Shah Hussain was a weaver's son of Lahore who became a Sufi of the Qadri order and wrote kafis in Punjabi. He is the earliest of the great Punjabi Sufi poets after Baba Farid Ji.
He is known as Madho Lal Hussain because of his attachment to Madho Lal, a young Brahmin of Shahdara. The two are buried in the same tomb at Baghbanpura in Lahore, and the annual Mela Chiraghan, the festival of lights, is held there.
He wrote as a woman, in the voice of a woman at the spinning wheel, waiting, which became the standard voice of Punjabi Sufi verse and passed into the folk song.
His refrain, ਮਾਏ ਨੀ ਮੈਂ ਕਿਨੂੰ ਆਖਾਂ, mother, who shall I tell, is one of the best known lines in the language.
The Mela Chiraghan was for centuries one of the largest gatherings in Punjab and was held inside the Shalimar Gardens until the 1950s.
He was a weaver's son of Lahore who took to the Qadiri path and then broke with respectable practice entirely, and the kafis he left are among the foundations of Punjabi poetry.
The name Madho Lal Hussain comes from his attachment to Madho, and the two are buried together at Baghbanpura in Lahore.
The Mela Chiraghan, the festival of lights, is held at the shrine each spring and was for a long period the largest fair in Lahore.