Noted scholar and dec­o­rated Pro­fes­sor and Head of the De­part­ment of Phi­los­o­phy and Re­li­gion, San­ti­nike­tan Uni­ver­sity -Mo­hammed Sir­a­jul Is­lam re­views Dr Jas­bir Singh Sar­na’s book -’Guru Nanak’s Jour­ney to Arab coun­tries’, which doc­u­ments the au­thor’s ac­count of how the First Mas­ter of the Sikh re­li­gion trav­elled far and wide into the world of Is­lam.

GURU NANAK DE­BJI IS A RARE PER­SON­AL­ITY IN THE AN­NALS OF MANKIND, who was not only the founder of Sikhism but also an egal­i­tar­ian so­cial re­former, mys­tic, an­chorite, Faqir as well as an Am­bas­sador of Peace and Hu­man Unity. He had a deeper re­la­tion­ship with the peo­ple of dif­fer­ent faiths and was also al­ways ea­ger to em­brace the whole­some teach­ings of other faiths and cul­ture too.

Guru Nanak re­al­ized the in­ner core of var­i­ous re­li­gions and af­ter en­com­pass­ing the ben­e­fi­cial parts, adopted those into the Sikh Re­li­gion.

The works of Kabir, Namdeb, Baba Farid and oth­ers are in­cor­po­rated in the Guru Granth Sahib. He did not hes­i­tate to adopt some of the prac­tices of Bhakti cults and Sufi prac­tices, be­cause, he thought that the fun­da­men­tal teach­ings and car­di­nal virtues of each and every re­li­gion are eter­nal and same but their mode of ex­pres­sions and prac­tices may be var­ied due to the founder’s un­der­stand­ing and re­al­iza­tions.

He ex­tended his ser­vice to all and sundry with­out any re­luc­tance and dis­crim­i­na­tion of caste, creed and re­li­gion. Guru Nanak’s con­tri­bu­tion is unique and un­com­mon in world his­tory. His ini­tia­tive of hu­man unity and har­mony still at­tracts all phil­an­thropic peo­ple glob­ally and also mo­ti­vates them to ini­ti­ate a move­ment against so­cial evils and re­li­gious big­otry. By the in­flu­ence of Guru Nanakji, many peo­ple dis­par­aged evil deeds and re­lent­lessly en­gaged in the ser­vice of hu­man­ity.

Guru Nanak De­b­ji’s open-mind­ed­ness is vivid in his dif­fer­ent ac­tiv­i­ties and moral prac­tices.

In or­der to ac­quire knowl­edge and re­al­iza­tion, Guru Nanak trav­elled far and wide and did not hes­i­tate to go to the Arab world and Per­sia. His­tory at­tests that Guru Nanak vis­ited Mecca, Med­ina and the var­i­ous parts of Per­sia, but we had no clear idea and ev­i­dence of his trav­els

Jas­bir Singh Sarna has done a won­der­ful job to col­lect the orig­i­nal man­u­script of Guru Nanak De­b­ji’s travel to the Arab coun­tries and pub­lished that travel his­tory in a book form. I must con­grat­u­late him for his no­ble deeds.

In my view­point, it is not a full book, rather it is a trea­tise based on the orig­i­nal source -Tarikh-e-Arab. This small book is di­vided into seven head­ings, like- Guru Nanak’s ar­rival to Mecca and the Prayer in Med­ina, Knowl­edge­able Knowl­edge to the city of Kufa, Ka­reen Hamid story, Meet­ing with the Peer Bagh­dad and his re­demp­tion, Faqir Bahi­lal’s re­demp­tion, the meet­ings with Mush­taq Hus­sain and the Re­al­ity of Prithipal Singh.

Guru Nanak’s con­tri­bu­tion is unique and un­com­mon in world his­tory. His ini­tia­tive of hu­man unity and har­mony still at­tracts all phil­an­thropic peo­ple glob­ally and also mo­ti­vates them to ini­ti­ate a move­ment against so­cial evils and re­li­gious big­otry. 

All head­ings of the book are thought-pro­vok­ing and in­ter­est­ing. Af­ter read­ing this book, read­ers and schol­ars will fa­mil­iar­ize them­selves with in­ter­est­ing and in­trigu­ing events re­lated to the Guru Nanak De­b­ji’s travel to the Ara­bian coun­tries.

I do hope it will quench the thirst of the schol­ars of his­tory, re­li­gion, so­cial sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy and cul­ture. The ini­tia­tive of Dr Jas­bir Singh Sarna is unique and we await his next praise­wor­thy vol­ume.

Ti­tle Im­age: The ti­tle of the book has been su­per­im­posed on the photo of the Gur­d­wara built in Bagh­dad to com­mem­o­rate Guru Nanak’s visit there.

Mo­hammed Sir­a­jul Is­lam is Pro­fes­sor and For­mer Head, Dept. of Phi­los­o­phy and Re­li­gion, Visva-Bharati Uni­ver­sity, San­ti­nike­tan. He is a na­tional awardee of many In­dian awards and Am­bas­sador of the Par­lia­ment of World Re­li­gions.