Multan is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities of the Indian subcontinent and earned the epithet 'City of Saints' for its dense concentration of Sufi shrines, particularly those of the Suhrawardi and Qadiri orders that took root here from the thirteenth century onward. Its skyline is dominated by the thirteenth-century tomb of Bahauddin Zakariya, founder of the Suhrawardi order in South Asia, and the soaring brick-domed tomb of his disciple Shah Rukn-e-Alam, completed in 1335 — among the finest pre-Mughal Islamic monuments in the subcontinent and a celebrated example of Tughlaq-era architecture, with its octagonal sloping walls and glazed-tile decoration. The shrine of Shams-i-Tabrez (a different figure from Rumi's companion of the same name) and that of Shah Shams Sabzwari add further layers to the city's Sufi geography. Multan's annual urs festivals draw pilgrims from across Pakistan, and qawwali, dhikr, and ziyarah continue as central elements of religious life here today, alongside congregational prayer in mosques old and new.