Peshawar: the First City
14 November 2018
Peshawar is not about the clatter of armoury, the tramp of soldiers’ feet and the raging din of battle; it is not of a city on fire and the cries of the dying. Peshawar is about murmured prayer, of the ringing of the temple bell and the call from the minaret, the clang of the jaras – the bell around the camel’s neck in the caravan – and the soft plop of the animals’ feet on unpaved streets, it is of the vendor crying his wares in streets where rows of shops run on either side and which are crowded with buyers and sellers. Peshawar is about long distance travellers, of caravanserais and story-tellers.
It was April 1977, and I was wandering about Namak Mandi in Under Sheher (Inner City) Peshawar. In a narrow street lined with stores and qehvakhanas, it leapt straight out of a story-teller’s repertoire: the caravanserai with its open-to-the-sky courtyard and spacious rooms on all four sides. A timber staircase led to the floor above where smaller rooms were equipped with fireplaces. But in 1977, the fireplaces were cold, the rooms empty and dusty, unused for perhaps a couple of decades and the downstairs rooms served as warehouse for packaged goods.
Read more »Labels: Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa, Peshawar
posted by Salman Rashid @ 15:38,
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Sense and Sensibility, Islamia College, Peshawar
03 March 2013
About the middle of the 19th century men like Sir Syed Ahmed Khan in the north and Hassanally Effendi in Karachi realised that the regressive mindset among Muslim youth was attributable mainly to their rejection of modern education. Working independently, these two dedicated men succeeded in the latter half of the 19th century in bringing English education to young Muslims in their respective areas.
In Peshawar, this shift had already occurred in the classrooms of Edwardes High School founded by the Church Missionary Society in 1855. In order to take education a notch higher, Sir George Roos-Keppel, chief commissioner of the province, floated the idea of a college for Muslims. This was around the end of the first decade of the 20th century, when there was no institution of higher education anywhere in the newly established North West Frontier Province.
Labels: Book of Days 2013, Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa, Peshawar, Stones of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 11:58,
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Clean Break - Governor’s House, Peshawar
16 February 2013
The final battle that undid the Punjabi empire of Maharaja Ranjit Singh was fought between the Sikhs and the British at Chillianwala in January 1849. The Punjab that was thus annexed by the East India Company at that time included the territories that we today know as Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa.
The East India Company moved in swiftly to establish its hold on the new territories and cities such as Mardan, Kohat and Bannu became headquarters from where the arm of governance stretched out to outlying areas. Peshawar, that had through the long and creative passage of time always been the principal city on the frontier, retained its position as the capital for the new rulers of the land.
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Labels: Book of Days 2013, Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa, Peshawar, Stones of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 19:22,
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