Salman Rashid

REDISCOVERING THE GRAND TRUNK ROAD
05 June 2023

Cutting through the burgeoning Mughal Empire in the 1540s, the Bihar-born Pakhtun soldier Farid Khan — better known as Sher Shah Suri — banished emperor Humayun to Persia. He utilised all five years of his reign to create some semblance of order in a land divided by tribal allegiances and equally strong perfidy, only to be pushed back, leaving behind a sorry dynasty that fizzled away in just as many years.

Yet, Suri has stayed long in our collective memories as the builder of the Grand Trunk Road, a legacy bequeathed, in part, to present-day Pakistan.

But was it really so?

It took travel writer Salman Rashid years of research, countless cross-country treks, rides on rickety two- and four-wheelers, frog-jumping the parapets of numerous forts, gingerly stepping down the decaying brick steps of ancient baolies [water reservoirs], conversations with both the simplest of minds and internationally certified authorities and generous dollops of his one-of-a-kind humorous and satirical asides to make short — read: long — work of the well-kept secret that the Grand Trunk Road is. Simply put, it has far more to it than meets the eye.

The road’s Pakistani trajectory begins from the town of Landi Kotal at the rugged edges of the Khyber Pass, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Shady trees line either side of the ancient route that flows towards Wagah near Lahore, before crossing into India and ending in southernmost Bangladesh. On the way, it has touched many settlements, been ground for historic monuments and peace treaties and branched off at the whims of various invaders and kings.

All that the road has weathered in its centuries of existence — facts and fables, history and folklore, cultural ethos and a landscape painted, in part, by deliberate intent — makes for an amazing conglomerate of knowledge that has been glossed over by crediting its construction to Sher Shah Suri.

Hence, Rashid’s latest travel treatise, From Landi Kotal to Wagah: Cultural Heritage Along the Grand Trunk Road. This absorbing, beautifully produced book is testimony to the fact that the Grand Trunk Road — about which much has already been written — was waiting to be rediscovered and recorded from an angle other writers have failed to highlight.

This angle is essentially that, although Suri probably did build some segments of the road, the numerous landmarks along its Pakistani length prove the presence, passing or settlement of travellers, preachers and warriors from as early as the fourth century.

Rashid writes a zesty story of this extensively traversed highway’s origins, beginning from the fourth century in the time of the Mauryans, to the sixth century when Cyrus, king of the Achaemenid empire, annexed modern-day Pakistan. The author then takes us through the Buddhist, Mughal, Sikh and British eras to bring readers to the status of the road in the present day.

Rashid’s findings draw a line between fact and fiction, verifying historical record and simultaneously debunking myths that have come to be over the years, either in ignorance or purposeful design to benefit contemporary needs and populations.

For instance, he writes of a small fortification in Torkham, KP, that shows all the signs of having been constructed in the early 20th century, most likely by the British. However, his local guide refuses to venture inside because he has grown up believing that it was actually the site of Timur’s gallows, where the Mongol conqueror had had many a dissident hanged.

Hardly anywhere else might we have read of the second-century warrior king Kanishka following a darting rabbit along a swamp, only to meet a local shepherd who told him that Buddha had prophesied that a victorious ruler would raise a stupa in that particular location to house the largest portions of the sage’s earthly remains. Eager to prove himself the ‘one’, Kanishka promptly had a stupa built and planted a peepal tree, marking a site to where every Buddhist pilgrim gravitated for 400 years.

By referencing records such as the Tuzk-i-Babari — also known as Babarnama or History of Babar — and Tuzk-i-Jahangiri [History of Jahangir] as well as a good deal of investigative good sense, Rashid creates a marvellous balance between historical accuracy and folklore. The local populace would even today rely religiously on hearsay — the authors of such yarns might never even have been near any source material — but any attempt to counter them will result in one being “drummed out of town.” Such situations give Rashid’s book a wry humour to which only he can do full justice.

Rashid addresses the Grand Trunk Road — originally called the Rajapatha [Royal Highway] and, in the area that is now Pakistan, the Utra Rajapatha [Northern Royal Highway] — as a living entity that is at times vibrant, at other instances bloodthirsty and, at yet other moments, a detour for specific political, social or religious invasions. Sometimes it is buried in anonymity, yet it continues to be very much part of an important line of communication down centuries of political, religious and social invasions.

The rich, historical story of the grandest highway in the Subcontinent criss-crosses a spread of beautiful geography and landscapes of wondrous culture, heritage, fable and folklore that is much deeper and more intriguing than its kilometres of surface.

