Haji Mohammad Alam Channa (1953 – 2 July 1998) was a Pakistani farmer who was one of the tallest living people with the height of . According to the

Guinness Book of World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

, the tallest living man in the world (between 1982 and 1998), was Pakistan's Mohammad Alam Channa. Before his death in 1998, Channa was reported to be tall. Born in 1953 in the city of

Sehwan Sehwan ( sd, سيوهڻ شريف, ur, ; also commonly referred to as Sehwan Sharif or ''Noble Sehwan'') is a historic city located in Jamshoro District of Sindh province in Pakistan and on the west bank of the Indus north-west of Hyderabad. The ...

(in Pakistan's Sindh province), Alam Channa is said to have stood 6 ft 4 inches by the time he was 18. He continued to grow taller till he was 26. Channa came from an impoverished Sindhi family. He did not receive any noteworthy education. The male members of his family had traditionally served as minor retainers at the famous shrine of Sufi saint,

Lal Shahbaz Qalandar Hazrat Sayyid Usman Marwandi, (1177 - 19 February 1274) popularly known as Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (), was a Sufi saint and poet of present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. Lal Shahbaz Qalandar was born in Marwand, Sistan to a family from Baghdad ...

, in Shewan. Here is where Channa too spent most of his years, tasked to keep certain areas of the shrine clean. According to Channa's paternal side of the family, Channa was making just Rs. 15 a week at the shrine. So when the circus offered him Rs. 160 a month, he decided to immediately accept the offer. The circus turned Channa into a local star. He would travel with it across the length and breadth of

Sindh Sindh (; ; ur, , ; historically romanized as Sind) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the southeastern region of the country, Sindh is the third-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the second-largest province ...

. All he had to do was to make an entry just when two short men dressed as jokers were going through their routine. He would walk in and proceed to lift up the jokers (who would pretend to run away from the giant). Channa would grab them and then put them on his shoulders. In 1981 a man who had watched Channa at the circus wrote a letter to the editors of the famous Guinness Book of World Records. With the letter he also sent some photos of Channa he had taken at the circus. Months later some officials from Guinness landed in Sindh's capital city, Karachi, and from there they reached Sehwan where they met and measured Channa. They measured him at being 7 ft 8 inches. On their return to the UK, the men entered Channa's name in the Guinness book as the tallest living human on earth. He suffered from kidney failure and high blood pressure. The government decided to send him to the US and finance his treatment. He was admitted to the

Westchester Medical Center Westchester Medical Center University Hospital (WMC), formerly Grasslands Hospital, is an 895-bed Regional Trauma Center providing health services to residents of the Hudson Valley, northern New Jersey, and southern Connecticut. It is known for h ...

in Valhalla, New York but died there on 2 July. He is buried in Sehwan.

Early life

"Channa belonged to an indigent Sindhi family. He could not get education. All his family male members had traditionally served as minor retainers at the famous shrine of Sufi saint,

, in Sehwan. In this town Channa spent his early years and assigned to keep areas of the shrine clean. He got married in 1989 and had a son in 1990."

References

External links

"Letter from Alam Channa to Sadruddin Noorani" in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Channa, Alam 1953 births 1998 deaths Sindhi people People from Dadu District People with gigantism Deaths from kidney failure