Piya Haji Ali, Mere Haji Ali

500 yards, It stands isolated, from the reach of the city of Mumbai and yet very much a part of her. It stands ancient and divine like an unmoving foundation that even the mighty sea may not touch. It is the blazing white house of god, the Haji Ali Dargah.
One of the monumental structures of Mumbai, it is a great symbol of religious tolerance. People of every religion flock the dargah, Hindus and Muslims, the rich and famous as well as the common folk. They all walk down the long path way which leads to Haji Ali. They give alms, food and clothes in plenty to the lepers and handicapped beggars crawling nearby. But once inside the dargah, they beg for their forgiveness for the many sins committed, they thank for the good life as granted to them, they pray for protection from harm, they wish for happiness for their near and dear ones. At the Haji Ali Dargah they bow down, while Allah the Almighty blesses them with his infinite radiance.

It is here that lays the tomb of Sayed Peer Haji Ali Shah Bukhari. The godly saint revered by one and all in Mumbai for the past many a hundred years.  Sayyed Peer Haji Ali Shah Bukhari was a rich Muslim merchant; he was from the land of Bukhara (Uzbekistan) in the Persian Empire. He let go of all his earthly possessions and walked the earth as a humble man of god and finally settled in the land of India, today’s Mumbai.

Haji Ali Dargah

The legend so goes that the seer was once heard a women wailing. On querying as to what troubled her, the women replied she had spilled her bowl of oil on the ground and on returning home her husband would beat her up for this. The saint simply thrust a finger into the soil where the oil had split and the liquid poured out in a jet. The saint later had a dream that he had hurt the earth in the due course of his noble act of removing the oil out of her. This then led to his travels which eventually had him settling in India and just chanting the name of Allah right to his last breath. The number of followers simply grew by the passing day. It so came to be, one day he instructed them that he should not be buried as is the norm in Islam. He had asked them to rather have his “kafan” thrown into the ocean and be buried wherever it is found. His followers did accordingly and as fate would have it, the kafan was found floating on a tiny island, a string of rocky islets not far off from the city itself. It was here thus that the historical structure of Haji Ali Dargah was built in the 15th century, in the year of about 1417.
Covering 4,500 square meters and Built in Indo-Islamic style architecture, the holy place has a massive turnout of more than forty thousand devotees on Thursdays and Fridays. The narrow path that is built to connect the dargah to the shore of Mumbai is about one kilometer in length. The tomb of the saint is placed within the mosque. Men and women pray in separate rooms. People come here begging for miracles to happen. They come not as Hindus and Muslims but rather as Mumbaikars knowing that the saint they are piously invoking also walked these same sands of Mumbai long ago.