We see the crumbling kos minars [milestones], which once numbered in the hundreds along the length of the road, but now only two survive in the Pakistani section. Also surviving in various states of despairing disrepair are the tomb of one Lala Rukh — purportedly either the daughter or granddaughter of Mughal emperor Akbar — and the baradari [garden] of Behram Khan, son of the Pakhtun poet and warrior Khushal Khan Khattak.

On this excellent adventure ride into antiquity, we also read about the Macedonian king Alexander’s trek through what is now Pakistan and stories of princesses who sponsored great architectural projects. In his trademark humorous style, Rashid comments that it seems the British government’s decision to lay a railway track between the tombs of the Mughal emperor Jahangir and his beloved wife Noor Jahan was intended to “accentuate the intellectual difference between the two” because Jahangir was “scarcely worthy” of the lady who “towered” above him.

This makes the opinion of the octogenarian village matriarch, with which Rashid begins his book, all the more poignant: “Roads make all the difference to women. They have little meaning for men who can ride horses that we women can’t.”

Yesterday, today and tomorrow. From Landi Kotal to Wagah is quite the stylistic tapestry of contemporary comment and the mystique of antiquity. And Rashid’s technique of breaking up scholastic historic content with first-person anecdotes adds much flavour to what may, at times, be a somewhat taxing read for those who might pick it up for entertainment purposes only.

From Landi Kotal to Wagah: Cultural Heritage Along the Grand Trunk Road

By Salman Rashid

Sange-e-Meel, Lahore

ISBN: 978-9231003875

250pp.

The reviewer is a freelance journalist, translator and creative content/ report writer who has taught in the Lums Lifetime programme. She tweets @daudnyla

Labels: Book Review, Books, Salman Rashid

posted by Salman Rashid @ 08:53, ,

Gwadar: Song of the Sea Wind
27 December 2021

Rizwana Naqvi

For long, images of the golden, unspoiled beaches of the Makran coast had “captured the imagination of the romantically inclined” as a place where one could “actually be away from the madding crowd.”

Other images, showing hills in “crumpled disorderly piles devoid of every shred of vegetation”, would tempt the wilderness enthusiast. But reaching the coast was not easy and, hence, the place remained unexplored.

However, things are changing fast and Gwadar — on the Makran coastline — is poised to become a bustling seaport and industrial city, mostly because of the much-celebrated China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Ever since Gwadar became easily accessible by road from Karachi, via the Makran Coastal Highway, there has been a regular inflow of tourists to the city, though foreign tourists are still to discover it.

Labels: Balochistan, Book Review, Books, Salman Rashid

posted by Salman Rashid @ 09:48, ,

Mithi: Whispers in the Sand
26 July 2021

Ali Bhutto

Up until the early 1990s, the portion of the Thar Desert that lies within Pakistan was largely devoid of blacktop roads, with the nearest one ending at the desert’s western periphery in Naukot. All travel from this point onwards was done either by camel, vintage Reo trucks from the Second World War — locally referred to as kekrra [crab] — or privately owned jeeps.

Back then, the journey from Naukot to Nagarparkar, which lies at the easternmost edge of Tharparkar district — today, a five-hour drive — would take up to 14 hours, writes Salman Rashid in his new book, Mithi: Whispers in the Sand.

Labels: Book Review, Books, Salman Rashid, Sindh

posted by Salman Rashid @ 10:49, ,

From Landi Kotal to Wagah
12 February 2021

The Unesco and the government of Pakistan launched a new joint publication titled “From Landi Kotal to Wagah: Cultural Heritage Along the Grand Trunk Road” on February 10 at the Pakistan National Council of Arts.

The result of a collaboration of more than two years, the coffee table book explores the built and intangible heritage along the Grand Trunk Road (GT Road) in Pakistan, combining a thoroughly researched narrative with a wealth of photos that illustrate the diverse and rich panorama of this 2500-year-old historical trade road. Over the centuries, the road has been extensively travelled by traders, pilgrims and great civilizations like the Greeks, Turks and Mughals who left their marks, perpetuating the mythical status of this legendary road.

Labels: Books, From Landi Kotal to Wagah, Salman Rashid

posted by Salman Rashid @ 14:53, ,

From Landi Kotal to Wagah: Cultural Heritage Along the Grand Trunk Road
02 February 2021

This is the story of one of the grandest highroads in the subcontinent richly steeped in legend and history. From the rugged contours of the Khyber Pass it bears the reader through a wondrous land of culture, heritage and a remarkably beautiful geography. From the middle of the sixth century BCE when Cyrus, the greatest king of the Achaemenian empire, annexed modern day Pakistan right down to the present times, the road has been extensively travelled. If there were invaders and plunderers on this grand highway, there were also pious pilgrims and common traders. Sprinkled along the length of the road like milestones to an ancient past are signs of those who traversed it. The Greeks, Mauryans. Scythians, Parthians, Sassanians and Turks all left their mark with a distinctive Mughal and British overlay. This book is a celebration of the Grand Trunk Road and those who left their mark on the history of Pakistan.

