Pakistan is a multilingual country with over 70 languages spoken as first languages. The majority of Pakistan's languages belong to the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-European language family.
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.
Rahim Yar Khan District, is a district in the province of Punjab, Pakistan. Its headquarters is the city of Rahim Yar Khan.
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 an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group native to the central Pakistan. They are multi-ethnic in origin and speak the Saraiki language.
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.
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 Lahnda dialect spoken in parts of the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is classified by some linguists as a northern dialect of Saraiki, although it has also been described as transitional between Standard Saraiki 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.
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.
