Mushtaq Hussain had travelled to Medina as a student of Islamic learning. His own account says that he studied Hadith and made use of the library while continuing his studies.

It was within this environment of religious scholarship that he encountered something he had not expected to find: a manuscript containing an account of Guru Nanak’s travels.

The significance of the discovery, as preserved in his later writings, was not simply that Guru Nanak’s name appeared in the manuscript. Mushtaq Hussain became fascinated by what he read and continued to investigate the account.

The published account identifies the manuscript as a Persian-Arabic work concerning Guru Nanak’s journeys through the Middle East.

In Sant Syed Prithipal Singh Ji’s later account, the writer of the manuscript is identified as Taajudin Naqshbandi, described as an Arabic-Persian scholar who encountered Guru Nanak during the Guru’s travels.

According to the narrative preserved in the book, Taajudin accompanied Guru Nanak for an extended period and recorded what he witnessed in the form of a diary.

The published account identifies Taajudin Naqshbandi as the author of the manuscript. It describes him as a scholar associated with the Naqshbandi tradition and the Shafi’i school of Sunni Islam.

According to the narrative, Taajudin encountered Guru Nanak during the Guru’s journey through the Middle East and subsequently accompanied him for approximately one-and-a-half to two years.

The account says that Taajudin eventually separated from Guru Nanak after Baghdad and returned to Medina, where he completed his manuscript.

These details belong to the historical narrative preserved in Sant Ji’s work. The archive therefore presents them as source-attributed claims, rather than presenting every detail as independently verified historical fact.

The importance of the manuscript in the biography is best understood through Mushtaq Hussain’s own response to what he read.

The published text says that he became deeply fascinated by the manuscript. He was particularly struck by its account of people within the Islamic world encountering and responding to Guru Nanak’s teachings.

For a young Muslim scholar already trained in Islamic literature, this material presented an unexpected historical and spiritual question.

The discovery did not immediately conclude his journey. Instead, it opened a period of investigation, reflection and questioning that would continue after he returned from the pilgrimage.

Because this website is intended to function as a historical archive, it is important to distinguish between the existence of a published account and independent physical verification of the original manuscript.

The later history of the manuscript is less certain than the account of its discovery.

The published narrative states that Mushtaq Hussain took the manuscript with him, showed it to his father and eventually brought it to India.

It also records that he showed the manuscript to Jathedar Achhar Singh in Lahore before his later transformation into Sant Syed Prithipal Singh Ji.

However, the same published material acknowledges uncertainty about the manuscript’s later whereabouts. It notes that Sant Ji moved frequently before settling in Patiala and that many belongings were lost.

For that reason, the archive should not currently claim that the original manuscript survives at a particular location unless new documentary evidence establishes it.

The discovery of the manuscript did not instantly produce the man who would later be known as Sant Syed Prithipal Singh Ji.

It began a process. Mushtaq Hussain had encountered a narrative that challenged the boundaries of what he had previously understood about Guru Nanak and the religious world through which the Guru had travelled.

The manuscript became a subject of continuing study and reflection. Later accounts describe this period as one of profound change in his thinking and spiritual direction.

The next chapter follows that search — the questions Mushtaq Hussain began asking and the investigation that gradually brought him closer to the teachings of Guru Nanak.