Uch

Uch, also called Uch Sharif, rises from the cultivated land of southern Punjab where the Panjnad rivers meet the edge of Cholistan, near the old meeting of the Chenab and the Indus. It was a regional city between the 12th and 17th centuries and a refuge for Muslim scholars. Shrines of Sufi saints, faced with glazed tile, stand among the lanes, and the Suhrawardi order spread here from nearby Multan. Jalaluddin Surkh-Posh Bukhari had settled in the town from Bukhara in 1244-45, and the Bukhari sayyids became its leading family.

Uch was in Delhi's hands in 1337, and in 1398 Timur's grandson Pir Muhammad took it, restoring it to Khizr Khan, who was to found the Sayyid dynasty. In the early 15th century it came under the Langah sultans of Multan. Around 1494 the tomb of Bibi Jawindi, a descendant of Jalaluddin, was raised, and in the same century Muhammad Ghaus Gilani founded a Qadiri Sufi lodge here; Guru Nanak is said to have visited Jalaluddin's descendants. The Arghuns invaded in 1525 and Sher Shah Suri took Uch in 1540, and under Akbar it became a district of Multan province. The poet Bulleh Shah was born here in 1680.