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The Fourth Udasi: Guru Nanak's Journeys West — Sindh, Mecca, Medina, and Baghdad

Professor: Kavi Santokh Singh Source: SikhLibrary

This course traces Guru Nanak's fourth and final great journey westward through Sindh, Pak Pattan, Mecca, Medina, Baghdad, and Kabul, following janamsakhi accounts and Kavi Santokh Singh's Sri Nanak Prakash. Students examine the most famous episodes of the Udasi tradition — the Mecca Kaaba sakhi, the meeting with Bahlol Dana in Baghdad — and analyze what these encounters reveal about Guru Nanak's theology of divine omnipresence and his engagement with Islam at its most sacred sites.

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Prerequisite recommended. This is a 200-level course. To get the most out of it, we recommend completing the 100-level courses first.

What you'll learn

  • Identify the major geographic stages of the Fourth Udasi westward to the Arab world and back
  • Analyze the Mecca Kaaba sakhi and its theological significance for understanding divine omnipresence
  • Explain Guru Nanak's engagement with Islamic spiritual traditions including Sufi mysticism
  • Compare Guru Nanak's approach to Muslim audiences with his earlier encounters with Hindu and yogi traditions
  • Evaluate the historicity of the Mecca and Baghdad episodes using multiple janamsakhi sources
  • Assess the Fourth Udasi's contribution to the development of Sikh universalism and the settlement at Kartarpur

Key terms — ਸ਼ਬਦਾਵਲੀ

ਮੱਕਾ

Mecca; the holiest city of Islam, visited by Guru Nanak during the Fourth Udasi

ਕਾਅਬਾ

Kaaba; the sacred cubic structure at the center of the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, site of the famous sakhi

ਬਗਦਾਦ

Baghdad; the city on the Tigris where Guru Nanak met the Sufi mystic Bahlol Dana

ਪਾਕ ਪਟਣ

Pak Pattan; the shrine of Baba Farid in Punjab, visited at the outset of the Fourth Udasi

ਬਾਹਲੋਲ

Bahlol Dana; the majzub (God-intoxicated mystic) Guru Nanak met in Baghdad

ਮਜ਼ਹਬ

Mazhab; religious law and practice; the category Guru Nanak challenged at Mecca

ਸੂਫ਼ੀ

Sufi; a practitioner of Islamic mysticism; Guru Nanak engaged Sufi traditions throughout the Fourth Udasi

ਰੁਕੁਨਦੀਨ

Rukn al-Din; the Islamic religious scholar (qazi) who confronted Guru Nanak at Mecca

ਕਾਬਲ

Kabul; the final major stop on the Fourth Udasi before Guru Nanak returned to Punjab via the Khyber Pass

ਕਰਤਾਰਪੁਰ

Kartarpur; the settlement Guru Nanak founded after the Fourth Udasi, where he lived his final years

Lessons

1. Setting Out West: The Fourth Udasi's Context

Full course contents
  1. Setting Out West: The Fourth Udasi's Context
  2. Sindh and Pak Pattan: The Faridian Connection
  3. Westward Through Persia: The Route to Arabia
  4. Arrival at Mecca: The City at the Center of Islam
  5. The Kaaba Sakhi: Feet Toward the Qibla
  6. The Theological Heart of the Mecca Episode
  7. Medina: The City of the Prophet
  8. Baghdad: Meeting Bahlol Dana
  9. The Baghdad Miracle: Calling Across Worlds
  10. The Return: Kabul and the Khyber Pass
  11. The Settlement at Kartarpur
  12. Legacy of the Fourth Udasi and the Complete Udasi Journey

West After North

Having completed journeys east, south, and north, Guru Nanak's Fourth Udasi carried him westward — into Sindh, through the Islamic world, and all the way to Mecca and Baghdad. The traditional dates of the Fourth Udasi are approximately 1519 to 1521, though as with the previous udasis, these dates cannot be established with certainty from internal janamsakhi evidence alone (McLeod 1968, 175). The western journey brought Guru Nanak into the heartland of Islam — the majority religion of his political context and the tradition with which he had engaged throughout his life in Punjab. The Fourth Udasi was thus in one sense the climax of Guru Nanak's interfaith engagement, testing his universal teaching at the centers of the world's most widespread monotheistic tradition.

