Al Beruni was here
22 February 2016
The fortified temple complex of Nandna sits smack on the Nandna Pass leading from the Salt Range highlands into the Punjab plains on the west bank of the Jhelum River. From times immemorial the pass, a natural and narrow cleft in the hills, has seen the passage of caravans of trade and invasion and because of its location, it would only have been natural for a fortress to be raised in the pass not just to hold adventurers at bay but also to exact taxes from passing traders.
Having sojourned in Taxila, Alexander of Macedonia came through the Nandna Pass to the banks of the Jhelum River. This was in the month of May in 326 BCE. Here he fought his hardest battle against Raja Paurava (Porus in Greek) since the last confrontation against the Persians a few years earlier.
In the year 1013, Mahmud the Turkish ruler of Ghazni came against Nandna when it was in the possession of Jaipul II, the king of Lahore who held sway as far as Peshawar. Nidder (Dauntless) Bhimpal, the governor of Nandna, bravely held out for several days until the Turks sneaked around the surrounding hills and into the plains of the village of Baghanwala to the south of Nandna. With the water supply cut off, Bhimpal the Dauntless brought down his army to confront the Turks where the orchards of Baghanwala now ring with birdsong.
Read more »Labels: Punjab, Salt Range
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Pakistan International Mountain Film Festival
22 June 2015
Hassan Karrar, is thin as a rail, stands six and a half feet tall and teaches history at LUMS. He walks with a long step and is known in Baltistan as ‘lumbi tango walla’ – long-legged man. At Pakistan International Mountain Film Festival he and I talked of the philosophy of mountaineering and the question of ‘conquering’ peaks.
First things first. No one conquers peaks. We conquer enemies; not peaks. The only thing anyone has ever conquered attempting a summit is their own fears. That’s all.
Read more »Labels: About, Between Two Burrs on the Map Travels in Northern Pakistan, Books, Guest Speaker, Mountaineering, Mountains, Salman Rashid, Salt Range, The Apricot Road to Yarkand
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Temples of the Salt Range
07 February 2015
Long before the Pathan general, Sher Shah Suri, built inns and mail stations along what has come to be known as the Grand Trunk Road, there was a network of highways criss-crossing the fertile Punjab plain and connecting it with regions beyond. One such was the road that crossed the Jhelum river near today´s village of Rasul, entering the Salt Range through the Nandna Pass, and heading west across the Indus at Kalabagh before reaching Bannu, on its way to the markets of Kandahar. The Salt Range is so called because fine quality salt has been mined here since classical times.
This road has seen its share of historical events. Alexander passed this way, and so did Hiuen Tsang, the Chinese traveller who visited India in the 7th century. Late in the 12th century, the doughty Khokhar Rajputs of the Salt Range revolted against the rule of Ghur, and the Ghorids had to struggle hard to keep this connection open. Babur took control of the area on his way to India, and later, Sher Shah Suri gave up claim to this road since he could not subdue the ferocious Gakkhars.
This road has seen its share of historical events. Alexander passed this way, and so did Hiuen Tsang, the Chinese traveller who visited India in the 7th century. Late in the 12th century, the doughty Khokhar Rajputs of the Salt Range revolted against the rule of Ghur, and the Ghorids had to struggle hard to keep this connection open. Babur took control of the area on his way to India, and later, Sher Shah Suri gave up claim to this road since he could not subdue the ferocious Gakkhars.
Labels: Punjab, Salt Range
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Shiva weeps no more
17 May 2014
The pond at Ketas Raj (Chakwal) is sacred to Lord Shiva for it is believed that it was formed by his tears when he wept for his dead wife. This makes Ketas one of the holiest shrines in Hinduism. In 1985, I wrote that even though there were water works daily, drawing a few thousand gallons from the pond to supply nearby villages, the water never receded. Shiva, I concluded, was still weeping for his wife and his tears continuously replenishing the pond.
About the middle of the last decade, the Musharraf government okayed the building of five (or four?) cement factories within a radius of a few kilometres of Ketas. Someone as corrupt as the government was hired to prepare an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The modus operandi of this fraudster is to prostrate himself at the feet of the factory owner and pray for the demi-god to say what he wants written in the EIA. And so the document gets written: a piece of utter deception meant only to fatten some government file.
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The writer of the EIA is corrupt all right, but he is not stupid. Nor indeed are the owners of the cement factories. All of them knew that cement being a water intensive industry, the factories would suck up the water from not just the soil but from all nearby water bodies. That is exactly what has happened.
