Lahore in 1933 – an aerial view

These original aerial photographs of old Lahore or the Inner City were shot in 1933. Zahra Mahmoodah has generously contributed them from a recently acquired album for Lahore Nama.

We invite the readers to identify the landmarks and buildings that are captured in the above photograph. Lahore remains the most beautiful city and in the 1930s it was surely a splendour!

Lahore – Before Partition- rare footage

Historic footage of Lahore city circa 1946 shot in Technicolor with views of two partition veterans on how the city has been changed after partition. Sites that have been captured are The Mall Road, Lahore Gymkhana (Old Building now Quaid-e-Azam Library), Lahore Museum, Badshahi Mosque, Lahore Fort, Delhi Gate, Walled City, Circular Road etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apEk8Yu0KXU&feature=related

Nadira Begum’s tomb – faded glory of Lahore

Saad Sarfraz Shiekh’s excellent article and photos

The tomb of Nadira Begum…

Finding Nadira Begum’s Tomb isn’t hard since its right next to Sufi Saint Hazrat Mian Mir’s shrine.

Nadira Saleem Banu was the wife of Mughal Prince Dara Shikoh, the ill-fated heir to Shah Jahan’s throne and the crown prince of his Indian empire.

She died in 1659, several months before Dara Shikoh execution, and was survived by two daughters. No sons survived thanks to Aurangzeb Alamgir, who got rid of all male threats.

Stories of Nadira Banu’s beauty and intelligence were famous throughout the empire. She was the daughter of Shah Jahan’s half-brother, Prince Perwez, and therefore Dara Shikoh’s cousin.

Her would-be husband Dara Shikoh was eager to marry her and had a good relationship with her throughout his turbulent life. He never remarried, in spite of the common Mughal practice of persistent polygamy and overflowing harems. Shah Jahan’s wife Mumtaz Mahal, Dara’s mother, arranged the marriage when both Dara and Nadira were teenagers.

Dara Shikoh’s sister Jahanara Begum got along with Nadira quite well, as reflected by her involvement and interest in Nadira’s wedding and her closeness to him.

Lahore Coffee House

Raza Rumi (published in The Friday Times)

Before his death in July 2009, KK Aziz had accomplished one mission
that he had set for himself, i.e. to write about the Lahore Coffee
House, the glorious nursery of ideas. Luckily, despite his failing
health, Aziz finished a draft that was meant to be a shining part of
his autobiographical kaleidoscope. “The Coffee House of Lahore: A
Memoir, 1942-57” was published in 2008 and Aziz, in the opening
chapters, tells us about the genesis of his passion to document this
memorable phase of our contemporary history.

Lahore Calling

These are prolific, topical times for Pakistani fiction. Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, published in early 2007, was the first of the recent bloom. Hamid’s unnerving novella, about a Princeton grad who grows a beard, quits his fancy New York consulting job and returns home to Lahore after 9/11, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Mohammed Hanif’s 2008 novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes, based on the 1988 plane crash that killed General Zia ul-Haq, was a finalist for the Guardian first-book award. And Daniyal Mueenuddin’s superb In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, a sage, Chekhovian collection of tales set in rural Punjab, has been wowing critics since publication in February. Ali Sethi’s hefty novel The Wish Maker, set mostly in Lahore during the 1990s and early 2000s, is also certain to keep the critics talking.

Sethi’s engrossing if uneven debut is written in astoundingly assured prose that belies the author’s youth (he is 25), particularly in his throbbing takes of contemporary Lahore, where he grew up and returned to after his undergrad years at Harvard. He describes everything from the “mewl of bargainers” at a fabric shop to card games played by bored guards at gated homes like the one in which middle-class narrator Zaki Shirazi lives. Also in the house are three related women whose lives mirror the tottering arc of recent Pakistani history — from partition to the bruised Bhutto years, caught between purdah and leggy Jane Fonda workout tapes, Suzuki Swifts and donkey carts. They are Zaki’s grasping grandmother Daadi; his widowed mom Zakia, editor of a progressive women’s magazine that criticizes the government and runs interviews with acid-attack victims; and Zaki’s teenage cousin Samar Api, who is on a lame quest to find an Amitabh Bachchan to sweep her off her feet.

(See the 100 best novels of all time.)

