Sadhaura and Pir Buddhu Shah

Sayyid Badruddin, called Pir Buddhu Shah, was a Muslim divine of Sadhaura who brought his followers and four of his sons to fight for Guru Gobind Singh Ji at Bhangani in 1688. Two of his sons were killed there.

He was executed at Sadhaura around 1704 on the orders of the Mughal authorities, for that support.

The tradition holds that when the Guru offered him a reward after Bhangani he asked for the comb the Guru had been using with hair in it, and was given it.

In 1710 Banda Singh Bahadur Ji took Sadhaura. The killing there is recorded in Persian sources as severe and the place is called Katalgarhi.

A Muslim pir gave two sons for a Sikh Guru and was killed for it, and the town where it happened is remembered mainly for what was done to it six years later.

He was a Sufi with a following of his own in a town between the hill states and the plain, and bringing armed disciples to a battle was a normal exercise of that kind of authority in that country at that date.

The reward he asked for afterward was the comb from the Guru's hair with the hairs still in it. Every telling keeps that detail.

Sadhaura is a small town in Yamunanagar district in Haryana now. The shrine is maintained and receives very few visitors from Punjab.

What we don't know

  • The date and circumstances of Pir Buddhu Shah's execution, given variously.

Where to check this

Named but not linked. These are real, findable documents. This project has not consulted them for this page.

  • Local shrine tradition at Sadhaura.

This page has not yet been read through by the editor. Treat it with more caution than the rest.

How this page was written. The text is compiled from the standard published histories and reference works, not from a document held in hand. Nobody from this project has visited the place or read the archive. The list above is where a reader can go to check it, not a record of what was consulted line by line. Dates and figures are the received account. If you hold something better, write in and it will be corrected.

This is one of 130 accounts in The Ten, the chapter of this site covering the Gurus, from 1469 to 1708.