Islam in Guru Nanak's World

Islam was not a foreign religion for Guru Nanak. The Punjab of his birth was ruled by Muslim dynasties; the Mughal Empire that would dominate the region was already taking shape. His closest companion, Bhai ਮਰਦਾਨਾ, was Muslim. His own compositions engage Islamic theological vocabulary — Allah, Rahman, Khuda — reframing these names within his theology of the One Creator beyond all names. Several of Guru Nanak's compositions are in praise of the One God using the vocabulary of both Hindu and Islamic traditions, demonstrating that his engagement with Islam was not peripheral but central to his theological vision (Singh 1994, 70). The Fourth Udasi's journey to the Arab world extended this lifelong engagement to its ultimate expression.

The World Guru Nanak Entered

In the early sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire had recently conquered Egypt (1517) and was the dominant power in the Arab world. Mecca and Medina were under Ottoman suzerainty, and the pilgrimage routes that connected the subcontinent to Arabia were well-established, used annually by thousands of Muslim pilgrims performing the Hajj. Sufi brotherhoods had established networks across the Islamic world, connecting Persia, the Arab heartland, Central Asia, and India. Guru Nanak's westward journey would have followed these established pilgrimage and trade routes, and his encounters would have been shaped by the specific religious culture of each location — Arab orthodoxy at Mecca, Sufi mysticism at Baghdad, the hybrid cultures of the Persian and Central Asian zones en route.

2. Sindh and Pak Pattan: The Faridian Connection

Pak Pattan and the Chishti Tradition

At the outset of the Fourth Udasi's westward journey, Guru Nanak visited ਪਾਕ ਪਟਣ (Pak Pattan), the site of the shrine of Baba Farid (Fariduddin Ganjshakar, d. 1266), one of the most revered Sufi saints of the Punjab. The Chishti Sufi order, to which Baba Farid belonged, emphasized love, humility, and direct experience of the divine — themes that resonated deeply with Guru Nanak's own teaching. The Guru Granth Sahib itself includes compositions by Baba Farid and his successors, demonstrating the spiritual kinship that Guru Nanak recognized between his own tradition and the Chishti Sufi teaching (Schimmel 1975, 345).

The Encounter with Shaikh Ibrahim Farid

At Pak Pattan, Guru Nanak met Shaikh Ibrahim Farid, a descendant of Baba Farid and the sajjada nashin (hereditary custodian) of the shrine. The Janamsakhis record a respectful exchange between the two — a meeting of spiritual equals rather than the challenging encounters of previous udasi episodes. This is significant: at Pak Pattan, Guru Nanak did not challenge but affirmed. The Faridian Sufi teaching of love and divine service was aligned with his own; the difference was one of form and institutional structure rather than theological substance. This encounter models the Fourth Udasi's more nuanced engagement with Islamic tradition: not all of Islam was to be challenged; much was to be affirmed, engaged, and built upon (Grewal 1969, 175).

Sindh: A Region of Spiritual Diversity

The Sindh region through which the Fourth Udasi passed was home to a distinctive blend of Hindu Sindhi traditions, Ismaili Muslim communities, and Sufi networks that had taken deep root in the region over centuries. The Sindhi Sufi tradition, particularly the traditions associated with Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai (though he came a century later, reflecting an established tradition), combined Islamic devotion with regional cultural forms in ways that paralleled aspects of Guru Nanak's compositional approach. Guru Nanak's passage through Sindh during the Fourth Udasi thus continued his engagement with the full range of Islamic spiritual expression — from the popular Sufi traditions of Punjab and Sindh to the formal theological and ritual practices of the Arab heartland.

