A house of the Ahl al-Bayt
From the household of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, through Imam Hasan and the saints of Gilan, down to our family today — a chain of names our forefathers wrote by hand and entrusted to us to keep.
What this is
A Shajra-e-Nasab is a written record of descent — a family tree set down in ink, generation by generation, tracing a family back through its forefathers. For a Sayyid family such as ours, it is the document of our connection to the household of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, the Ahl al-Bayt.
Our family belongs to the Hasani Sayyids — descendants of Imam Hasan (A.S.), the grandson of the Prophet ﷺ, through his daughter Fatimah al-Zahra (S.A.) and Imam Ali (A.S.). The Shajra traces this descent through the saints of Gilan and the generations that carried the line eastward into the subcontinent, down to the present day.
This site gathers the whole record in one place: the story of the scrolls and their condition, the account of the three scrolls we received, the translation of the readable one, the authenticated lineage from Uch Sharif, the sacred station of the Panjtan Pak from whom we descend, and a way for family members to contribute names and corrections.
How it came to us
For most of a century, the Shajra was kept safe within the family. In early 2026 it came into our hands for preservation — and when it did, its condition told the story of the long years that had passed. What we received was not a single clean document but three fragile scrolls, aged and worn, some portions lost entirely and others still holding their ink.
The scrolls had suffered from burns, oxidation, damp, and the passage of time. The paper had grown brittle, and in places the writing was gone. Yet enough survived — names, generations, and long passages of history — to make recovery possible.
In his own words
When the scrolls finally came into my hands, they were in a condition that pained the heart to see. They had been kept safe within the family for some forty to fifty years, and the years had not been gentle. What reached me were three scrolls — brittle, darkened, and worn. One was so badly damaged and oxidised that not a word of it could be read. A second carried names in Arabic and Persian, some of which could still be made out. Only the third had survived with clear, readable paragraphs of text.
Fearing that any further handling might cost us what little remained, I did not attempt to unroll or clean them beyond what was necessary. Instead, I had all three scrolls carefully scanned and photographed in high resolution, so that whatever the paper still held would be captured and safe, whatever became of the originals thereafter.
From those scans I took the readable scroll and sent a copy for translation to persons in Iran who have knowledge of shajras — scholars familiar with this manner of lineage record and with the older forms of the script — so that the names and the history it preserved could be rendered faithfully and set down for the family. The originals were then placed with a conservation laboratory for preservation.
I share all of this so that those who come after us know exactly what was received, in what state, and what was done to save it. This record is an amanah — a trust — and it is my hope that the generations to come will guard it as our forefathers did.
— Syed Ali Nawaz Shah
s/o Syed Iftikhar Mehdi Shah
The condition when received
A short film and photographs documenting the scrolls in the state they reached us — a record in themselves of how close this history came to being lost.
The scrolls, filmed on receipt.
The full set of photographs appears on The Three Scrolls.
Explore
What each of the three scrolls held, their condition, and the conservators' assessment of what could be saved.
The readable Persian scroll, rendered into English and Urdu — the lineage and the lives of the ancestors.
The authenticated chart and the full chain of descent, name by name, with generation numbers.
The five of the cloak — the Prophet ﷺ, Fatimah, Ali, Hasan, and Husayn — from whom we descend.
The complete interactive tree, with every branch and descendant.
Add your branch, submit a correction, or reach us — help keep the record complete.