Sultan Uvays Bobo Complex

Who was Sultan Uvays?

Uwais al-Qarani, remembered locally as Sultan Uvays, was born in Qaran in Yemen and is revered as a contemporary of the Prophet and a collector of hadith; tradition says he fell at the Battle of Siffin in 657 and was buried in Syria. His grave here is symbolic: a shrine appeared in the 17th century, and a large mosque with ten cells was added in the 19th. The complex is a rectangle of 21.5 by 53 metres running north to south, and its entrance was renovated in 2002.

Pilgrimage customs

Pilgrims first climb to the tomb of Chinor Bobo on the hilltop — said to have been Sultan Uvays’s teacher or muezzin, though scholars consider him a figure of local folklore — before visiting the saint’s own grave. By the gate is a sacred spring, said to have welled up beneath the saint’s foot, feeding a pool whose fish nobody eats; dead fish are buried with ceremony, and drinking the water is a main aim of the visit. Along the dry bed of the old channel, women hoping for children build small stone cairns. Legend has it that on a nearby hill Sultan Uvays fasted for forty days, praying for all Muslims.