Greeks in Pukhtunkhwa
29 September 2016
Upon taking over as the Deputy Commissioner of Bannu in the Northwest Frontier Province [Khyber Pukhtunkhwa], my friend Jehanzeb Khan called me. Here was a city, perhaps the only one in the entire country, said he, whose old quarter was still circled by a wall punctuated with gates. These gates, I was told, were shut every day at sunset until the following morning – just as it would have happened in a past forgotten by most of us. It sounded like a town that had been left alone by the soul-destroying march of time and immediately a vision formed: thick, high town wall behind which rose tower houses of timber lattices and gloriously carved wooden balconies and doors, shuttered windows and rooftop parapets with lotus-shaped corner adornments. All closely packed together to look like the finest of all subcontinental walled cities.
Yet it took me two years to get to Bannu. The town wall is there all right. Some three metres high, it is constructed entirely of the brick that was introduced to us by civil engineers of the Raj and that we still assiduously employ. The gate posts, topped by domes and finials too are constructed of the of the same bricks. But neither the wall nor the gate-houses possess the hoariness that I was expecting. They are, wall and every single gate-house, disappointingly new. Indeed, behind the city wall the old part, that European travellers would have called the ‘native’ part of town, is set out in grids, a layout that we of the subcontinent had forgotten after the downfall of the great cities of Moen jo Daro and Harappa.
Labels: Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa, Sea Monsters and the Sun God
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The Battle of Jhal Magsi
28 September 2016
Jhal Magsi, the seat of the Baloch tribe of Magsi, lies northwest of Larkana in Gandava district of Balochistan. This quaint little town may not be famous for many things, but I remember a local bard who sang for me the ballad of the battle between the Magsi-Chandio confederacy on one side and the Rinds on the other. His rasping baritone and the lilt in his voice was goose bump-raising and I write his words in translation.
The Jamalis and Buledis, he sang, stole some properties of the Mugheris. Now having domicile in Magsi area the Mugheris were under the protection of Nawab Ahmed Khan, the Magsi chieftain. They petitioned the chief who immediately rode out at the head of a small army and came upon the Jamali lashkar at the town of Qabula. Ghulam Mohammed, the Jamali chief, made off with his life but the rest were cut down and the stolen properties restored to the rightful owners.
Read more »Labels: Balochistan, Sindh
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Celestial Stone
26 September 2016
In August sparse grass provided a veneer of green to the rocky hillside. Otherwise it was barren with nary a tree for shade. But there was silence. Silence, overwhelming and complete that remained undisturbed by the distant sound of traffic. Such is the hill of – that lies outside the village of Bilot some forty kilometres north of Dera Ismail Khan on the highroad to Chashma. Barren and rocky, it would be an unremarkable place but for the group of seven extraordinarily ornate buildings, all Hindu temples, that crown its top.
Here is a flat-topped edifice whose tapering shikhara, or steeple, gave way long ago. It is likely that more than the malevolent hand of man, it was the passage to time that wrought its overthrow. A little way off behind it are two more on a high plinth. One has an angular shikhara whose unique feature are the gaping oblong windows. Barely ten metres across on the same plinth and directly facing this building is another. A couple of hundred metres to the north, across a stretch of ground thickly sprinkled with the detritus of houses whose foundations are all that remain and broken pottery, is a group of four buildings. These too sit atop a raised plinth.
Read more »Labels: Heritage
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Abdul Karim
22 September 2016
It sounded a right peculiar name as it slipped off the tongue of a French mountaineer: Little Cream. The girl pronounced it ‘Cream’ and at first it seemed it was a segue from the tale of a past ascent to some food item. But soon it became clear that Little Cream was a Balti High Altitude Porter (HAP) of good standing.
The year was 1988 and the place in Gilgit was a hotel where tourists and mountaineers congregated at a communal table for meals. I had met the girl earlier at a store stocking mountaineering equipment and was invited to join her for dinner. I forget her name, but she had great things to say about this man, making this creamy little fellow seem almost a superman.
The year was 1988 and the place in Gilgit was a hotel where tourists and mountaineers congregated at a communal table for meals. I had met the girl earlier at a store stocking mountaineering equipment and was invited to join her for dinner. I forget her name, but she had great things to say about this man, making this creamy little fellow seem almost a superman.
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Pukhtun Stonehenge
21 September 2016
Out there on the Salisbury plain in England, they have their stone circle they call Stonehenge. Now stones are stones, but henge is an obscure word. According to my Random House Dictionary it is a ‘circular area enclosed by a bank and ditch and often containing additional features included one or more circles of upright stone or wood pillars ….. used for ritual purposes or for marking astronomical events, as solstices and equinoxes.’