3. Westward Through Persia: The Route to Arabia

The Persian Route

The most common land route from South Asia to Mecca in Guru Nanak's time passed through Persia (modern Iran). Persia in the early sixteenth century was dominated by the Safavid dynasty, which had established Twelver Shia Islam as the state religion in 1501 — a development that created tensions with the predominantly Sunni Arab world. This sectarian complexity would have been part of the religious landscape Guru Nanak traversed. The Persian route connected the subcontinent to Mesopotamia and then to the Arabian peninsula, passing through major cities including Mashhad, Tabriz, and Baghdad before reaching the Hijaz (Kohli 1969, 170).

Sufi Networks Along the Route

The Persian zone was particularly rich in Sufi activity. The great Persian Sufi poets — Rumi (d. 1273), Hafez (d. 1390), Jami (d. 1492) — had created a vast literature of divine love that suffused Persian religious culture at every level. Sufi khanqahs (hospices) were present along the major routes, providing hospitality to travelers and maintaining communities of practitioners. Guru Nanak's journey through Persia would have brought him into contact with this Sufi world — a world that shared significant themes with his own teaching: the inadequacy of formal religious practice without inner transformation, the primacy of divine love, the Guru's role in guiding the soul toward the divine (Schimmel 1975, 88).

Wearing the Pilgrim Garb

According to the janamsakhi tradition, Guru Nanak adopted pilgrim dress (the blue robe and cap of a Muslim hajji) for the journey to Mecca — not as deception but as a form of engagement with the tradition on its own terms. The Sri Nanak Prakash describes this attire: a blue robe, a cap, and the pilgrim's staff. This sartorial choice is theologically interesting: it models the approach Guru Nanak took throughout his udasis — entering each religious tradition from within, meeting its practitioners on their own ground, and from that position of respectful engagement offering his teaching. The pilgrim's garb in the Fourth Udasi is the outer form of the inner method (Santokh Singh 1843).

4. Arrival at Mecca: The City at the Center of Islam

Mecca: The Center of the Islamic World

ਮੱਕਾ (Mecca) in the Hijaz region of Arabia was (and remains) the holiest city of Islam. Every Muslim who is physically and financially able is required to perform the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) at least once in their lifetime — one of the Five Pillars of Islam. In Guru Nanak's time, the annual Hajj drew pilgrims from across the Islamic world, creating a gathering of extraordinary religious intensity and cultural diversity. The ਕਾਅਬਾ (Kaaba) — the cube-shaped structure in the courtyard of the Masjid al-Haram — was the focal point of all Islamic prayer; every Muslim in the world faced toward it five times daily (McLeod 1968, 180).

The Significance of Going to Mecca

For the janamsakhi tradition, Guru Nanak's arrival at Mecca carries enormous symbolic weight. He has journeyed to the literal center of the Islamic world — the place where every Muslim faces in prayer, the holiest spot on earth for the world's largest monotheistic tradition at that time. His presence there is not that of a curious tourist but of a teacher who brings his own message into dialogue with Islam at its highest expression. The encounter that follows — the Kaaba sakhi — is the Fourth Udasi's theological centerpiece, and it carries the full weight of Guru Nanak's universal teaching about the omnipresence of the divine (Grewal 1969, 180).

The Hajj Context

Guru Nanak arrived at Mecca during the Hajj season, according to the janamsakhi tradition, when thousands of pilgrims were gathered. This context is significant: the Mecca episode was not a private encounter but took place in the most public religious arena in the Islamic world. The janamsakhi presentation of the encounter thus claims the highest possible audience for Guru Nanak's teaching — not a remote encounter with a marginal figure but an engagement at the center of global Islamic practice. Whether or not the episode occurred exactly as described, it encodes the janamsakhi tradition's understanding that Guru Nanak's teaching could hold its own in the most challenging possible religious environment.

