Hazrat Babajaan (Balochi: حضرت باباجان) (various dates claimed – September 21, 1931[1][2]) was a Pashtun Muslim saint considered by her followers to be a Sadguru or Qutub.

The earliest recorded account of Hazrat Babajan, who was named at birth Gulrukh ("Face like a Rose") states that she "is the daughter of one of the ministers of the Amir of Afghanistan".

[3] Later accounts report that Babajan "hails from Afghanistan … and was the daughter of a well-to-do Afghan of noble lineage";[4] "born to a royal Muslim family of Baluchistan.

An introspective child and spiritually inclined, from "early life she developed mystical tendencies, and unlike girls of her age, she used to pass a good deal of her time in prayers, meditation and solitude.

"[9][5] Following the conventions of Afghan nobility, Babajan was reared under the strict purdah tradition, in which women were secluded from the outside world, and also subject to a custom of arranged marriages.

Following instruction from the guru, "she went into seclusion in a nearby mountain outside Rawalpindi and underwent very severe [riyazat] (spiritual austerities) for nearly seventeen months.

[12] After a second stay in Rawalpindi with her earlier Hindu master, Babajan embarked on several long journeys through the Middle Eastern countries Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.

"It is said that she traveled to Mecca disguised as a man [apparently to avoid detection] by way of Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and doubling back into Arabia.

Now an old woman, her back slightly bent, shoulders rounded, with white matted hair, and shabbily dressed, she "was seen sitting or resting at odd places, in different parts of the City.

"[15] Babajan finally located to a slum area called Char Bawdi (Four Wells) on Malcolm Tank Road, part of a British Army cantonment.

[16] The Char Bawdi area at that time has been described as "a picture of dirt, desolation and ugliness, a breeding spot of plague and pestilence and a regular haunt of dangerous riff-raffs by night.

"[17] After several months’ exposure to the natural elements, Babajan grudgingly allowed her devotees to build a basic shelter of gunny sacks above her.

[citation needed] According to one observer, within a decade of Babajan taking residence "the [Char Bawdi] locality underwent a metamorphosis surpassing all expectations.

What with the featural changes in the buildings all around, electrified tea-shops ringing with the clatter of cups and saucers, a concourse of peoples consisting of all ranks and creeds waiting for Babajan’s darshana, a street bard entertaining the crowd with his music, the beggars clamouring for alms, easy-going idlers standing indiscriminately hampering vehicular traffic and the whole atmosphere heavily laden with sweet burning incense perpetually kept burning near Babajan, presented a scene typically Eastern, leaving an indelible impression on one’s memory.

"[20] In May 1913, Merwan Sheriar Irani, then nineteen years old, was riding his bicycle on the way to class at Deccan College, when he looked up and saw an old woman sitting under a neem tree surrounded by a crowd.

He had cycled past on previous occasions but had never paid much attention to her, though he was aware that she was regarded by some as a Muslim saint; yet others thought her "a mad woman or a witch or sorceress.

"[30] The white marble dargah (shrine) of Babajan was built alongside the neem tree under which she had sat for so many years, by the roadside which is now a busy thoroughfare.

When Babajan was fifteen years of age her guardians began to arrange for her marriage … at this juncture she made bold to leave the family home.

After a lapse of many years, during the First World War the Baluchi regiment was transferred to Pune, and in that city the same soldiers came face-to-face with Babajan sitting under her neem tree at Char Bawdi.

Ghani’s later, and extended, version of Babajan’s life, published in 1939, provides a different account: She left home at the age of eighteen on her wedding day.

[34] At the other end of the scale, in his colourful spiritual travel book, A Search in Secret India (1934), the then freelance journalist, Paul Brunton, recounts that he learnt "from former Judge Khandalawalla, who had known [Hazrat Babajan] for fifty years, that her age is really about ninety-five".

[36] Regarding Brunton’s report, Kevin R D Shepherd observed: "That Khandalawalla had known Babajan for as long as fifty years is questionable; though it need not be doubted that he had encountered her by the time of her second visit to Bombay c.