The novel (national epic, family saga and testy teen drama knotted into one) meanders — including an abrupt jaunt to Granada, where Zakia and Zaki vacation just so, it seems, Sethi can make a point about the high potential of Islamic culture. And it’s burdened by clichés: the love of all things Bollywood; mingy mothers-in-law; the kid who escapes to an American university. Still, Sethi’s sharp eye, worthy of being an entomologist’s, makes the book a steadily absorbing read, all 400-plus pages of it. Recollecting his first day at a private boy’s academy, Zaki remembers of a classroom: “A dead wasp lay on its back in a corner of the windowsill with its legs curled up. It had wandered in past the mesh and never found its way out.” It’s a muted metaphor not just for Zaki but for Pakistan as a whole. It’s this kind of nuanced detail in The Wish Maker, moreover, that leaves you wishing for much more from Sethi, whose buzzing talent is unmistakableThese are prolific, topical times for Pakistani fiction. Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, published in early 2007, was the first of the recent bloom. Hamid’s unnerving novella, about a Princeton grad who grows a beard, quits his fancy New York consulting job and returns home to Lahore after 9/11, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Mohammed Hanif’s 2008 novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes, based on the 1988 plane crash that killed General Zia ul-Haq, was a finalist for the Guardian first-book award. And Daniyal Mueenuddin’s superb In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, a sage, Chekhovian collection of tales set in rural Punjab, has been wowing critics since publication in February. Ali Sethi’s hefty novel The Wish Maker, set mostly in Lahore during the 1990s and early 2000s, is also certain to keep the critics talking.

By TIM KINDSETH

Sethi’s engrossing if uneven debut is written in astoundingly assured prose that belies the author’s youth (he is 25), particularly in his throbbing takes of contemporary Lahore, where he grew up and returned to after his undergrad years at Harvard. He describes everything from the “mewl of bargainers” at a fabric shop to card games played by bored guards at gated homes like the one in which middle-class narrator Zaki Shirazi lives.

Bibliography: The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam By Dr. Muhammad Iqbal

Bibliography: The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam By Dr. Muhammad Iqbal

Works of Allama Iqbal

(A) Works in Prose

Bedil in the Light of Bergson, ed. and annotated by Dr. Tehsin Firaqi, Lahore, 1988.The Development of Metaphysics in Persia (a contribution to the history of Muslim philosophy), London, 1908. Reprinted Lahore, 1954, 1959, 1964.

CULTURES OF PUNJAB

The geographical entity in the north-western region of India called Punjab, the land of five rivers, has been and still is an integral part of the common pool of Indian culture. Its arts and crafts also form an important part of the deep-rooted artistic tradition of India and are equally rich and significant.

The culture of Punjab prior to the partition of 1947 was a mixture of three strains one flowing frorn Kangra hills, the second from south-western area from Multan to Lahore, and the third from Peshawar w Lahore.

Abandoned pleasures

LAHORE: The paien bagh at the Lahore Fort is without visitors. The garden was adjacent to the sleeping chambers and was built by Emperor Jahangir in 1633AD. It was used only by the inmates of the emperor’s harem.

Moving Journeys: An Exhibition of Photographs of the Colonial Punjab

Photographs of the Punjab taken by London’s Royal Geographical Society
(RGS) members during the late 19th and early 20th centuries form the
core of the exhibition. The RGS images provide a glimpse of the Punjab
province through the ages, capturing the changes brought on by
different empires and the impact of internal and external migration.
To help interpret the pictures, the exhibition also makes use of
travelogues collected and written by RGS members during the colonial
period.

K. K. Aziz on Lahore

Chapati Mystery has published this enchanting post on Lahore. We are cross posting for our readers. Raza Rumi

K. K. Aziz, 82, one of the most renowned historian of Pakistan, is gravely ill in Lahore. He is one of those cherished individuals who dare speak truth without the fear of consequence. He acted as the nation’s conscious for a long while [See especially, The Pakistani Historian: Pride and Prejudice in the Writing of History (1993)]. I am currently reading the second volume of his autobiography and I thought, I’d share this little bit about Lahore from his introduction. Speedy recovery, Professor Aziz.