5. The Kaaba Sakhi: Feet Toward the Qibla

The Sakhi

The Kaaba sakhi is the most celebrated episode of the entire Udasi tradition. According to the Puratan Janamsakhi and subsequent retellings, Guru Nanak lay down to sleep with his feet pointing toward the ਕਾਅਬਾ. An Islamic scholar (ਰੁਕੁਨਦੀਨ, Rukn al-Din, or identified as a qazi in some accounts) woke him angrily: how could he sleep with his feet toward the house of God? Guru Nanak's reply has become one of the most quoted sayings in Sikh tradition: turn my feet toward any direction where God does not exist. As the scholar moved Guru Nanak's feet away from the Kaaba, the Kaaba — according to the janamsakhi — moved in the same direction, always remaining at the foot of the Guru (Kohli 1969, 178).

The Theological Message

The Kaaba sakhi encodes a profound theological argument about divine omnipresence. The Islamic tradition does not literally claim that God dwells within the Kaaba; the Kaaba is the direction of prayer (qibla), a focal point for Muslim devotion. But popular religious practice had developed a sense that the Kaaba was the specific house of God, with a corresponding sense that other directions were less sacred. Guru Nanak's challenge — pointing his feet toward the Kaaba — is a challenge to this implicit geography of the sacred: if the divine is truly everywhere, there is no direction that is not toward God. The miraculous Kaaba-turning in the janamsakhi is the divine's own confirmation of this teaching (McLeod 1968, 183).

The Qazi's Response

According to the Janamsakhis, Rukn al-Din (or the qazi figure) was not simply defeated in the exchange but transformed. The miracle of the moving Kaaba convinced him of Guru Nanak's spiritual authority, and a genuine dialogue followed. This pattern — the initially hostile interlocutor transformed by encounter with Guru Nanak — is standard janamsakhi structure, but its theological content at Mecca has particular force: if even a learned Islamic scholar at the holiest site in Islam was moved to recognize Guru Nanak's teaching, the universality of that teaching is demonstrated at the highest possible level. The Fourth Udasi's climactic episode at Mecca thus served as the capstone of the entire udasi narrative.

6. The Theological Heart of the Mecca Episode

Divine Omnipresence as Theological Foundation

The Kaaba sakhi's central theological claim is the omnipresence of the divine — that no direction is more sacred than another because the divine is equally present in all directions. This claim is not anti-Islamic; it can be found within Islamic theology itself, particularly in the Sufi tradition. The Quran states: Wherever you turn, there is the face of God (Surah 2:115). The Sufi tradition, particularly the school of Ibn Arabi's wahdat al-wujud (unity of being), had developed sophisticated theologies of divine omnipresence. Guru Nanak's Mecca encounter can be read as aligning his teaching with the deepest resources of Islamic theology against a more limited popular practice (Schimmel 1975, 267).

The Qibla and Inner Prayer

Islamic practice orients prayer toward the Kaaba as a unifying discipline — all Muslims everywhere face the same direction, creating a physical expression of community and shared devotion. Guru Nanak's challenge is not to the Kaaba per se but to the implicit claim that God is more present in one direction than another. His teaching redirects from external orientation to internal: true prayer is not a matter of which direction the body faces but whether the heart faces the divine. This is not a unique Sikh position — it is shared with major strands of Sufi teaching — but Guru Nanak embodies it at the center of Sunni Islam's most sacred institution, giving it maximum force and drama (McLeod 1968, 185).

Guru Nanak and Islamic Monotheism

The Mecca encounter represents the deepest point of Guru Nanak's engagement with Islamic monotheism. His first declaration — Na koi Hindu, na koi Musalman (there is neither Hindu nor Muslim) — made at Sultanpur Lodhi at the beginning of the First Udasi, finds its ultimate testing ground at the center of the Islamic world. The claim is not that Islam is wrong but that the divine transcends all religious categories — and that the sincere Muslim, no less than the sincere Hindu, must ultimately encounter the One beyond all names. Guru Nanak's respect for Islamic spiritual practice is evident throughout his compositions; his challenge is always to the gap between the tradition's highest aspiration and its institutional limitation. The Mecca episode embodies this distinction perfectly.

