Baba Sheikh Farid

Farīd al-Dīn Ganj-i-Shakar فرید الدین گنج شکر
An imagined modern portrait of Farīd al-Dīn Ganj-i-Shakar
Sheikh ul Alam Qutb-e-Akbar
Born	c. 1175 Kothewal, Multan, Punjab, Ghurid Sultanate (present-day Pakistan)
Died	c. 1266 Pakpattan, Punjab, Delhi Sultanate (present-day Pakistan)
Venerated in	Barelivism, South Asian Sufism especially of the Chishti order, Sikhism
Major shrine	Shrine of Baba Farid, Pakpattan, Pakistan

Farīd al-Dīn Masʿūd Ganj-i-Shakar (c. 1175-1266), known reverentially as Bābā Farīd or Shaykh Farīd by Muslims and Sikhs of South Asia, or simply as Farīduddīn Ganjshakar, was an 12th-century Punjabi Muslim preacher and mystic who went on to become "one of the most revered and distinguished ... Muslim mystics" of the medieval period.

Fariduddin Masud was a great Sufi master who was born in 1179 at a village called Kothewal, 10 km from Multan in the Punjab region of what is now Pakistan, to Jamāl-ud-dīn Suleimān and Maryam Bībī (Qarsum Bībī), daughter of Sheikh Wajīh-ud-dīn Khojendī. He was one of the founding fathers of the Chishti Sufi order. Baba Farid received his early education at Multan, which had become a centre for Muslim education; it was there that he met his teacher Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, a noted Sufi saint, who was passing through Multan on his way from Baghdad to Delhi. Upon completing his education, Farīd left for Sistan and Kandahar and went to Makkah for the Hajj pilgrimage with his parents at the age of 16.

Once his education was over, he moved to Delhi, where he learned the Islamic doctrine from his master, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki. He later moved to Hansi, Haryana. When Quṭbuddīn Bakhtiyār Kākī died in 1235, Farīd left Hansi and became his spiritual successor, and he settled in Ajodhan (the present Pakpattan, Pakistan) instead of Delhi. On his way to Ajodhan, while passing through Faridkot, he met the 20-year-old Nizāmuddīn, who went on to become his disciple, and later his successor Sufi khalīfah.