From the 1920s onwards, perhaps even earlier, Lahore was the most highly cultured city of north India. From here appeared the largest number of Urdu literary joundals, newspapers, and books and two of the

The Historian – Online Journal of Government College University, Pakistan

Raza Rumi

Many months ago I received this link to the online journal of the Government College University, Lahore. It has an impressive editorial board and the editor, Tahir Kamran, is a respected historian whose efforts and contributions to revive the near-dead discipline of history deserve more than appreciation.

The said issue of The Historian has diverse articles including On the Making of Muslims in India Historically and Evolution and Impact of Deobandi Islam in the Punjab. And, there are some brilliant book reviews as well. The book that interested me were Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and M.J. AKBAR’s, Blood Brothers: A Family Saga.

I was once a student at this institution albeit for a year only. After years of state control, the recent reforms have improved the quality of instruction and of course the management. Thus the glorious tradition of the Government College shall not wane despite the awful stateof education that haunts Pakistan.

Do visit the website and browse through the pieces if history is your cup of tea.

Lahore stays linked to its past

By Ramachandra Guha

Published: April 18 (Financial Times)

Badshahi Mosque

I first visited Lahore in 1995, illegally. I was attending a conference in Islamabad, and had a visa for that city alone. But I was determined to get to Lahore. I had grown up in a town in north India inundated with refugees from Pakistan’s Punjab. The fathers of my friends had all been educated in Lahore, and spoke in elegiac tones about its colleges, parks, theatres and shops. A book they passed lovingly from hand to hand was Pran Neville’s Lahore: A Sentimental Journey, an account of a sensuous and even sybaritic city, whose residents – at least in this telling – were preoccupied with the pleasures of clothes, food, music and sex.

Speaking of the 1930s, Neville wrote that “Lahore was famous for its sexologists, mostly [Hindu] vaids and [Muslim] hakims. They promised sexual prowess to all those who could afford their expensive formulations, which had ingredients like gold, silver, pearls and rare herbs.”

Personal histories: attention Lahore buffs

I have received this letter from Suniti Mohindra based in the US, who is searching for many answers. This email was so interesting that I am publishing it with Suniti’s permission. I am going to look for materials but I would request the readers to help our friend in undertaking this amazing project. History is not the domain of the rulers only. Personal histories are even more important for they give us a humanistic vision of our past and the present. Please leave any information here in the comments section RR

Dear Raza Rumi,

I was researching for the history of Lahore the great City of Punjab where my grandfather Ralla Ram Mohindra came to for his college education in 1892/3 and while finishing his college he came across an advertisement in the local paper where the East India Company was advertising for educated persons for the development of the Railway in East Africa called the Uganda Railway. My Grandfather hailed from Malsian district Jullandhar from the Soodhan Mohalla his father being in the business of leasing land to the farmers and hence from a rich family that believed in Education and the values to be gotten wherefrom. My Grandfather without telling his father Lala Moti Ram (he was the only son) applied for this post was immediately called to Calcutta where he was given a crash course in Administration and telegraphy and with a handsome advance given a ticket to sail for Mombasa, Kenya to report to the General Manager George Whitehouse[who was later knighted]as the Railhead Station Master and took the Railway from Mazeras to Kisumu on Lake Victoria the period was 1896 to 1901.

I am putting together history of my family and was wondering if you may be able to help me in constructing the aura of the Great City of Lahore the then Capital of Punjab. I have pieced together some aspects but these only relate to the fact that there were four sections of the city etc. Is there any material that would help me grasp what the Metropolis of that time was and what great thing it was for some one from a village to come to this Great City, get Educated there and them get the dare devil outlook for adventure and exploration in a spirit of fearlessness to a distant part of Africa then known as KALA PANI.. my love for Punjab aside, the great adventure of my Grandfather and what motivated a young man in his late teens to embark on such a journey is what I want to get a handle on.

Any help from you would be most helpful and please accept my gratitude which I shall duly acknowledge for the courtesy extended.

With respect and regards,

Suniti Mohindra

Lahore’s history goes rack and ruin

Isambard Wilkinson, The National

Lahore – A project to save the architectural and cultural heritage of Lahore’s fabled Old City is foundering due to political instability and corruption, officials say.

The World Bank has offered US$10 million (Dh36.7m) to restore the 2.6-sq-km Old City, home to 145,000 of Lahore’s eight million population, but the so-called Sustainable Development Walled City project has become mired in bureaucracy and inertia.