7. Medina: The City of the Prophet

Medina After Mecca

From Mecca, the janamsakhi tradition records that Guru Nanak traveled to Medina — the second holiest city of Islam, containing the Masjid al-Nabawi (Prophet's Mosque) and the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad. Medina was (and remains) the destination of millions of Muslim pilgrims who visit after completing the Hajj in Mecca. The sacred geography of Islam thus has two poles: Mecca as the center of prayer and the site of the Kaaba, Medina as the city of the Prophet and the locus of the Islamic prophetic tradition (Kohli 1969, 185).

The Significance of the Medina Visit

Guru Nanak's visit to Medina, while less dramatically narrated in the Janamsakhis than the Mecca episode, carries its own significance. The Prophet Muhammad is the supreme exemplar of Islamic spiritual life — the one whose direct connection with the divine (wahy, revelation) founded the tradition. Guru Nanak's respectful presence at the tomb of the Prophet models a form of interfaith reverence that acknowledges the genuine spiritual authority of the Islamic prophetic tradition without subordinating his own teaching to it. The janamsakhi accounts of the Medina visit tend to record Guru Nanak's acknowledgment of the Prophet's greatness — a recognition consistent with his broader theology of diverse paths to the One divine reality (Grewal 1969, 185).

The Quranic Voice in Guru Nanak's Compositions

Several of Guru Nanak's compositions engage Quranic themes and use Arabic/Persian theological vocabulary with deep familiarity. The composition known as Patti (alphabet poem) includes references to Islamic as well as Hindu learning; the Bara Maha (months of the year) addresses the soul's longing for the divine in terms that resonate with Sufi love poetry; and several sabads directly address the Islamic community, calling them to live up to their own highest ideals. This sustained engagement with Islamic textual and devotional traditions demonstrates that Guru Nanak's Fourth Udasi encounter with Islam was not a sudden encounter but the culmination of a lifelong dialogue that had shaped his compositions from the beginning.

8. Baghdad: Meeting Bahlol Dana

Baghdad: City of the Caliphate

ਬਗਦਾਦ (Baghdad), on the banks of the Tigris river in modern Iraq, had been the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate and the center of the Islamic world's intellectual and cultural life for centuries before the Mongol sack of 1258. By Guru Nanak's time, Baghdad was under the rule of the Safavid-Ottoman conflict zone, but it remained a major city with a rich Islamic cultural heritage and a significant Sufi presence. The city was home to the tomb of Abdul Qadir Gilani (d. 1166), founder of the Qadiri Sufi order — one of the most widespread Sufi brotherhoods in the Islamic world (Schimmel 1975, 198).

Bahlol Dana: The Majzub

The most memorable encounter of the Baghdad episode is with ਬਾਹਲੋਲ (Bahlol Dana) — identified in the janamsakhi tradition as a majzub, a God-intoxicated mystic who had been overwhelmed by divine love to the point of losing ordinary social function. The majzub type was well-known in Sufi tradition: figures who had been so completely consumed by divine love that they appeared mad to ordinary observers but were recognized by the spiritually perceptive as having achieved a form of direct divine encounter. Bahlol Dana is a specific historical figure in Islamic tradition — associated with the early Abbasid period — but his appearance in the Fourth Udasi narrative may be a literary device that places Guru Nanak in dialogue with the highest expression of Islamic mystical absorption (Kohli 1969, 190).

