History

Dafther Jailany was the meditation centre of one of the greatest saints in Islamic history, Sheikh Muhiyadeen Abdul Qadir Gilani.

The Saint and Dafter Jailany are linked by more than name: rock carvings, Arabic inscriptions, writings, tombstones an dlegend indicate that the saint meditated at Dafther Jailany for a period, and there are many stories about the saint's visit and his impact on Dafther Jailany. Today, Dafther Jailany is the main focal point for Sufism in Sri Lanka. Jailani is situated at about 60 km from Ratnapura and Maskeliya, the most convenient base for climbing the mountain, is a four hour drive from Jailani. The shrine at Jailani lies serenely exposed at the edge of a dramatic granite escarpment 22 km southeast of Balangoda. The legends linking Jailani to the twelfth century travels (astral or otherwise) of Sheikh Muhiyadeen Abdul Qadir Jilani have been collected elsewhere' (Aboosally 1975, 2002), but the plausibility of these traditions is closely linked to the historical evidence of medieval Arab and Persian pilgrimages to Adam's Peak.
Although Jailani is said to have been a place of Muslim refuge and Sufi meditation from the beginning of the fourth century of the Islamic era—and both a discovered dervish tombstone and some Arabic inscriptions would seem to support this view (Aboosally 2002)—all of the infrastructure of the Jailani shrine today is of twentieth century origin.

The site was rediscovered in 1875 through the efforts of an Indian Muslim of Lakshadweep origin who subsequently married and settled in Balangoda. However, it is worth noting that the rediscovery of the Jailani site did not serve to charter an exclusive lineage of saintly caretaker-descendants, such as the hereditary saheb shareholders of Nagoor Sahab or the pirzad-e families of the Nizamuddin Auliya Dargah in Delhi.
Seyed Mustafa Abdul Rahuman (Periya Bawa'), the Lakshadweep maulana who reopened Jailani to popular worship, is buried in a special ziyaram next to the Balangoda Jumma Mosque, and beside him lie his local patrons, Sinna Lebbe Cassim Lebbe and the latter's son, C.L.M. Marikar. The Lakshadweep saint's Balangoda-born son, Seyed Buhari, seems to have been a recognized figure in the 1920s, but he did not perpetuate a local saintly lineage.
In addition to the cliffside cave ledge where Muhiyadeen Abdul Qadir Jilani is believed to have meditated, another key location is the china room,8 a small enclosed cave-cell built into the overhanging rock above the mosque where it is said the Sixteenth Century saint Shahul Hamid and his travelling companion Seyed Sahabdeen—whose ziyaram is at the Meera Maccam Mosque in Kandy—meditated in the company of Allah's 'green' servant al-Khidr during an astral journey from his shrine at Nagoor, Tamilnadu. When he returned to Nagoor, Shahul Hamid brought with him an iron chain originally used by Khidr (or, in another version, by the Macedonian hero, Dhul Qarnayn) to bind himself while performing severe austerities at Jailani. A distinctive 'shrinking chain' identified with this legend hangs from the ceiling in front of the tomb of Hazrat Yusuf Saheb, the miraculously conceived son of Shahul Hamid, at the Nagoor Dargah
During most of the year, Jailani is a tranquil place to visit, devoid of crowds, and conducive to solitary sightseeing and contemplation. But each year during the kandoori festival commemorating the death anniversary of the Iraqi saint—popularly known inTamil as Muhiyadeen Andavar (Lord Muhiyadeen)—the site fills with Muslim pilgrims from all parts of the island and loudspeakers echo with amplified singing and recitation.

During both the inaugural flag raising ceremony and the concluding feast day, the pilgrim shelters are packed;
Jailani Mosque
The mosque at the base of the rock remains the centre of the festival to this day. Indeed, almost no such established dargah-based elite lineages exist in Sri Lanka.7 Members of the small but prosperous Muslim merchant community in Balangoda began celebrating the Jailani festival annually from 1890, and in 1922 C.L.M. Marikar ('Balangoda Hajiyar') constructed the mosque at the base of the rock that remains the centre of the festival to this day.
A focus on the saints Muhiyadeen Abdul Qadir Jilani (Muhiyadeen Andavar) and Shahul Hamid (Nagoor Andavar) is deeply rooted in Sri Lankan popular Islam. The legends of Daftar Jailani say these two saints combined forces with the scriptural 'green' Prophet 17—the mysterious servant of Allah also known as Hayat Nabi, an advisor to Moses, who is believed to have a special connection with the world of nature and with the fountain of immortality—and the heroic figure, Dhul Qarnayn (Two Horns), an Islamic transformation of Alexander the Great.

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