Read more »Labels: Heritage, Punjab, Salt Range
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Hajira: mystery in the Salt Range
01 May 2013
A little way northward of the village of Maira Tharchak in the heart of the Salt Range there sits a solitary cubicle measuring roughly five metres square. Constructed of dark limestone, its walls taper inwards near the top which is roofless.
The building has three doorways; the closed west wall being simply marked by a mehrab inside. The building is plain inside and out: there is neither inscription nor painting, nor indeed the stone mason’s mark. In the northeast corner of the interior sits a rude pile of undressed stone to mark a burial. This is apparently a later accretion added by someone who found the empty building handy to inter their dead.
The building has three doorways; the closed west wall being simply marked by a mehrab inside. The building is plain inside and out: there is neither inscription nor painting, nor indeed the stone mason’s mark. In the northeast corner of the interior sits a rude pile of undressed stone to mark a burial. This is apparently a later accretion added by someone who found the empty building handy to inter their dead.
Labels: Punjab, Salt Range
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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To Ketas by motorbike
14 April 2013
About three weeks ago, I received an email from a certain Omar Jahangir who had read my piece 'Shiva weeps no more'. This was my lament about the drying up of the sacred pond of Ketas by the cement factories installed barely a stone's throw from this historical site. Mind, cement manufacture is a water INTENSIVE industry. Young Omar, the Additional Deputy Commissioner (General) at Chakwal wrote to tell me that they had some work on the pond and revived it. He invited me to come see it for myself. Now, we are always ready to revile everyone for everything they do wrong, seldom to do we acknowledge the good work of others. So there I was on my motorcycle putt-putting off to Choa Saidan Shah.
It was a leisurely drive through Gujrat and Lala Musa to the Chillianwala monument which I wanted to photograph. Despite having left home at 6.00 AM, I was not able to get there until 10.00. Though the monument looked priceless in the sunshine dappled by the tall old trees, I had wanted a lower sun. I paused, but did not take any pictures. It will have to be done another time. Then across Rasul Barrage south to Dhariala Jaleb from where I turned to the hills. Passing the sign for Gharaibwal, I made a mental note of stopping here on the return journey to photograph the old and disused railway station of which I have a great memory from an unforgettable train trip in 1994. That was time when this line was worked by those magnificent steam behemoths that we have sadly lost. This story is preserved in my book, Prisoner on a Bus: Travel Through Pakistan
.Labels: Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Punjab, Salt Range
posted by Salman Rashid @ 08:00,
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Nandna: Al Beruni was here
09 April 2013
Abu Rehan Al Beruni, a native of the Ferghana valley, one of the greatest minds of his time, sojourned in Nandna in the year 1017. The fame of this ancient hilltop university and temple had reached him in Ghazni where he lived in virtual imprisonment under Mahmud, the Turkish despot.
When he finally received permission, he hurried eastward and fetched up at Nandna where he hoped to be tutored in Sanskrit. The brilliant man evidently took time off from his lessons for though he learned the language his book Qanun al Masudi also tells us something more. He wrote: ‘When I happened to be living in the fort of Nandna in the land of India, and I found a high mountain standing to its West, and also saw a plain to its South, it occurred to my mind that I should examine this method [of the astrolabe] there.’
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2010, Punjab, Salt Range, Sights Less Seen
posted by Salman Rashid @ 08:56,
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Ketas: where Shiva wept
05 April 2013
When the goddess Sati died, her husband Shiva was distraught as only a god could be. He wept so inconsolably that the tears flowed as rain from his eyes. The two streams from the divine eyes formed two ponds, one Pushkara in Rajasthan and the other Ketaksha in the Salt Range of Punjab. Both are sacred to followers of the Vedic code. Among their many pilgrimages, it is Ketaksha that the Hindus consider one of the more important ones.
Over the years the word Ketaksha was corrupted to Ketas, by which name we now know the group of ancient buildings sitting by the road outside village Choa Saidan Shah in the Salt Range. Here the late 17th century domed temple of Shiva casts a narcissistic shadow in the placid blue waters of the pond and dominates the rest of the ruined buildings sprinkled all around. Here are roofless hulks of the dharmsala that housed visiting pilgrims and here are other temples, some pre-dating the main temple by as much as seven centuries.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2010, Punjab, Salt Range, Sights Less Seen
posted by Salman Rashid @ 11:06,
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