Saraiki literature is the literature of the Saraiki language of Pakistani Punjab.
The language, partly codified during the British Raj, derived its emotional attraction from the poetry of the Sufi saint, Khawaja Ghulam Farid, who has become an identity symbol. [1] Khawaja Ghulam Farid was a famous Punjabi poet and he wrote all his poetry in Punjabi language
The beloved's intense glances call for blood
The dark hair wildly flows The Kohl of the eyes is fiercely black
And slays the lovers with no excuse
My appearance in ruins, I sit and wait
While the beloved has settled in Malheer I feel the sting of the cruel dart
My heart the, abode of pain and grief A life of tears, I have led Farid— one of Khwaja Ghulam Farid's poems (translated)
Shakir Shujabadi (Kalam-e-Shakir, Khuda Janey, Shakir Diyan Ghazlan, Peelay Patr, Munafqan Tu Khuda Bachaway, and Shakir De Dohray are his famous books) is a very well recognized modern poet. [2]
The Department of Saraiki, Islamia University, Bahawalpur was established in 1989 [3] and the Department of Saraiki, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan [4] was established in 2006. Saraiki is taught as a subject in schools and colleges at higher secondary, intermediate and degree level. The Allama Iqbal Open University in Islamabad, [5] and the Al-Khair University in Bhimbir have Pakistani Linguistics Departments offering M.Phil. and Ph.D in Saraiki.
The Associated Press of Pakistan have also launched a Saraiki version of the news site. [6]
Saraiki alphabet |
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آ ا ب ٻ پ ت ٹ ث ج ڄ چ ح خ د ڈ ݙ ذ ر ڑ ز ژ س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق ک گ ڳ ل م ن (ں) ݨ و ہ ھ ی ے |
Extended Perso-Arabic script |
In the province of Punjab, Saraiki is written using the Arabic-derived Urdu alphabet with the addition of seven diacritically modified letters to represent the implosives and the extra nasals. [7] [lower-alpha 1] In Sindh the Sindhi alphabet is used. [8] The calligraphic styles used are Naskh and Nastaʿlīq. [9]
Historically, traders or bookkeepers wrote in a script known as kiṛakkī or laṇḍā, although use of this script has been significantly reduced in recent times. [10] [11] Likewise, a script related to the Landa scripts family, known as Multani, was previously used to write Saraiki. A preliminary proposal to encode the Multani script in ISO/IEC 10646 was submitted in 2011. [12]
Saraiki is an Indo-Aryan language of the Lahnda group, spoken by around 28 million people primarily in the south-western half of the province of Punjab in Pakistan. It was previously known as Multani, after its main dialect.
Khawaja Ghulam Farid was a 19th-century Sufi poet and mystic from Bahawalpur, Punjab, 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 Standard 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.
Baha-ud-din Zakariya, also spelled Bahauddin Zakariya, and also known as Baha-ul-Haq and Bahauddin Zakariya Multani, was a Sunni Muslim scholar saint and poet who established the Suhrawardiyya order of Baghdad in medieval South Asia, later becoming one of the most influential spiritual leaders of his era.
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 north-western Indo-Aryan language varieties spoken in parts of Pakistan and India. 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.
Khairpur Tamewali Tehsil is an administrative tehsil (subdivision" of Bahawalpur District in the Punjab province of Pakistan. The city of Khairpur Tamewali is the tehsil headquarters which is administratively subdivided into eight union councils.
The Punjabi dialects and languages or Greater Punjabi are a series of dialects and languages spoken around the Punjab region of Pakistan and India with varying degrees of official recognition. They 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 Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group native to the Southwestern region of the Punjab province of Pakistan. They are multi-ethnic in origin and speak the Saraiki language.
Khawaja Fareed Government Post Graduate College, Rahim Yar Khan, located in the heart of the city Rahim Yar Khan, Punjab, Pakistan. It is named after a Muslim Saraiki saint and poet, Khwaja Ghulam Farid.
There are three writing systems for Saraiki:
Thaḷī is a western dialect of the Punjabi language spoken in parts of the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It has been classified within the Saraiki group of dialects by some linguists, as a northern dialect of Saraiki, although it has also been described as transitional between Multani and Shahpuri Punjabi. Its name derives from the Thal Desert.
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 a saraiki poet from Bahawalpur, Punjab. 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.