The Encounter's Theological Content

The janamsakhi accounts of Guru Nanak's meeting with Bahlol Dana record an exchange between two figures who have each, from their respective traditions, arrived at the experience of divine omnipresence and the inadequacy of formal religious practice. Bahlol, from within the Islamic Sufi tradition, had abandoned all social convention in his total absorption in the divine; Guru Nanak, from outside the Islamic tradition, recognized in Bahlol a kindred spirit. This encounter of recognition — rather than the pattern of challenge and transformation that characterizes most udasi encounters — models a form of interfaith meeting that the tradition presents as possible: two genuinely God-realized individuals meeting in mutual acknowledgment beyond tradition (McLeod 1968, 188).

9. The Baghdad Miracle: Calling Across Worlds

The Miracle Account

The Janamsakhis record a dramatic miracle at Baghdad: Guru Nanak performed an azan (Islamic call to prayer) that was heard not only in the earthly world but in the heavens above and the netherworld below simultaneously. According to the account, when asked how many worlds there were, Guru Nanak indicated that the divine presence extended through worlds without number — not only the earth but countless realms of creation. The miracle of the multi-world azan dramatizes this teaching: the divine call encompasses the entire creation, not merely the visible world (Kohli 1969, 192).

The Azan as Theological Statement

Guru Nanak's performing of the azan at Baghdad is theologically rich. The azan is the distinctive call to Islamic prayer — a declaration that God is great, that there is no god but God, that Muhammad is his prophet, that prayer is better than sleep. By performing the azan, Guru Nanak enters fully into Islamic practice — he does not stand apart from it but participates in its most characteristic ritual act. His innovation is the cosmic extension: the azan he performs reaches not just the mosque courtyard but the entire creation. This is consistent with the Mecca Kaaba episode's theology: the divine is everywhere, prayer is everywhere, the call to the divine resonates through the entire cosmos (Grewal 1969, 190).

The Baghdad Plaque Tradition

An interesting historical dimension of the Baghdad episode is the tradition that Guru Nanak left a mark of his visit — a plaque or inscription — that was still visible in later centuries. Several sources from the Sikh tradition mention this inscription, and while independent verification has not been achieved, the tradition points to a conviction that Guru Nanak's Baghdad visit left a concrete historical trace. Whether or not the specific miracle accounts of the Baghdad episode are literally historical, the tradition's confidence in the visit's historicity is itself significant — the Fourth Udasi's western arc is presented not as mythological journey but as real travel to real places that left real traces (Singh 1994, 78).

10. The Return: Kabul and the Khyber Pass

The Return Route

After Baghdad, the janamsakhi tradition records Guru Nanak's journey through Khorasan (northeastern Persia/Central Asia) toward the subcontinent. Khorasan was a major cultural zone connecting the Persian world with the Indian subcontinent, home to major Sufi orders and a rich tradition of Persian Islamic culture. The route brought him to ਕਾਬਲ (Kabul) in the Hindu Kush mountains — the capital of the early Mughal empire under Babur at this period. From Kabul, the standard route back to Punjab passed through the famous Khyber Pass, one of the great mountain passes of the ancient world (Kohli 1969, 195).

Kabul: The Mughal Connection

Kabul in approximately 1521 was Babur's base of operations, from which he had launched his Punjab campaigns (including the Saidpur attack recorded in the Babarvani of the First Udasi). Guru Nanak's passage through Kabul thus creates a strange narrative symmetry: the ruler whose invasion he had witnessed and lamented in the Babarvani was now, in a sense, his neighbor on the return journey from the west. The janamsakhi tradition does not record a direct encounter between Guru Nanak and Babur at Kabul, but the proximity gives the Fourth Udasi return a historically grounded quality that anchors the western journey in the known political history of the period (Grewal 1969, 195).

