Friday, September 20, 2013

The Tombs of Makli

Makli Hill is one of the largest necropolises in the world, with a diameter of approximately 8 km. It lies approx. 98 km east of Karachi and is the burial place of some 125,000 local rulers, Sufi saints and others. Makli is located on the outskirts of Thatta, the capital of lower Sindh until the seventeenth century, in what is the southeastern province of Pakistan.It was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1981 under the name of Historical Monuments of Thatta.

Legends abound about its inception, but it is often believed that the cemetery grew around the shrine of a fourteenth-century Sarwa, Muhammad Hussain Abro. According to other sources however, the credit for establishing Makli as a holy place for worship and burial goes to the immigrant saint, poet and scholar Shaikh Hammad Jamali and the then local ruler, Jam Tamachi.[3] Another legendary person buried at Makli is the saint Pir Murad (1428-1488).

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