𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐚𝐳𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐛𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐒𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐫

The Hazratbal Shrine,( literally “Majestic Place”), The most important Muslim shrine of Kashmir, is undoubtedly the Hazratbal Shrine, which is situated on the left bank of the famous Dal Lake in Srinagar This unmatched reverence is anchored in the love and respect for the Prophet. Mohammad (peace be upon him), whose Moi-e-Muqqadus, (the sacred hair) is preserves here. The shrine is known by many names including Hazratbal, Assar-e-Sharief, Madinah-us-Sani, and Dargah Shareef & Dargah. The name of the shrine comes from the Urdu word Hazrat, meaning “respected”, and the Kashmiri word Bal, meaning “place”. Thus it means the place which is given high regards and is respected among the people.
According to legend, the relic was first brought to India by Syed AbdUllah, a descendant of the Holy Prophet Muhammad who left Medina and settled in Bijapur, near Hyderabad in 1635.
When Syed AbdUllah died, his son, Syed Hamid, inherited the relic. Following the Mughal conquest of the region, Syed Hamid was stripped of his family estates. Finding himself unable to care for the relic, he sold it to a wealthy Kashmiri businessman, Khwaja Nur-ud-Din Eshai.
However, when the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb came to know of what had transpired, he had the relic seized and sent to the shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer, and had Khwaja Nur-ud-Din Eshai imprisoned in Delhi for possessing the relic. Later, realizing his mistake, Aurangzeb decided to restore the relic to Khwaja Nur-ud-Din Eshai and allowed him to take it to Kashmir. However, by that point, Khwaja Nur-ud-Din Eshai had already died in imprisonment. In the year 1700, the relic finally reached Kashmir, along with the body of Khwaja Nur-ud-Din Eshai. There, Inayat Begum, daughter of Khwaja Nur-ud-Din Eshai, became a custodian of the rel family of Srinagar, and since then, her descendants from the Banday family have been the keepers of the relic and established the shrine. Inayat Begum was married into the prominent Kashmiri Banday
The history of the shrine goes back to the early seventeenth century when the Mughal Emperor Shahjahan’s Subedar, Sadiq Khan, laid out a garden here & constructed a palacial building, Ishrat Mahal or Pleasure House in 1623. However, the Emperor, during his visit in 1634, ordered the building to be converted into a prayer House with some additions & alterations. During the time of Aurangzeb, when MOI-e-Muqqadas arrived in Kashmir in 1699, it was first kept in the shrine of Naqashbad Sahib in the heart of the city. Shahjahan’s Subedar, Sadiq Khan identified place for
Moi-e-Muqqadas in Hazratbal then known as Sadiqabad, the selection of place was miraculous, piece of land around which birds (Pigeons) and animals (sheep /cows) used to form a ring but do not fly or walk over it.
The old structure on the miraculous place was demolished and the construction of the present marble structure almost 150 meters way from original structure was started by the Muslim Auqaf Trust headed by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah in 1968 and completed in 1979.
The relic was reported disappeared on 26 December 1963. There were mass protests all over the state on the disappearance of the Moi-e-Muqqadas with hundreds of thousands out in the streets. The Awami Action Committee was formed to recover the relic. On 31 December the Prime minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru made a broadcast to the nation on the disappearance of the sacred relic. The relic was recovered on 4 January 1964