native to central Pakistan, unified by their use of the Saraiki language and a shared regional identity that transcends tribal and ethnic affiliations.
Riasti is a term used for a group of Lahnda varieties spoken in the Cholistan Desert along the banks of the river Sutlej in the southern Punjab, Pakistan. Its definition is imprecise, and is usually taken to refer to the central (Multani) and southern dialects of Saraiki which were spoken in the former riasat (transl. state) of Bahawalpur, in what are now the Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan districts, respectively. The southern dialect, also known as Bahawalpuri, is spoken in the southern parts of Dera Ghazi Khan as well.
There are three writing systems for Saraiki:
Thaḷī is a dialect within the Lahnda group spoken in parts of the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is classified by some linguists as a northern dialect of Saraiki language, although it has also been described as transitional between Multani and Shahpuri. Its name derives from the Thal Desert, in which it is spoken.
Multani is a Brahmic script originating in the Multan region of Punjab and in northern Sindh, Pakistan. It was used to write Saraiki, often considered a dialect of Lahnda group of languages. The script was used for routine writing and commercial activities. Multani is one of four Landa scripts whose usage was extended beyond the mercantile domain and formalized for literary activity and printing; the others being Gurmukhi, Khojki, and Khudabadi. Although Multani is now obsolete, it is a historical script in which written and printed records exist. It was also known as Karikki and as Sarai.
Dr. Shakir Shujabadi is a prominent Saraiki-language poet in Shujabad, a small city near Multan, Pakistan.
Multani is a Unicode block containing characters used for writing the Multani alphabet, a Brahmic script used in the Multan region of Punjab and in northern Sindh in Pakistan. The script is now obsolete, but was historically used to write the Saraiki language.
Lutf Ali (1716–1794) was an 18th-century poet from Bahawalpur, Punjab, active in the Bahawalpuri dialect. He was born in the village of Mao in present-day Rahim Yar Khan District. He wrote the popular narrative poem Saifalnāma in 1781 based on a tale from the One Thousand and One Nights.
Jatki, Jadgali, and other related terms have sometimes been used to refer to one or another of the Indo-Aryan languages spoken in Balochistan and neighbouring parts of Sindh and Punjab.
