Roghan Sheher – the city of Caves
14 April 2017
The ravine of the Kudi Kor, one of the several tributaries of the Porali River that flows by Lasbela town in Balochistan, is wild and desolate with water in the bed only when it rains. The sheer sides of the gorge rise from about fifty to a hundred metres above the floor and would be unremarkable but for the caves that pock them.
Carefully hewn into the walls of conglomerate, the caves form proper dwelling places with a veranda in front that gives access to a room behind through a doorway. The rooms have windows looking through the veranda and niches for lamps. In at least one or two, remnants of in-house grain storage vats can still be found tucked into a corner. Locals know this site as Roghan Sheher.
Labels: Balochistan, Book of Days 2010, Sights Less Seen
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The town called ‘Tomb’
29 March 2017
The high, wind-scoured mound of hard-packed clay rises above the date orchards to the north of Turbat town. Closer inspection reveals an array of eroded turrets and bulky walls meant clearly for defensive purpose, foundations of rooms, immense quantities of pottery shards and even a brick-lined well or two.
Locals call it Miri and believe it is the last vestige of the palace of Ari Jam, the king of Kech and Makran. But Ari Jam was apparently a mythical figure for history provides no corroboration of his existence. Instead, there is no dearth of reference to the town of Kech in the accounts of the several Persian and Arab geographers who passed through Makran in the Middle Ages.
Read more »Labels: Balochistan, Book of Days 2010, Sights Less Seen, Turbat
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The Loneliest Places in Pakistan
26 October 2015
I suppose it is natural to feel an overwhelming sense of isolation in a particular remote and unpopulated place. I have also heard that a sense of dread overcomes folks in lonely places. I have a different feeling, however. Lonely, isolated place do things to me. My imagination goes into overdrive and I begin to perceive things that I wouldn’t anywhere else.
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| Shuwert on the Central Asiatic side of the Great Asiatic Divide |
In those early years of travelling after I left the army and lived in Karachi, I went alone. In 1979, along the Malir River, about sixteen kilometres upstream of Super Highway, I got my first taste of real solitude. Having left the highway, I had not seen a single soul en route. When I slept that night on a flat rock, the only sound was the soughing of the thorn bushes all around me. Occasionally there was a yelp of some unidentified animal. Once or twice I heard the mewing and coughing of what I later learned could have been sand cats.
Read more »Labels: About, Balochistan, Northern Pakistan, Sights Less Seen
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Rabat: Caravanserai at the edge of Pakistan
15 April 2013
In the narrow apex where the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet, the map marks a place as Rabat. Gird by the stark, barren crags of the Kacha Koh hills that to the southeast form the border between Pakistan and Iran, and the higher Koh e Malik Siah to the north, this is no village. Rabat is just a militia post and a number of ruined buildings.
Constructed of sun-baked bricks and mud plastering, these ruins are dominated by one large walled-in compound. It is this building that gives Rabat its name: in Arabic the word signifies ‘caravanserai’ – and that is what this and the neighbouring smaller building once served as.
Read more »Labels: Balochistan, Book of Days 2010, Sights Less Seen
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Dhonra Hingora: not a soul was left living
12 April 2013
The rich farmlands and mango orchards of the canal-fed plains of lower Sindh give way to a saline tract overgrown with mesquite bushes and peelu trees. In this flat land, there rise above the vegetation three domed buildings. On closer inspection one also notices vestiges of scores of brick and lime mortar foundations and walls as well as remnants of houses, some of them smothered by the growth.
Lore preserves the tale of a pious man much given to the pleasures of the marijuana drink bhung, who was one day visited by troopers from the court of the Mughal king Aurganzeb. The purpose of their call being to confiscate the pitchers of the intoxicant that the saint reportedly always had at hand. The pitchers were there all right, but when the soldiers looked in, they found them brimming with yogurt. Now the Sindhi word for yogurt being dhonra and because it had been established by the Hingora tribe, the town came to be known as Dhonra Hingora.
Labels: Book of Days 2010, Sights Less Seen, Sindh
posted by Salman Rashid @ 08:55,
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Fort Prosperity
10 April 2013
One of the more reliable histories of Sindh tells us that the fortified city of Kalankot carries the name of its founder Raja Kala of antiquity. But Richard Burton who travelled widely in Sindh in the 1860s believes the name comes from Sanskrit meaning Fort Prosperity.
Though the origin of Kalankot will remain shrouded in mystery until detailed scientific investigation is carried out, history does paint a sketchy picture. After their capital of Mahatamtur was sacked by imperial troops from Delhi in or about 1284, the Soomras moved to this area and built the fort. There is also the possibility that the fort already existed, in which case the Soomras may have restored it for their use. They did not remain long however: by the middle of the 14th century when the Sammas came to power Kalankot lay in ruins.
Labels: Book of Days 2010, Sights Less Seen, Sindh
posted by Salman Rashid @ 09:01,
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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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Bhamala: the hidden monastery
07 April 2013
As the city of Taxila expanded over the centuries, there grew around it like appendages a number of religious institutions. Buddhism being the predominant religion in the heyday of this great city, these establishments were all monasteries of that religion. The better known among these are Jaulian, Mohra Moradu and Dharmarajika. There are others in the same area that are lesser known. Of these surely the most enchanting and the least known or visited is the Bhamala monastery.
