Though hardly famous, his ancestors were Bukhara-origin Sayyids long connected to the Multan area. One of them was a disciple of the thirteenth-century Sufi saint buried in Multan city, Bahauddin Zakaria. Bulleh’s father, Shah Muhammad, however, lived much closer to Lahore, in the neighbourhood of Kasur. A teacher affiliated to the village mosque in Pandoke, fifty miles from Kasur town, Shah Muhammad was well-versed in Arabic, Persian, and the Qur’an.