Salisbury in England, incidentally, is not the only place with a stone circle – it is the most spectacular and one that goes back some five thousand years in time. There are other sites on the British Isles and elsewhere in Europe and elsewhere in the world – though I am not certain about the Americas.
Read more »
Labels: Balochistan, Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa, Stonehenge
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The Road to Bari La
20 September 2016
The road to Bari La. The pass, the highest on the eastern flanks of Deosai, lies between the gray ridge and the snow covered peak. Over the pass, the road leads to Matiyal and on to Kargil on the Indian side.
Image from Deosai: Land of the Giant
Labels: Books, Deosai, Deosai: Land of the Giant, Nadeem Khawar, Photo Stream, Travel Photography
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The Rani’s Baoli
19 September 2016
The edifice is unpretentious. But the quality of construction is superior. So fine, in fact, that the building could only have been built for nobility. Nadia, my hostess in Palandri (Kashmir), said it was called baoli – the traditional subcontinental well with steps descending to water level – and I imagined a structure like the Mughals were so fond of building.
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| School in progress in the Rani’s Baoli. The rani’s room is in the background with the utility rooms on right |
As I was driven a few kilometres outside Palandri town, Nadia told me the building is believed to have been a watering place for the animals of passing caravans and nothing more. When we arrived, the fine architecture immediately told me that the structure was much more than what they believed it to be. Ell-shaped with the rooms fronting an open courtyard formed by a low wall on two sides, the building comprises six rooms of various sizes.
Read more »Labels: Heritage, Kashmir, Kashmir Diaries, TNS
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Lahore and Dilly in a day
16 September 2016
It was late afternoon on a November day. The mellow sun sat on the western horizon just above the brown and grey tree-less hills when we fetched up outside Lahore. The place was deserted. The doors set in high mud walls were closed and padlocked, not a soul walked the narrow lanes. The squares of agricultural plots were desiccated with a thick layer of powdery dust upon which stood sere stalks of what would have been corn and what were once handsome, spreading mulberry trees were mere leaf-less skeletons. It was a ghost town we had entered.
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| Deserted home in Lahore |
My friend Dawood Bareach decided we should drive on to Dilly. And so, five minutes later we turned off the highway and entered Dilly. Ten minutes between Lahore and Dilly and not even an international border to cross may sound a geographical anomaly. But in Loralai district of Balochistan this is reality. And its origin lies two centuries, perhaps farther, in the past.
Read more »Labels: Balochistan
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The Shaksgam Valley
13 September 2016
If there was ever a lonely place I had been to, it was the country on the south side of the Aghil Pass. The Shaksgam Valley here is as desolate as it can ever get. Our caravan is approaching the Kindik Tash camp ground.
Image from The Apricot Road to Yarkand
Labels: Books, Photo Stream, The Apricot Road to Yarkand, Travel Photography
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The highway and the well
09 September 2016
Twenty years ago I spent a couple of days with my army chum Ahmed Yar Bandial in his village which is, naturally, Bandial. It sits on the old highroad from Khushab to Mianwali. For good measure, it keeps company with village Hadali, famous for being the ancestral place of the great Khushwant Singh. Incidentally, upon his passing, our very own Fakir Syed Aijazuddin brought home the ashes of the great writer to inter them in one wall of the school where this future luminary first learned the secrets of the written word.
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| The well: Rising just above the mesquite trees in the back can be seen the domed pillars marking the head of the steps leading into the well |
But all this was just to get the geography right.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Where Gakkhars ruled
07 September 2016
It could have been a day warm and humid as it was in August 1553 when Kamran Mirza’s eyes last beheld the crenulated walls of Pharwala Fort starkly outlined against a blue Bhadon sky held up by billowing white cumulus. But it was crisply warm as we parked on flat ground above the Soan River running between us and the fort.
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| Hathi Gate |
It had started out with Rehan Afzal and I talking about Pharwala. But then Pharanaz and her husband Naweed joined us too and we resolved to together visit it. Returning to the fort after eighteen years, I had forgotten that I had then entered by Hathi Gate by wading across the river, the same way as Babur had done back in the spring of 1519. There, behind the fortification Babur espied the steely gaze of Hathi Gakkhar, a man of gigantic stature and reportedly superhuman strength that likened him as to an elephant.
Read more »Labels: Heritage, History, Punjab, TNS
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Amaltas at its best
02 September 2016
Related: Salman Rashid’s archetypal Amaltas
[This image by Rahat Dar of The News]
Labels: Ecology, Photo Stream, Travel Photography
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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