GHANĪ KHĀN and his brother Nabī Khān, Paṭhān horse dealers of Māchhīvāṛā in presentday Ludhiāṇā district of the Punjab, were admirers of Gurū Gobind Siṅgh whom they had visited at Anandpur and to whom they had sold many good animals. When they learnt that, travelling in a lonely state after the battle of Chamkaur (1705), the Gurū had come to Māchhīvāṛā, they at once turned out to meet him and offered their services. They provided him with a bluecoloured dress and carried him out of Māchhīvāṛā in a palanquin disguised as a Muslim divine. They declared him to be Uchch dā Pīr, the holy man of Uchch, an old seat of Muslim saints in southwest Punjab. They escorted him thus up to Hehrāṅ, a village near Rāikoṭ in Ludhiāṇā district, where a group of Sikhs relieved them. The Gurū dismissed Ghanī Khān and Nabī Khān with his blessings and a hukamnāmā meant to be a letter of commendation which was reverently preserved by their descendants. The family migrated to Pakistan in 1947. Their house in Māchhīvāṛā is now a gurdwārā known as Gurdwārā Uchch dā Pīr.