The Kartarpur settlement
Sheikh Ibrahim at Pak Pattan
Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji met the successor of Shaikh Farid, and the two debated whether one can sail in two boats.
According to the Puratan Janamsakhi, Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji and Mardana were singing in the forest outside Pak Pattan when Kamal, a disciple of Sheikh Ibrahim, came gathering firewood. He stopped to listen to the verses, carried them back to his master and said he had met a true man of God.
The Sheikh came out and looked at this person in a householder's clothes. He warned him not to want both God and the world: a man who stands on two boats, he said, will lose his cargo. Guru Ji's reply was to place feet and goods on both. For those who trade in what is true, he said, there would be neither sea nor sinking.
How do we know?
Several traditional accounts tell this story, without close independent support.
This is one of the few encounters with a Sufi that McLeod accepts as likely.
- Later traditionGives the Puratan's discourse with Sheikh Ibrahim and the exchange about the two boats.[EoS]
- ScholarshipTreats the meeting as a strong probability, because Pak Pattan was close and famous, while thinking the actual discourse largely imagined. (p. 140)[McLeod]
- ScholarshipRejects the versions which have Guru Ji meet Farid himself, since he passed away in 1265. (pp. 80, 82)[McLeod]