Through the Khyber Pass

The Khyber Pass was (and remains) one of the most strategically and historically significant mountain passes in Asia, connecting the subcontinent to Central Asia. For Guru Nanak, the Khyber crossing marked the return from the western extreme of the Fourth Udasi toward home — toward Punjab, toward his family, and toward the final phase of his life. The journey through the pass brought him back into the Pashtun-inhabited borderlands between Afghanistan and Punjab, a region with its own religious character: a blend of tribal customs, Sufi Islam, and memories of earlier Hindu and Buddhist civilizations. The Fourth Udasi's return through the Khyber thus passed through layers of religious history on the way back to Guru Nanak's birthplace.

11. The Settlement at Kartarpur

Kartarpur: The City of God

After the Fourth Udasi, Guru Nanak settled at ਕਰਤਾਰਪੁਰ (Kartarpur, meaning 'city of God') on the bank of the Ravi river in Punjab. This settlement, which he founded and where he lived his final years until his death in approximately 1539, became the prototype of the Sikh community as Guru Nanak envisioned it. At Kartarpur, the daily routine he established — early morning prayer and ਕੀਰਤਨ, honest labor during the day, communal ਲੰਗਰ (community kitchen) in the evening — instantiated his teaching in a living social model (Singh 1994, 82).

The Kartarpur Model

The Kartarpur community embodied the full theological vision of the four udasis. The early morning prayer encoded the First Udasi's teaching about meaningful (not mechanical) worship. The honest labor of farming encoded the Bhai Lalo teaching of the Second Udasi. The communal langar with no caste distinctions at the table encoded the social vision of equality that ran through all four udasis. The kirtans that gathered the community each evening encoded the tradition of devotional song that Bhai Mardana's rabab had accompanied from Sultanpur to Baghdad and back. Kartarpur was, in this sense, the physical realization of the entire udasi journey (McLeod 1968, 195).

Guru Nanak's Last Years

At Kartarpur, Guru Nanak worked as a farmer alongside his followers, demonstrating the householder theology he had defended against the Siddhs at Sumer Parbat. The community grew, and people of all backgrounds — Hindu and Muslim, high-caste and low-caste — gathered. When Guru Nanak chose his successor, he passed the guruship not to his son but to Bhai Lehna, who had demonstrated the qualities of selfless service and spiritual receptivity — a choice that established the principle of spiritual merit over biological lineage that would shape the Sikh tradition through the ten Gurus. Kartarpur thus represents not only the end of the Fourth Udasi but the foundation of the Sikh community as an ongoing institution.

12. Legacy of the Fourth Udasi and the Complete Udasi Journey

The Mecca Sakhi's Theological Legacy

Of all the episodes in the four udasi tradition, the Mecca Kaaba sakhi has had the most enduring impact on Sikh theological self-understanding. The teaching that there is no direction where God does not dwell — and the miracle of the Kaaba turning to confirm this — has become a touchstone for Sikh theological reflection on divine omnipresence, interfaith relations, and the universal character of the divine reality. The sakhi is regularly cited in discussions of Sikh universalism and in dialogues between Sikhs and Muslims, where its respectful challenge to the directionality of prayer serves as a starting point for conversation rather than a point of conflict (Grewal 1969, 200).

The Four Udasis as Complete Arc

Viewed as a whole, the four udasis constitute a complete geographic and theological arc. East (First), South (Second), North (Third), and West (Fourth) — Guru Nanak engaged every direction of the compass, every major religious tradition, every geographic zone of the known world. The four udasis together demonstrate the core claim of Sikh universalism: the divine reality (ੴ) that Guru Nanak encountered and proclaimed is not the property of any one tradition, culture, or geography but the ground of all existence, encountered wherever sincere seekers turn. The udasi journey embodied this claim in the most literal possible way — by going everywhere and finding the divine everywhere (McLeod 1968, 200).

