iconoclastic Indian poet-saint revered by Hindu (Hinduism)s, Muslims, and Sikh (Sikhism)s alike.

The birth of Kabīr (Arabic: “Great”) remains to this day shrouded in mystery and legend. Authorities disagree on both when he was born and who his parents were. One legend proclaims a divine virginal birth. His mother was reputed to have been of the Brahman caste and to have become pregnant after a visit to a Hindu shrine. Because she was unwed, she abandoned Kabīr, who was found and adopted by a Muslim weaver. That his early life began as a Muslim there is no doubt, although he later became influenced by a Hindu ascetic, Ramananda.

Though Kabīr is often depicted in modern times as a harmonizer of Hindu and Muslim belief and practice, it would be more accurate to say that he was equally critical of both, often conceiving them as parallel to one another in their misguided ways. In his view, the mindless, repetitious, prideful habit of declaiming scripture could be visited alike on the sacred Hindu texts, the Vedas, or the Islamic holy book, the Qurʾān; the religious authorities doing so could be Brahmins or Qāzīs; meaningless rites of initiation could focus either on the sacred thread or on circumcision. What really counted for Kabīr was utter fidelity to the one deathless truth of life, which he associated equally with the designations Allah (Allāh) and Ram—the latter understood as a general Hindu name for the divine, not the hero of the Ramayana (Rāmāyaṇa). Kabīr's principal media of communication were songs called padas and rhymed couplets (dohas) sometimes called “words” (shabdas) or “witnesses” (sakhis). A number of these couplets, and others attributed to Kabīr since his death, have come to be commonly used by speakers of north Indian languages.

Kabīr's poetic personality has been variously defined by the religious traditions that revere him, and the same can be said for his hagiography. For Sikhs he is a precursor and interlocutor of Nanak (Nānak), the founding Sikh Guru (Gurū) (spiritual guide). Muslims place him in Sufi lineages, and for Hindus he becomes a Vaishnava (devotee of the god Vishnu) with universalist leanings. But when one goes back to the poetry that can most reliably be attributed to Kabīr, only two aspects of his life emerge as truly certain: he lived most of his life in Banaras (now Varanasi), and he was a weaver (julaha), one of a low-ranked caste that had become largely Muslim in Kabīr's time. His humble social station and his own combative reaction to any who would regard it as such have contributed to his celebrity among various other religious movements and helped shape the Kabīr Panth, a sect found across north and central India that draws its members especially but not exclusively from the scheduled castes (formerly known as untouchables). The Kabīr Panth regards Kabir as its principal guru or even as a divinity—truth incarnate. The broad range of traditions on which Kabīr has had an impact is testimony to his massive authority, even for those whose beliefs and practices he criticized so unsparingly. From early on, his presence in anthologies of north Indian bhakti (devotional) poetry is remarkable.