AT A GLANCE

Why go?

Tucked behind Hasan Square in Karachi's Gulshan-e-Iqbal neighbourhood, the Mazar Sheikh Kamaluddin Syed Abdul Qadir Gilani is a working Sufi shrine that doubles as a mosque and madrasa complex. Listed on Google Maps under the Urdu category درگاہ (dargah/shrine) and rated an unusually high 4.9 from dozens of visitors, it is a place of quiet devotion rather than a grand tourist monument—and that is exactly its appeal.↗↗

The shrine carries the name of the Qadiri saint Syed Kamaluddin Abdul Qadir Gilani and sits within a Markaz-ul-Qadri, a centre of the Qadiri Sufi order descended from the venerated Baghdad scholar Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani, known across South Asia as Ghaus-e-Azam. Visitors describe a well-kept, recently modernized compound built around a mosque (Jama Masjid), a tomb (mazar) and a madrasa, Dar-ul-Uloom Qadriya, where the order's learning and remembrance continue.↗↗↗