From Journey to Institution: The Udasi Legacy in Sikh Life

The four udasis shaped Sikh institutional life in lasting ways. The ਸੰਗਤ (congregation) established at each stop became the model for the gurdwara. The ਕੀਰਤਨ sung with Bhai Mardana became the central practice of Sikh worship. The ਲੰਗਰ (community kitchen) at Kartarpur became the institution practiced in every gurdwara worldwide. The householder theology defended against the Siddhs became the Sikh social norm. The universal engagement with all religions modeled by the four udasis became the basis for Sikh interfaith theology. In this sense, the udasi journeys did not end when Guru Nanak settled at Kartarpur — they became institutionalized in the very fabric of the Sikh tradition, continuing to shape Sikh life six centuries after their completion.

References & further reading

  1. Santokh Singh, Kavi. Sri Nanak Prakash. Amritsar: Khalsa Samachar, 1843.
  2. McLeod, W. H. Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968.
  3. Grewal, J. S. Guru Nanak in History. Chandigarh: Panjab University, 1969.
  4. Kohli, Surindar Singh. Janam Sakhi Traditions. Patiala: Punjabi University, 1969.
  5. Singh, Harbans. The Heritage of the Sikhs. New Delhi: Manohar, 1994.
  6. Schimmel, Annemarie. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975.
  7. McLeod, W. H., trans. and ed. The B40 Janam-Sakhi. Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University, 1980.

From the source text

(੧੭੬) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ਹੈ, ਤਿਸ ਬੀਰਜ ਤੇ ਹੀ ਸਰਬ ਕੀ ਉਤਪਤੀ ਹੈ। ਅਰ ਜਲ ਕੇ ਬਰਸਬੇ ਤੇ ਸਰਬ ਉਤਭੁਜ੧ ਕੀ ਉਤਪਤੀ ਹੈ। ਇਸੀ ਹੇਤ ਕਰਿ ਸਰਬ ਜਗਤ ਕੋ ਪਿਤਾ ਜਲ ਹੈ। ‘ਮਾਤਾ ਧਰਤਿ ਮਹਤੁ’=ਸਰਬ ਜਗਤ ਕੀ ਮਾਤਾ ਧਰਤੀ ਹੈ। ਕੈਸੀ ਧਰਤੀ ਹੈ? ‘ਮਹਤੁ’ ਕਹੀਏ ਬਡੀ ਹੈ।
(176) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Yes, from that seed, everything originates. And from the raining of water, all vegetation originates. For this reason, water is the father of the entire world. ‘Mata dharat mahat’ = the earth is the mother of the entire world. What kind of earth is it? It is called ‘mahat’, meaning great. A mother is one who supports and raises a child, nourishes them by producing milk from her own body, and bears the impurities of the child; in the same way, the earth relates to the entire world. First, it supports and holds everything upon itself; second, the earth produces grain and other sustenance within itself to feed everyone—the nourishment of all comes from the earth, and everything that originates from it consumes it.
— from Garab Ganjinee Teeka. Gurmukhi is the author's original text (OCR); the English is a machine translation. Both are short study excerpts — refer to the original for an authoritative reading.Read the full work on SikhLibrary ↗

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1. The Mecca Kaaba sakhi involves Guru Nanak sleeping with his feet toward the Kaaba. What was his response when confronted about this?
2. Pak Pattan, visited at the outset of the Fourth Udasi, was the shrine of which Sufi saint whose compositions appear in the Guru Granth Sahib?
3. In the Mecca Kaaba sakhi, what miraculously happened when the qazi moved Guru Nanak's feet away from the Kaaba?
4. Who was Bahlol Dana, encountered by Guru Nanak in Baghdad?
5. The settlement Guru Nanak founded after completing the Fourth Udasi was called:
6. The traditional dates of the Fourth Udasi are approximately:
7. At Baghdad, the miracle attributed to Guru Nanak involved:
8. The Kartarpur community's daily routine — morning prayer, honest labor, evening langar — embodied which teaching from the udasi journeys?
9. Guru Nanak wore pilgrim dress (blue robe and cap) for the journey to Mecca as an example of:
10. The four udasis together cover all four compass directions. Which course matches which udasi?

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