HAZRATBAL HOLY RELIC OF PROPHET MUHAMMAD PBUH

The Hazratbal Shrine ( Kashmiri : حضرت بل; Urdu : حضرت بل , literally: Majestic Place ), is a Muslim shrine in Srinagar , India . Itcontains a relic believed by many Muslims of Kashmir to be a hair of the Islamic prophet Muhammad . The name of the shrine comes from the Arabic word Hazrat, meaning holy or majestic, and the Kashmiri word bal, (bal is a corrupted form of Sanskrit Vala which means an enclosure) meaning place. [ 1 ]
The shrine is situated on the left bank of the Dal Lake , Srinagar andis considered to be Kashmir 's holiest Muslim shrine. [ 2 ] The Moi-e-Muqqadas (the sacred hair)of Mohammed is believed to be preserved here. The shrine is known by many names including Hazratbal, Assar-e-Sharief, Madinat-us-Sani, or simply Dargah Sharif.
History of the relic

According to legend, the relic was first brought to India by SyedAbdullah, a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad who left Medina and settled in Bijapur , near Hyderabad in 1635. When Syed Abdullah died, his son, Syed Hamid, inherited the relic. Following the Mughal conquest ofthe region, Syed Hamid was stripped of his family estates. Finding himself unable to care forthe relic, he sold it to a wealthy Kashmiri businessman, Khwaja Nur-ud-Din Eshai.
However, when the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb cameto know of what had transpired, he had the relic seized and sent to the shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer , and had Khwaja Nur-ud-Din Eshai imprisoned in Lahore for possessing the relic. Later, realizing his mistake, Aurangzeb decided to restore the relic to Khwaja Nur-ud-Din Eshai and allowed him to take it to Kashmir . However, by that point, Khwaja Nur-ud-Din Eshai had already died in imprisonment. In the year1700, the relic finally reached Kashmir, along with the body of Khwaja Nur-ud-Din Eshai. There, Inayat Begum, daughter of Khwaja Nur-ud-Din Eshai, becamea custodian of the relic and established the shrine.
Inayat Begum was married into the prominent Banday family in Kashmir, and since then, her descendants from the Banday family have been the keepers of the relic, known as Nishaandehs (literally: givers of the sign).


Hazratbal disappearance episode
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Hazratbal disappearance episode is the incident in 1963 of the disappearance of a hair - believed to be of the Prophet Muhammad from the Hazratbal shrine in Jammu and Kashmir state in India . [ 1 ]
The hair was reported disppeared on 26 December 1963. There were mass protests all over the state on the disappearance of the Mo-e-Muqaddas (the Hair of the Prophet) with hundreds of thousands out in streets. Awami Action Committee was formed to recover relic. On 31 December the prime minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru made a broadcast to the nation on the disappreance of the sacred relic. The relic was recovered on 4 January 1964