Kabir

Kabir
An 1825 CE painting depicts Kabir weaving.
Born	uncertain (1398 or 1440 CE) Lahartara near Kashi (present-day Varanasi)
Died	uncertain (1448 or 1518 CE) Maghar
Occupation	Weaver, poet
Known for	influencing the Bhakti movement, Sant Mat and Kabir Panth movements. Having hymns included in the Guru Granth Sahib
Movement	Bhakti (Ramananda's disciple)
Parents	Neeru (father) Neema (mother)

Kabir (Hindi: कबीर, IAST: Kabīr) was a 15th-century Indian mystic poet and saint, whose writings influenced Hinduism's Bhakti movement and his verses are found in Sikhism's scripture Adi Granth. His early life was in a Muslim family, but he was strongly influenced by his teacher, the Hindu bhakti leader Ramananda.

Kabir is known for being critical of both Hinduism and Islam, stating that the former was misguided by the Vedas and the latter by the Quran, and questioning their meaningless rites of initiation such as the sacred thread and circumcision respectively. During his lifetime, he was threatened by both Hindus and Muslims for his views. When he died, both Hindus and Muslims he had inspired claimed him as theirs.

Kabir suggested that True God is with the person who is on the path of righteousness, considered all creatures on earth as his own self, and who is passively detached from the affairs of the world. To know God, suggested Kabir, meditate with the mantra Rāma, Rāma.

Kabir's legacy survives and continues through the Kabir panth ("Path of Kabir"), a religious community that recognises him as its founder and is one of the Sant Mat sects. Its members are known as Kabir panthis.

The years of Kabir's birth and death are unclear. Some historians favor 1398–1448 as the period Kabir lived, while others favor 1440–1518.

Many legends, inconsistent in their details, exist about his birth family and early life. According to one version, Kabir was born to a Brahmin unwed mother in Varanasi, by a seedless conception and delivered through the palm of her hand, who then abandoned him in a basket floating in a pond, and baby Kabir was picked up then raised by a Muslim family. However, modern scholarship has abandoned these legends for lack of historical evidence, and Kabir is widely accepted to have been born and brought up in a family of Muslim weavers. According to the Indologist Wendy Doniger, Kabir was born into a Muslim family and various birth legends attempt to "drag Kabir back over the line from Muslim to Hindu".