Mushtaq Hussain Shah was not simply a young man from Kashmir. His own autobiographical account presents him as someone who had already pursued formal Islamic education before the journey that would change his life.

He records that he had graduated as a Moulvi from Darul Uloom Deoband, describing himself as a qualified Islamic scholar. He also records training as a naturopathic doctor at Azam Khan’s Tibbia College in Delhi.

These details are important because they show that his intellectual development preceded his later encounter with Sikh history. His later writings would draw upon the Arabic and Persian scholarly traditions with which he had become familiar.

The surviving autobiographical record gives us only limited detail about the everyday life of the young Mushtaq Hussain. What it does preserve is his educational path.

His studies placed him within the world of Islamic scholarship, while his later travels exposed him to religious and historical traditions beyond his immediate surroundings.

This distinction matters for the historical archive. We should not fill the gaps in the childhood record with assumptions. Instead, the documented educational journey provides the foundation for understanding what came next.

According to his own account, Mushtaq Hussain had returned from a visit to Lahore when he found his father preparing to undertake Hajj.

His father asked him to accompany him. Mushtaq records that he sought permission from his mother before preparing for the pilgrimage. His mother, like his father, belonged to a prominent Syed family of the Sadat tradition.

Permission was given, and Mushtaq Hussain prepared to join his father and a group of Kashmiri pilgrims.

In 1927, Mushtaq Hussain travelled with a group of Kashmiri pilgrims under his father’s leadership.

His autobiographical account records the route through Karachi, Aden and Jeddah before reaching Makkah.

The journey was therefore not simply a movement from one city to another. It connected a young scholar from Kashmir with the wider Islamic world and placed him in an environment where people, languages, manuscripts and traditions met.

After completing the pilgrimage in Makkah, Mushtaq Hussain and his father travelled to Medina.

For Mushtaq, Medina became particularly important. According to his own account, he was there to continue his Islamic studies and studied Hadith.

He also made use of the library in Medina. It was within this setting of Islamic scholarship that he encountered a manuscript whose subject was completely unexpected to him: the travels of Guru Nanak.

Chapter 3 is based primarily on the first-person account attributed to Sant Syed Prithipal Singh Ji, supplemented by the biographical introduction published with the same work.

For Mushtaq Hussain, the journey to Medina had begun as part of his religious education and pilgrimage. Yet the library opened an unexpected path.

According to the account preserved in Taajudin’s Diary, he came across a handwritten manuscript titled Sihayto Baba Nanak Fakir, attributed in the published account to Taajudin Naqshbandi.

The appearance of Guru Nanak’s name in an Islamic scholarly setting surprised the young Mushtaq Hussain and drew him deeply into the manuscript.

This is where the next chapter of his life begins. The scholar from Kashmir had entered the library searching within a world of Islamic learning. He emerged from that encounter carrying a new historical question — one that would remain with him for the rest of his life.