Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (October 13, 1948 - August 16, 1997) was primarily a singer of Qawwali, the devotional music of the Sufis, a mystical offshoot of Islam. Traditionally, Qawwali has been a family business. Nusrat's family (originally from Afghanistan, though they had been living in Pakistan for a large part of their lives) has an unbroken tradition of performing qawwali for the last 600 years.