Jewels of Moghul architecture have been neglected or poorly restored. Havelis, courtyard houses akin to Morocco’s highly prized riads, have been left to rot. Many of the city’s decorously carved wooden balconies, or jerokahs, have collapsed and the streets are squalid.

The city that was bought to life by writers ranging from the Moghul court chroniclers to the bard of the British Raj, Rudyard Kipling, and was once the capital of the Moghul and Sikh empires, is in a state of deep decay.

Lahore 1883-4

posted by Raza Rumi

Read this amazing piece, thanks to UQ.

ء1881 دی مانو گنتری موجب ضلع لہور وچ ہندواں، سکھاں تے مسلیاں دی گنتری ویکھن نال ساڈے بہوں عبقریاں دے گویڑ صحیح نہیں رہندے۔ پر اسیں کیہہ کرئیے، اساں تے اوہی لکھاں گے جیہڑا اس گیزیٹئر وچ لکھیا ہویا ہے۔ جو انج ہے،

Read the rest in Punjabi here

Rewriting history -Government is considering to extend Lahore Museum

By Waqar Gillani writing for the News on Sunday

The expansion of Lahore Museum according to international standards, is yet to be seen. The old Tollington Market on The Mall which was decided to be used as an extension of the museum, is still locked..

The Tollington Market renovated a couple of years back, was formally inaugurated last year by the then governor. Only a lane divides the two buildings — Lahore Museum and Tollington. The Board of Governors (BoG) of the museum, in its 47th meeting, decided to set up a ‘City Museum’ in the Tollington Market, approving that the artefacts of national museum from the city could be shifted to this place. The board came to the conclusion that Tollington Market was the most suitable place for extension of the museum because of its proximity to the Lahore Museum and approved a subway to connect the Lahore Museum with Tollington Market.

The idea was to get the space to display its over 40,000 artefacts which are lying in the inventory for lack of space. They were scheduled to be displayed at the city museum at Tollington Market after its opening in September 2007. The Lahore Museum has over 60,000 artefacts in its possession. Since the museum did not have enough space, only 20,000 artefacts are on display there.

Losing Lahore

Josh Loeb writing for this week’s Friday Times

	Delhi Gate – entrance to the “Royal Route”
	The Dhai Anga Mausoleum
	The derelict tomb of “Buddu,” Dhai Anga’s husband
	“Cities that survive and prosper are not cities which destroy their heritage. People don’t visit Paris because of business; they visit because it is a beautiful city”
	“This country is strewn with heritage,” she continues. “Turn a stone and there’ll be something there. And it should not be the preserve of intellectuals – ordinary people are interested” – Yasmeen Lari

“He who has not seen Lahore has not been born,” the saying goes, yet speak to those interested in old buildings and they will tell you that Lahore is dying.

Earlier this year, English architectural historian Simon Jenkins issued a stark warning. “Lahore’s past is collapsing around it,” he wrote in a British newspaper. “Hovering over its ancient walls is a sense of utter neglect.” He went on to warn that cities that neglect their past endanger their future. If this true, Lahore’s future is bleak.

Take the mausoleum of Dhai Anga, wet nurse to Mughal Shah Jahan. Completed in 1671, the building is situated in what was once a rose garden but is now a mini-wasteland – the haunt of drug-addled young men who pace about with bloodshot eyes beneath the arches of the tomb’s chambers. Of the “beautiful enamelled tile mosaics” proclaimed on the information board outside there is now almost nothing left. Whilst funds are directed towards Lahore’s two world heritage sites – the Lahore Fort and Shalimar Gardens – other historic monuments are turning to dust.

Mohammad Imran makes a living guiding visitors around historic sights like the Dhai Anga Mausoleum.

“I want to see this building in a good condition,” he says. “I want to see a restoration but I want to see it done in the right way. A lot of buildings are restored half-heartedly. It should be restored to its original shape or else there is no point.”

Imran trots out the old refrain that antique buildings should be looked after for the sake of tourism (something with which Jenkins agrees). But Yasmeen Lari, Pakistan’s first female architect and the director of the Pakistan Heritage Foundation, takes a different view.

“I’m not bothered about tourists,” she explains. “Frankly, the way things are in the country right now, tourists are not going to come anyway. Conserving our heritage is something that should be done for our own pride and for social cohesion. It’s something to understand ourselves by.

