Abdul Ghafur, as was his original name, was born of poor and obscure parents, probably Gujars, at the village of Jabrai, in Upper Swat, and passed his early boyhood tending sheep and cattle. He was even then distinguished for his religious proclivities, and at the age of eighteen he decided to adopt the life of an ascetic, and proceeded to Barangola to learn to read and write, and master the rudiments of his religion. Thence, after a time, he set out as an “inquirer after wisdom,” and at first took up his abode in or near a mosque about three miles from Mardan; but moving on again after a stay of a few months, he became, at Tordhair, the disciple of a fakir who enjoyed in those parts a reputation for peculiar sanctity. Here the Akhund resolved to exchange the mosque for the hermitage, and became a recluse. About the year 1816 he accordingly settled down, as a young man of barely twenty, to a life of the greatest austerity, at a lonely spot on the banks of the Indus, below the village of Beka, ten miles above Attock, where for twelve years he followed the _Nakshbandia_ form of religious devotion—sitting silent and motionless, his head bowed on his chest, and his eyes fixed on the ground. His food was an inferior kind of millet moistened with water, and throughout his life—he died at the age of eightythree—his diet was equally simple, milk being, however, subsequently substituted for water. His fame as a saint dates from his sojourn at Beka, and even to this day, in the most distant parts of Persia, he is still remembered as “the Hermit of Beka.” [Sidenote: A Militant Priest] In an evil moment he unwisely allowed himself to be drawn into a quarrel between the Khan of Hund and Saiyid Ahmad of Bareilly, and found himself obliged to abandon his retreat at Beka, and wander forth unknown and of no account; but after some years he settled down in a ziarat at Ghulaman, in British Yusafzai, and recovering his old reputation for sanctity and piety, his advice and prayers were again in great request. Thence in time he removed to the village of Salim Khan, in the south-east of British Yusafzai and on the border of the Khudu Khels, and, being generally regarded as a saint, was given the title of Akhund by the learned Moslem doctors of the day.