Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi, called Mujaddid Alf Sani, the renewer of the second millennium, was a Naqshbandi Sufi of Sirhind who died in 1624. His tomb complex, Rauza Sharif, is one of the most important Naqshbandi shrines in the world.
It draws pilgrims from Afghanistan, Central Asia and Turkey. The annual urs brings visitors from countries whose citizens do not otherwise come to Punjab.
His theological position, an insistence on orthodoxy against the syncretic tendencies of Akbar's court, is influential in South Asian Islam and is argued about intensely, including by people who claim him for positions he may not have held.
The complex stands at Sirhind, a few kilometres from Fatehgarh Sahib, where the younger Sahibzade were killed in 1704 and where the Shaheedi Sabha draws lakhs of Sikhs each December.
Two of the most significant religious sites of two traditions sit within walking distance of each other on the ruins of a Mughal city that the Khalsa demolished twice.
The Naqshbandi order is the one Sufi tradition that generally stayed close to orthodox law, and this is its principal seat in South Asia. Its lines run from here through Delhi and out into Central Asia, which is exactly why the visitors come from where they come from.
Sirhind itself is gone. The city was among the largest in northern India, was sacked in 1710 and again in January 1764, and what is left is a field of mounds with a handful of buildings standing among them: this enclosure, the Aam Khas Bagh, the Jama Masjid and a few tombs of the Mughal governors.
It stands a short distance from Fatehgarh Sahib. Two of the most consequential religious sites in northern India, of two traditions with a hard history between them, sit within a few kilometres of each other.