Situated on an elongated hill above the right bank of the Haro River where the valley is only a couple of hundred metres wide, Bhamala is as secluded as it can get. On three sides the hills loom high, only to the southwest is the view open where the narrow valley looks into what was once a large depression containing a few villages but now lies submerged under the placid blue waters of Khanpur Dam.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2010, Punjab, Sights Less Seen, Taxila
posted by Salman Rashid @ 12:37,
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Lal Mahra: Who sleeps here?
06 April 2013
Going by the opulence of the blue tiles and elegant cut-brick work, locals believe the funerary monuments contain the mortal remains of some important Mughal king and his retinue. History that would normally have another tale to tell, in this case however is silent. And the silence is resounding.
What is today farmland because of the canals that now criss-cross the area, was nothing but scrub desert as little as seven decades ago. But back in the 13th century when population was a mere fraction compared to today, this arid region of Dera Ismail Khan would have been uninhabited desert. Through this desert passed the ancient Hashtnagar (Peshawar)-Multan thoroughfare and the tombs locally known as Adhira or the Mughal tombs of Lal Mahra lie just off the old road to the west.
Read more »
What is today farmland because of the canals that now criss-cross the area, was nothing but scrub desert as little as seven decades ago. But back in the 13th century when population was a mere fraction compared to today, this arid region of Dera Ismail Khan would have been uninhabited desert. Through this desert passed the ancient Hashtnagar (Peshawar)-Multan thoroughfare and the tombs locally known as Adhira or the Mughal tombs of Lal Mahra lie just off the old road to the west.
Labels: Book of Days 2010, Sights Less Seen
posted by Salman Rashid @ 09:12,
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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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Rajo Pind: jailhouse or caravanserai?
03 April 2013
Sher Shah Suri’s famous Rohtas Fort sits on one side of the Kahan River. Across the muddy waters of the stream lies the village of Rajo Pind. Otherwise unremarkable, the village proper can be entered by a lofty but ruinous gateway that was once part of a high wall enclosing a large compound. Inside the compound, among the modern houses, there are three buildings dating back to the Mughal era. The locals believe these were part of a jailhouse where the Suri king interred his political foes.
The ruins comprise of a row of simple rooms arranged on either side of a smaller gateway along the north side of the village. These rooms wrap around to the west side and run into a modern residence. These rooms are said to be part of the old jailhouse. These are, in fact, residential rooms of an old caravanserai. Those that are still serviceable serve as store-rooms for local residents. Others are gradually being dismantled and replaced with modern construction.
Labels: Book of Days 2010, Punjab, Sights Less Seen
posted by Salman Rashid @ 09:00,
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Khaplu Fort: back from the brink
02 April 2013
For several centuries the successive rajas of Khaplu oversaw the affairs of their kingdom from a very eagle’s eyrie of a castle on a high hill outside town. But when the Dogras of Kashmir overran Baltistan in the late 1830s, they forced the raja to give up that out-of-the-way place and make himself more accessible. They were not thinking of better governance, however. They only wanted to have the raja within easy reach so as to prevent any mischief when they perceived it.
And so the year 1840 saw the new residential fortress of the Khaplu raja coming up right inside Khaplu town. Solid of construction, square in plan and rising through four irregular floors the fort is a fine example of the defensive-residential building seen across the Northern Areas of Pakistan.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2010, Northern Pakistan, Sights Less Seen
posted by Salman Rashid @ 08:39,
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Tower on the Ford
31 March 2013
If anything, the solitary tower standing on its high plinth amid rich farmland is enigmatic. Locals know it as Pattan Minara – Tower on the Ford – and believe that this lofty tower once stood on a ford upon the Indus River. It is indeed true that when Alexander passed through this region in the year 325 BCE, the river did indeed flow nearby and not forty kilometres to the westward as it does today. All around the building several mounds strewn with pottery shards mark the remnants of cities past.
Though no detailed study has been carried out at the site, the archaeologist and the historian provide a few sketchy details. Pattan Minara was built in two distinct phase. The ground floor with its square plinth and west-facing doorway is a Hindu temple. The building style and the embellishment on the exterior show a clear connection with the Hindu Shahya temples of the Salt Range, the most telling of which is the representation in miniature of the front elevation of the building on the three façades.
Labels: Book of Days 2010, Sights Less Seen
posted by Salman Rashid @ 11:19,
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Sights Less Seen
30 March 2013
Though the beginning of our prehistory is marked by the absence of the written word, archaeologists have yet been able to painstakingly piece together a clear and coherent story from the myriad relics discovered from the ruins of our earliest cities. Written history begins for us with the earliest Sanskrit treatises compiled from the oral tradition about the beginning of the first millennium BCE. This was followed quickly by the works of the Greeks beginning with Herodotus in the early 5th century BCE. Later still, the written word proliferated and history became much more lucid giving the remains of our ancient built heritage an historical context.
Note: Sights Less Seen is part of Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) book of days initiative.
Nevertheless, there are still hundreds of monuments across the four provinces of Pakistan that continue to hold their veil of secrecy tight around themselves. Going by their architectural style, these monuments can easily be assigned a definite era, yet historians are hard put to tell us who built them and for what purpose. Indeed, most of our lesser-known monuments have either not been touched by archaeologists or, at best, have received a cursory once over. The mystery therefore abides.
The twelve historical sites from across Pakistan featuring in the following posts have been selected for two reasons: either they are relatively little known, or they hold a certain degree of inscrutability. Though some of the sites have been duly investigated by archaeologists and historians there are others in this collection that have never felt the probing touch of the scientist’s scalpel.
Labels: Book of Days 2010, Sights Less Seen
posted by Salman Rashid @ 09:18,
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