Pakistan · Islamabad · Islamabad
Nurpur Shahan, Islamabad — Area Guide & Where to Stay
The darbar of Bari Imam holds the middle of Nurpur Shahan, a village quarter of Islamabad that answered to another name before the saint settled here.
About Nurpur Shahan
Where to stay in Nurpur Shahan
Not every neighbourhood fits every trip — here's what each one is good for.
Nurpur Shahan trades in pilgrimage rather than in beds, and its lanes run to the darbar of Bari Imam instead of to any reception desk. No hotel row forms here. Rooms stand south-west on the sector grid of Islamabad, where Blue Area lines Jinnah Avenue and the sectors on either side of that corridor take the visiting trade.
If the shrine is why you came, your bed is down on the grid.
About Nurpur Shahan
What are the main landmarks in Nurpur Shahan?
Nurpur Shahan's monument is the darbar of Bari Imam, the tomb of Shah Abdul Latif Kazmi, a Qadiriyya ascetic who died in the village in 1705. The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb raised the first structure over the grave, and later hands renovated it more than once in the centuries that followed. Bari Imam is Islamabad's patron saint.
Pilgrims come from across Pakistan, and the urs, the annual marking of the saint's death, is when the ground around the tomb fills.
What is the history of Nurpur Shahan?
Nurpur Shahan was a bandit haunt called Chorpur before a Sufi saint settled there. Shah Abdul Latif Kazmi, born at Karsal in Chakwal District in 1617, settled among those thieves, preached peace to them, and was buried here in 1705. The old name did not survive him.
The village kept its saint and its lanes when Islamabad was drawn across the plateau below from 1960. A bomber struck the shrine in 2005.
Where is Nurpur Shahan?
Nurpur Shahan lies among the foothills of the Margalla Hills, the Diplomatic Enclave below it to the south and Quaid-i-Azam University off to the east.
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Updated September 2026