By Prof. Dr Sabir Badalkhan,



Zikris live in large numbers in Balochistan and Sind. They are all Baloch, speaking mainly Balochi but some Brahui speakers also from the Jahlawan region of Khuzdar district.

Zikri Baloch have later migrated and settled in large numbers in district Lasbela of Balochistan as well in Karachi and interior Sind but there are no reports of any non-Baloch Zikris (by Baloch I mean Balochi and Brahui speakers who call themselves Baloch by nationality).

The term zigri is the Balochi pronunciation of the term zikri which means a person who prays zikr. They pray five times daily zikr (locally calledc zigr by the Baloch) in their prayer houses called zigrana or zikrkhana (in the way of Ismailis congregation places called jamatkhana).

They believe in Muhammad al-Arabi as the last prophet and Quran as the last book. They believe that though the prophethood terminated with Muhammad of Arabia, Imams continued coming until the last imam who was the Mahdi.

They believe that the Mahid, whose arrival was predicted in the Hadith of the holy Prophet, has come and gone. It is not true that they believe in Sayyid Mohammad Jaunpuri being their Mahdi.

As a matter of fact, none of their religious books and oral traditions make any mention of this Sayyid Mohammad Jaunpuri, and none among the Zikris has ever heard of him. Who was their Mahdi is not clear but all of their records show that he was born in AH 977, i.e. 67 years after the death of Sayyid Mohammad Jaunpuri. Their records show that this Mahdi had stayed 6 years in Lar (a city in the Fars province of Iran) and ten years in Kech (now called Turbat) in Makran.

Until the first half of the 18th century the whole of Makran was Zikri and the boundaries of the Zikri Baloch state extended up to Lasbela and Khuzdar on the east, Kharan on the north, and Minab and Kirman on the west.

On the south was the Baloch coast which was also Zikri. The first attack on the Zikris came during the time of Khan Nasir Khan of Kalat who wanted to extend his rule on all Baloch areas and the Zikri Baloch state of Makran was a hurdle in his way of all Baloch land unification.

He killed the Zikri ruler, Malik Dinar, devastated towns and villages and put on fire and sword the whole region for about 40 years (from 1757 to 1795). As a result, the Zikri state was destroyed and the majority of the Zikri Baloch converted to the Sunni Islam. The British travellers found more than half of the present day Pakistani administered Makran Zikri during the mid-19th.

Presently their number has been reduced to a few hundred thousand and the ratio of conversion to the Sunni Islam is very high.Who was their Mahdi? is a complicated question with no easy answers.

There are no records to show who he was but the Zikris have murshids who claim direct descendant from Shah Niamatullah Wali of Kirman. On the basis of this it is argued that the Zikri faith was most probably an offshoot of that Sufi order and the Zikri Baloch rulers of Makran gave it an independent colour soon after they got power in Makran and established their Zikri Baloch kingdom independent from all foreign influence.

Might it be but nobody is in a condition to say who he was except for the fact that he was surely not Sayyid Mohammad Jaunpuri from India. There is nothing to be surer than this. Besides, their religious practices are very much close to the Ismaili practices and many scholars believe that both come from the same root and that the Zikrism is a by-product of the Nimatollahi sufi order of Iran.

(I am writing a book on the Zikris and have contributed a paper on the subject for a conference proceeding held in 2005 at Uppsala in Sweden. I hope to have my book out by the end of this year).



Prof. Dr Sabir Badalkhan,