Data Darbar's founder wrote a book still assigned to students of Sufism today, and the shrine built around his grave has itself been the target of a major terrorist attack in living memory.
The scholar in the tomb
Ali Hujwiri, also known as Data Ganj Bakhsh, was an eleventh century Persian Sufi scholar who settled in Lahore and wrote the Kashf al-Mahjub, widely regarded as one of the earliest systematic treatises on Sufism in Persian, still studied by scholars of Islamic mysticism today. His tomb in Lahore became a major shrine and pilgrimage site, drawing devotees across Pakistan and the wider region.
Attacked in 2010
On 1 July 2010, twin suicide bombings struck the shrine during a crowded evening, killing dozens of worshippers and pilgrims, one of a string of attacks on Sufi shrines in Pakistan by militant groups hostile to Sufi devotional practice, which they regard as religiously illegitimate. The attack drew widespread condemnation and did not stop the shrine's operation, which resumed after a period of heightened security.
A kitchen that still runs daily
The shrine operates a large free kitchen serving food to visitors and the poor on a continuous basis, a practice consistent with the charitable emphasis found across South Asian Sufi shrine culture and one that has continued despite the security concerns the 2010 attack introduced.