Jandiala Sher Khan

Jandiala Sher Khan, or Jandy ala Sher Khan (Urdu: جنڈیالہ شیر خاں), is a town of Sheikhupura District in the Punjab, Pakistan. It is part of Sheikhupura Tehsil^[1] and is located at 31°49'15N 73°55'10E.^[2] The town is notable for being the birthplace of famous poet Waris Shah, known as the Punjabi Shakespeare,^[3] and contains his Mausoleum.^[4]

Jandiala Sher khan was an important provincial town in the Mughal empire. Although the town was located on a floodplain and there were no nearby sources of water, requiring local residents to dig wells to irrigate their crops. During the reign of Emperor Akbar, a man of means known as Sher Khan settled here. Heeding the advice of a local dervish named Syed Ghaznavi, Sher Khan built a monumental step-well (known as a baoli) to provide easier access to the water table.^[5] Sher Khan also built a caravansary-like structure over the stairs to the well, either serving as a type of inn or providing space for merchants to sell goods to travelers moving to and fro along the road between Lahore and Kashmir. Immediately to the southeast of the baoli he also endowed a small mosque.^[5] The design of the step well is quintessentially Akbarian. The ground plan is conceived as a central domed chamber surrounded by eight smaller rooms, a motif known as hasht bihisht ("eight paradises"), a Mughal innovation derived from Timurid precedent.^[5] Sher Khan's endowment of the baoli was immortalized by a plaque in Persian calligraphy that used to hang on the site, but was moved to the Lahore Museum, Pakistan for safekeeping in 1971. It is the place of the ex-governor Punjab Kaliningrad Khan also^[5]