Labels: Books, From Landi Kotal to Wagah, Salman Rashid

posted by Salman Rashid @ 14:53, ,

Tareekh Ke Musafir
24 January 2021

The genre of Urdu travel writing in Pakistan is dead, brutally butchered by a narcissistic writer whose travel fiction — written more like the post-summer vacation essays of a class four student — has destroyed the genre. Over the past four decades, his countless books, produced as travel literature, were more about the writer than about the place. The result is that most readers of Urdu now believe that what they have so avidly consumed is travel writing.

Now, travel writing is not just a narration of a journey — though there have been some fabulous and substantial books of this sort, too. It is a presentation of history, culture, geography, sociology, even a little bit of geology and, sometimes, anthropology. In Urdu, this was just not done. The trend of spurious writing spawned several copycat works, none of which made an impression on the reader.

Abubaker Sheikh stands apart from the run-of-the-mill travel writer in Pakistan. Tareekh Ke Musafir [Travellers of History] — the book under review — is his second work and, in keeping with its title, it is truly a journey through history.

Labels: Book Review, Books

posted by Salman Rashid @ 11:41, ,

The Rock Art of Karachi

In February 1987, trekking up to the source of the Hub River in Balochistan, I had my first exposure to ancient rock art. Etched on a rock, in a wild and desolate area north of the village of Goth Badal Khan, was a hunting scene.

Dismissing those drawings of men, animals and geometric symbols as the work of modern youngsters, I took no further notice of them. Such was my understanding of our local petroglyphs, even when I erroneously considered myself an informed layperson.

Those etchings on stone were in the vicinity of what the locals call a gabr band — or wall of the fire-worshippers. Scores of these walls of dressed stones are scattered around in the mountainous areas northward of Balochistan and Sindh from the 26th parallel latitude.

Labels: Book Review, Books, Sindh

posted by Salman Rashid @ 09:30, ,

Mithi - Whispers in the Sand
20 August 2020

In 2017, the district administration of Tharparkar at Mithi invited me to this work. Through that year, I made five trips to Mithi at different times of year. Though I was under the mistaken notion that my research was complete, when I got down to writing, I found so much was missing. Spent the whole of 2018 reading and writing. Last year, 2019, was spent in editing. Very slow process that was. Over the past two months young Aamir Ali designed this work with great love and attention.

Labels: Books, Sindh

posted by Salman Rashid @ 21:00, ,

Ranikot: the Wall of Sindh
26 December 2019

Badar Abro, author of Ranikot: The Wall of Sindh, is without a doubt the one individual who has seen every inch of the Rannikot Fort. And he has seen, nay, observed it with a critical and learned eye. From his first trip out to this great monument in 1985, he has never been there as a tourist; he has always been a researcher. With remarkable and dogged commitment, he has returned repeatedly to that harsh environment. That alone is an achievement and some. He is therefore well equipped to write on Rannikot.

The book, so grossly mistitled Ranikot, is a beautiful presentation with scores of first-class ground level and drone images and maps. The latter are a great help to elucidate the layout of this spectacular fort. I have long held that Sindhis are a people who have a strong umbilical cord harnessing them to their dharti [land], so the corruption of a place name by a true Sindhi is therefore not just jarring, but heartbreaking for me.

Labels: Book Review, Books, Sindh

posted by Salman Rashid @ 10:43, ,

THE SOUL OF MOUNTAINEERING
08 February 2019

Mountaineers are a special breed. A breed entirely apart from the rest of us who follow an esoteric way of thinking. Eric Shipton got it right when he wrote approvingly in Upon That Mountain of the “philosophy which aims at living a full life while the opportunity offers. There are few treasures of more lasting worth than the experience of a way of life that is in itself wholly satisfying. Such, after all, are the only possessions of which no fate, no cosmic catastrophe can deprive us; nothing can alter the fact if for one moment in eternity we have really lived.”

Shipton would know, because he and his lifelong friend William Tilman made the greatest duo of mountaineer-explorers of the 20th century with a huge quantum of pioneering work to their credit.

Labels: Book Review, Books

posted by Salman Rashid @ 13:02, ,

Symbols in Stone: The Rock Art of Sindh
10 December 2018

"The Kirthar Mountain Range, which separates Sindh from Balochistan, is rich in ancient petroglyphs.” Thus anthropologist Zulfiqar Ali Kalhoro opens his latest book Symbols in Stone: The Rock Art of Sindh. If anything, this is an understatement, because in Sindh, virtually thousands of examples of man’s artistic expression can be found. In two earlier works, Kalhoro discussed memorial stones and funerary architecture and its art in the province. In this book, as indeed in his earlier works, the author unravels aspects of anthropology and history that had always been right in front of our eyes and of which we knew nothing.

