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Waris Shah
وارث شاہ
c. 1722 – c. 1798 · Jandiala Sher Khan, Punjab · dates reconstructed, not recorded
Author of Heer, the Punjabi epic that became the language's defining work.
Waris Shah wrote Heer, the retelling of the love of Heer and Ranjha that became the best-known work in the Punjabi language. It is a love story on the surface and a portrait of eighteenth-century Punjab underneath: its castes, its clerics, its villages and its power.
It is a performed text more than a printed one. Heer is sung, and the way it is sung is itself a tradition, which is why it has stayed in living memory rather than in anthologies.
He is buried at Jandiala Sher Khan. As with Bulleh Shah, his dates are reconstructed rather than recorded.