On the wide, sun-baked plains of southern Punjab stands Multan, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in South Asia and a place where layers of history press close together. Known affectionately as the City of Saints, Madinat-ul-Auliya, it has drawn merchants, mystics, and pilgrims for centuries. Its skyline is studded with the tiered, blue-tiled domes of Sufi shrines, its bazaars glow with hand-painted pottery and camel-skin lamps, and in the height of summer its orchards ripen with some of the sweetest mangoes in the region. Multan wears its age gracefully, a city of devotion and craft at the heart of the Saraiki-speaking belt.
A City of Ancient Origins
Multan's story reaches back thousands of years. Traces of settlement here are linked to the era of the Indus Valley Civilisation, and the city appears in classical accounts of antiquity. When Alexander the Great's armies marched through the region, Multan reportedly stood on an island in the Ravi, a river that has since shifted its course across the flat alluvial plains. Today the city lies near the Chenab, one of the great rivers that give Punjab its name, meaning the land of five waters. Few cities can claim such an unbroken thread of habitation, with each passing age adding a fresh layer to its identity.
The City of Saints
The title for which Multan is best loved is the City of Saints. Over the centuries it became a magnet for Sufi mystics who settled, taught, and were buried here, and their tombs turned the city into a place of pilgrimage. The devotional culture that grew around these shrines remains alive today, expressed in song, poetry, and the gatherings that mark each saint's annual urs, or commemoration. This living tradition connects Multan to the wider world of Sufi Music, whose qawwali and folk hymns echo across the shrines of Punjab and carry the message of love and unity that the saints preached.
Multan is called Madinat-ul-Auliya, the City of Saints, for the many mystics who made it their home and their resting place.
The Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam
The grandest of Multan's monuments is the Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam, a fourteenth-century Sufi saint whose mausoleum crowns a low hill at the heart of the old city. Built between about 1320 and 1324 during the Tughluq period, it is regarded as one of the earliest and finest examples of Tughluq architecture. The tomb rises in three tiers from an octagonal base, reaching some thirty-five metres in height, its walls of red brick reinforced with beams of dark shisham wood. The exterior is clothed in dark blue, azure, and white tiles arranged in floral and geometric patterns, a masterpiece of medieval tomb design that has placed it on UNESCO's tentative list of World Heritage Sites.
Bahauddin Zakariya and the Shrines
Equally revered is the shrine of Bahauddin Zakariya, the founder of the Suhrawardi Sufi order in the region and one of the towering spiritual figures of medieval Multan. His tomb, set within a walled complex, was for a time the resting place of Shah Rukn-e-Alam before that saint was moved to his own mausoleum. Together these two shrines anchor a city dotted with the graves of saints and scholars. The square and octagonal tombs, with their domes of glazed tile, form a distinctive school of architecture that influenced sacred buildings far beyond Multan itself.
Crafts, Pottery, and Mangoes
Beyond its shrines, Multan is famous for the work of its hands. Its blue-glazed Multani pottery and tilework, painted in cobalt and turquoise, are admired across the subcontinent and have long decorated the city's own monuments. Artisans here also produce fine handicrafts, embroidered textiles, and the delicate camel-skin lamps that cast warm, patterned light. Surrounding the city are orchards renowned for their mangoes, whose sweetness owes much to Multan's intensely hot summers. The combination of craft and harvest has made the city a centre of trade as well as devotion for centuries.
The Sikh Era and the Road to War
Multan's strategic position made it a prize for successive rulers. In 1818 the city was captured and incorporated into the Sikh Empire after a siege led by forces under Kharak Singh. Three decades later, in 1848, a revolt at Multan against Sikh and British authority set off a chain of events that helped spark the Second of The Anglo-Sikh Wars. The fighting that followed would reshape the political map of the whole region. Multan thus stands alongside cities such as Lahore as a witness to the dramatic shifts of nineteenth-century Punjab.
Multan Today
In the present day Multan is a major city of southern Punjab and a heartland of Saraiki language and culture. Its bazaars still trade in pottery and crafts, its orchards still send mangoes across the country, and its shrines still welcome streams of pilgrims. The city carries its long past lightly, blending the rhythms of a busy modern centre with the deep devotional life that earned it the name City of Saints. To walk its lanes is to move through centuries of faith, craft, and continuity, all gathered on the warm plains beside the Chenab.