Until the book on memorial stones in Tharparkar, even the informed traveller coming upon them was utterly uninformed of their provenance and meaning. The Brahmi script on the oldest memorials, and Gujarati on later ones, was unknown to visitors and so these stelae — whose exact number was not known — sprinkled around the Thar Desert were just stones with nice carvings of horse riders. End of story.

Labels: Book Review, Books, Sindh

posted by Salman Rashid @ 10:05, ,

THE MEMSAAB CHRONICLES
25 November 2018

Fakir Syed Aijazuddin is, without argument, Pakistan’s foremost teller of historical tales. Across 16 works, his pen — rather, his keyboard — spans several centuries past and easily glides into contemporary times. He has yet again outdone himself with Sketches from a Howdah: Charlotte, Lady Canning’s Tours, 1858-1861. Meticulously designed and printed on art paper in royal quarto size (10 by 12.5 inches), the volume is a collector’s item.

The title is apt, for it seems Charlotte Canning habitually sketched sitting atop an elephant in an elaborate howdah, complete with a dickey behind for her maid. The book’s front cover and frontispiece bear this colourful scene in oil, rendered by the well-known Raj artist George Landseer.

Labels: Book Review, Books

posted by Salman Rashid @ 10:33, ,

THE BARD’S PAKISTAN
03 June 2018

There are two aspects of a good travel book. One, that towards the end it makes me a bit sad that it is going to be over — I actually read slower and slower near the end. Second, that it makes me want to leave everything and go travelling where the author has been. The bonus is that it draws chuckles.

Isambard — ‘Bard’ to his friends — Wilkinson’s Travels in a Dervish Cloak succeeds on all counts.

It was in 1984 that Geoffrey Moorhouse wrote his beautifully witty To the Frontier, which was billed by Ayaz Amir as a “very sympathetic account” of Pakistan. Moorhouse’s journey through Pakistan took place in 1982 when the country was just beginning to break loose from its moorings under the cockeyed version of a dictator’s sham piety. Back then, society still maintained its original charm and beauty and it was easy for Moorhouse to show us an original Pakistan. There was more beauty, fewer warts.

Labels: Book Review, Books, Pakistan, Travel

posted by Salman Rashid @ 12:15, ,

A Memoir of Partition
11 January 2018

On the twentieth day of March 2008, I headed home for the first time in my life. I was fifty-six years and a month old. Walking east across the border gates at Wagah I was on my way to the fulfilment of a family pietas of very long standing. I was going to a home I had never known; a home in a foreign land, a land that state propaganda wanted me to believe was enemy territory. But I knew it as a country where my ancestors had lived and died over countless generations. That was the home where the hearth kept the warmth of a fire first kindled by a matriarch many hundred years, nay, a few thousand years, ago and which all of a sudden had been extinguished in a cataclysm in 1947.

In that great upheaval, in a singular moment in time, that home ceased to be home. One part of the family made it across the border to become a tiny part of a huge data: they were among the nearly two million people uprooted from their homes. Another part of the family also became a statistic—a grim and ghastly one: they were part of the more than one million unfortunate souls who paid with their blood for the division of India and foundation of the new country of Pakistan for Muslims. They who died were not just Muslims who lived east of the new line drawn by Cyril Radcliffe. They were Sikhs, Hindus and even Jains who had homes thousands of years old, west of this line in the land that became Pakistan.

Labels: Books, India, Pakistan, Partition

posted by Salman Rashid @ 10:56, ,

The Intent of the Invaders
24 July 2017

The blurb on the title page of The Arabs in Sind — 712-1026 AD tells us that the work is the dissertation of John Jehangir Bede as submitted to the Department of History, University of Utah in the United States. As for Bede, the Publishers [sic] Note on Page VI begins, “All efforts to trace Mr Bede lead to a blind alley.” However, the last line of this note tells us that he was born in January 1940 to Mary and Zwingle Bede and died in 1989. Attempts to trace him through institutions he was connected with led to similar dead ends. Regardless, the work itself is rather useful and one wonders why this piece of research languished so long before being brought to light. However, thanks to the Endowment Fund Trust, Karachi, better late than never.

Bede weaves a readable and concise account of the Arab invasion of Sindh in 711 CE. His sources are many and varied and the point of interest here is that he delves deeply into the archive of Arab history dating from the eighth to the 10th centuries. In fact, the treasure trove in the book is Chapter II, titled ‘The Sources’. It forms a compendium of all source material dealing with the Arabs in Sindh.

Labels: Book Review, Books, Genealogy, History, Sindh