Dargah of the Dais — Khambhat (Cambay)

Khambhat (Cambay) was the first and most important center of the Fatimid Dawat in the Indian subcontinent. The early Dais — sent from Yemen to spread the Ismaili Tayyibi dawat in India — established their base here in the 11th and 12th centuries CE. Khambhat was then one of the great ports of the western Indian Ocean, a cosmopolitan trading city where Arab, Persian, and Indian merchants mingled, and where the community that would become the Dawoodi Bohras first took root. Several of the early Dais who carried the dawat from Yemen to India are buried in Khambhat. Their dargahs are among the oldest Bohra sacred sites in India — predating Surat, Mumbai, and most other centers of the community's presence.