LAST Sunday, High Wycombe's Silsilla Aalia Qadria celebrated the Urs (saints day) in the Jubilee Road Mosque, in honour and remembrance of Hazrat Piray Shah Ghazi, a Muslim sufi saint who is buried near Mirpur in Azad Kashmir and is known as Dhamri Wali Sarkar.

The Muslim sufi saints are mainly responsible for introducing Islam to India and there is a chain of their shrines stretching across Pakistan and India.

They preached peace and tolerance and found converts to Islam by their devotion to God, rather than worldly things, and as living examples of selflessness, truth, purity, humbleness and service to humanity.

Consequently, their shrines are not just beacons of spirituality for the Muslims but for people of other faiths also converge on their mausoleums for spiritual solace.

The Urs celebrations lasted from 3pm till the late evening prayers at 8pm, with large numbers of people attending from High Wycombe and further afield.

The gathering heard some renowned Qaries, reciters of the Holy Koran and Naat Khawns (reciters of religious poetry in praise of God and his prophet) many of whom only recite the works of Mian Mohammed Bux, a prolific Punjabi sufi poet and a devotee of the saint.

His collective works are known as Saif Mallouk. The remarkable point about this collection is that each and every line of this massive work is full of rhythm, meaning and religious significance.

The meeting was presided over by Raja Amir Dad Khan and speakers included Maulana (religious scholar) Abdul Latif from Aylesbury, Qari Saeed (Birmingham), Qari Mohammed Zaman (Preston), Qari Mohammed Ali (London), Qari Mohammed Summandar Khan (Rochdale), Allama (title given to one who is learned) Mureed Hussain (Manchester), Sahibzada Ghulam Jeelani, Imam of Jamia Mosque in Jubilee Road, Hafiz Hameed-ud-Din Qureshi, Imam of the mosque in Castlefield, Haji Mohammed Sarver, a Second World War veteran and long time and revered resident of High Wycombe, Haji Abdul Karim, Hafiz Sajjad Hussain (High Wycombe), and Allama Zahour Ahmed Chashti from Pakistan.

The principal speaker was Pir Syed Abdul Qader Jilani, a most learned and impressive Islamic scholar, the spiritual head of Dar-ul-Allom Qadria in Walthamstow, London, which serves the spiritual needs of Muslims in this country.

Pir Abdul Qader Jilani commentated in a fulsome way about the poetry of Mian Mohammed Bux as contained in Saif Mallouk and its significance

The meeting ended with special prayers for peace and tranquillityespecially in areas of conflict such as Afghanistan, Palestine and Kashmir