“This country is strewn with heritage,” she continues. “Turn a stone and there’ll be something there. And it should not be the preserve of intellectuals – ordinary people are interested.”

Back at the Dhai Anga Mausoleum, two workers from the mysteriously (and perhaps misleadingly) named Archaeological Department are engaged in what appears to be dusting stones. “Small repairs,” explains one, Furqan Ullah, yet there remains an air of hopelessness about the endeavour.

Living Lohawarana

by Raza Rumi

Also published in Himal Magazine’s October issue

There was a Lahore that I grew up in, and then there is the Lahore that I live in now. Recovering from an exile status for two decades, I find myself today turning into something of a clichéd grump, hanging desperately on to the past. Yet I resist that. Writing about Lahore is a sensation that lies beyond the folklore – Jine Lahore nai wakhaya o janmia nai (The one who has not seen Lahore has never lived). It has to do with an inexplicable bonding and oneness with the past, and yet a contradictory and not-so-glorious interface with the present.

Lahore is now the second largest city in Pakistan, with a population that has crossed the 10 million mark. It is turning into a monstropolis. Had it not been for Lahore’s intimacy with Pakistan’s power base – the Punjab-dominated national establishment – this would be just another massive, unmanageable city, regurgitating all the urban clichés of the Global South. But Lahore retains a definite soul; it is comfortable with modernity and globalisation, and continues to provide inspiration for visitors and residents alike.

Over the last millennium, Lahore has been the traditional capital of Punjab in its various permutations. A cultural centre of North India extending from Peshawar to New Delhi, it has historically been open to visitors, invaders and Sufi saints alike. Several accounts tell how Lahore emerged as a town between the 6th and 16th centuries BC. According to commonly accepted myth, Lahore’s ancient provenance, Lohawarana, was founded by the two sons of Lord Ram some 4000 years ago. One of these sons, Loh (or Luv), gave his name to this timeless city. A deserted temple in Lahore Fort is ostensibly a tribute to Loh, located near the Alamgiri gate, next to the fort’s old jails. Under the regime of Zia ul-Haq, Loh’s divine space was closed and used as a dungeon in which to punish political activists.

Lahore as Kipling Knew It

paknation writing on the Lahore metroblogs:

Though now obscured as a tourist destination due to its location 15 miles inside Pakistan, Lahore was the heart of Kipling’s India. Between 1882 and 1887, he worked there as the assistant editor of The Civil and Military Gazette, combing the back alleys of the old, walled city for stories and material for his later fiction. Like the Irish street urchin, Kim, the hero of his greatest novel, Kipling used Lahore as a base to explore the rest of the subcontinent.

Armed with the Penguin edition of ”Kim,” I set out for the Lahore Museum, where Kipling’s father, John Lockwood Kipling, had been the curator and where the first scene in ”Kim” takes place. The novel opens with Kim sitting ”astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher – the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum.” It was while astride the gun that Kim meets a Tibetan lama, whom the boy then escorts into the Wonder House.

The Zam-Zammah (Urdu for lion’s roar) is known in Lahore as Kim’s gun, and, except for the brick platform that has been replaced by marble, the copper and brass cannon looks exactly as Kipling described it; a massive icon of imperialism over 14 feet long, mounted on wooden wheels that are well over six feet in diameter. And the Wonder House opposite is just that; in my opinion one of the world’s great underrated museums.

Sheesh Mahal (Palace of Mirrors) – Lahore Fort

Sheesh Mahal (Palace of Mirrors) at the Shahi Qila, Lahore, Pakistan – April 2008, originally uploaded by saffyhuk.

The picture shows the Sheesh Mahal (Palace of Mirrors) at the Shahi Qila, Lahore, Pakistan..

The Sheesh Mahal (Palace of Mirrors) is located within the Shah Burj block in north-western corner of Lahore Fort. It was constructed under the reign of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in 1631-32. The ornate white marble pavilion is inlaid with pietra dura and complex mirror-work of the finest quality. The hall was reserved for personal use by the imperial family and close aides. It is among the 21 monuments that were built by successive Mughal emperors inside Lahore Fort, and forms the jewel in the Fort’s crown.[1] As part of the larger Lahore Fort Complex, it has been inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981.