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cultural heritage along the grand trunk road
 Chapter Name

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cultural heritage along the grand trunk road

salman rashid
Published in 2020 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization, 7, place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP, France
And UNESCO Field Office Islamabad, 7th Floor, Serena Business Complex,
Islamabad-Pakistan/ and Sang-e-Meel Publications, 25 Lower Mall,
Shahrah-e-Pakistan, Lahore 54000 Pakistan

© UNESCO and SANG-E-MEEL PUBLICATIONS, 2020

ISBN 978-92-3-100387-5

This publication is available in Open Access under the Attribution-ShareAlike

3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by-sa/3.0/igo/). By using the content of this publication, the users accept to be
bound by the terms of use of the UNESCO Open Access Repository
(http://www.unesco.org/open-access/terms-use-ccbysa-en).

The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this

publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part
of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or
of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors;
they are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization.

Author: Salman Rashid

Editor: Shahid Kamal
Peer Reviewer: Fakir Syed Aijazuddin
Photographs: © UNESCO/Asad Zaidi & © Salman Rashid
Design and Layout: Halima Sadia
Illustration and Map Design: Keepsakes Pakistan
Printed by: Sang-e-Meel Publications
Cover Image: © UNESCO/Asad Zaidi
Bus passing through Zohal (south) Darwaza of Rohtas fort.

Printed in 2020
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cultural heritage along the grand trunk road

salman rashid
 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3
Passing into History Peshawar: the First City East of the Indus
Page

i
Foreword
Pages

ii-iii
Introduction
Pages

iv-v Pages

1-17
Pages

18-59
Pages

60-99
Acknowledgements
 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
Chapter 4 In the Land of Maharaja Ranjit Singh Chapter 7

Over the Cut Throat Pass Raja Paurava Ruled Here The City that Loh Built

Pages Pages Pages Pages

100-149 150-165 166-207 208-249

Foreword

10
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On a bright summer morning in April 2018, officials from UNESCO Islamabad and the Department of
Archaeology and Museums, Government of Pakistan, visited Rawat Fort to assess the conservation work
underway at the site, which is located just outside Islamabad. For centuries, the Rawat Fort served as
a caravanserai, an inn with a central courtyard, for traders, adventurers, pilgrims and travelers, travers-
ing across the mountains of Afghanistan into present-day Pakistan, and onwards to the Bay of Bengal.
Located in proximity to a prominent Buddhist stupa at Mankiala, the Hindu temples of Gujar Khan and
the Sikh havelis of the Potohar, the area consists of countless historical sites that narrate stories of the
rich and diverse heritage of this region. Hence, the idea of a book on the heritage along the Grand Trunk
Road was born.

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

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

diversity of cultural and religious heritage along the Grand Trunk Road in Pakistan with an acute eye.
Salman Rashid, the pre-eminent Pakistani travel writer and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society,
takes us on a fascinating journey along the Grand Trunk Road, describing the architectural marvels built
over millennia and their history, highlighting the diverse cultural, religious and architectural expressions
that have helped shape the identity of the people of Pakistan.

i
The book, unique in its kind, serves to encourage the people and the government of Pakistan to protect

Foreword
and preserve the heritage which marks the ancient landscape of Pakistan. We are confident that From
Landi Kotal to Wagah will encourage the tourists to explore the country in depth.

In the spirit of the global Sustainable Development Agenda 2030, the production of this book has been
a true partnership. The Federal and Provincial Governments of Pakistan, the Delegation of the European
Union to Pakistan, the Embassy of Switzerland in Pakistan, The World Bank and UNESCO have collabo-
rated to support the project. We are especially grateful to Salman Rashid, and Dr. Abdul Azeem, Director
of Archaeology and Museums, who often traveled together on the journey described in the book.
We are delighted to present it to you.

Patricia McPhillips Thomas Kolly Illango Patchamuthu Androulla Kaminara

Director/Representative Ambassador of Switzerland, Country Director Ambassador of the EU
UNESCO Islamabad Islamabad World Bank Delegation to Pakistan
 Introduction
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ii
Chapter Name

Aerial view of the southern Zohal Darwaza. The gateway was named
after Saturn because oral tradition once related that the planet was
overhead at the time of its building. It was later corrupted to Sohail
after a supposed saint. In the background the gateway to the inner fort
and the white-domed remains of the once magnificent palace of Raja
Man Singh are clearly visible.
Pakistan is a country of limitless tourism potential ranging from the lakes of Sindh, ideal for windsurfing,
through the plains rich with cultural and historical sites to the high mountains of the northern areas. Yet,
over the past seven decades, little attention has been paid to this component of national importance.
Boosting tourism for the economic growth of the country is among the top priorities of our government.
I am glad to see the manuscript of the book, which highlights the lesser known but amazing sites of Paki-
stan, identifying potential opportunities for promoting tourism in the country.

It is a matter of great satisfaction to note that both individuals and organizations have extended full
support to accomplish this significant project. I wholeheartedly acknowledge the support of UNESCO,
World Bank, European Union and Embassy of Switzerland in Islamabad, who put a joint effort to bring
out a monograph titled From Landi Kotal to Wagah: Cultural Heritage Along the Grand Trunk Road. I am
delighted to know that this is the first book of its kind on heritage sites along the ancient Grand Trunk

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Road and provides a complete compendium of important historical and cultural sites spread along four
hundred odd kilometres of the ancient highway.

The most pleasing aspect of the book is the narrative that connects each monument with historical fact
and modern belief(s) - providing a wonderful bridge between the present and distant past. Equally inter-
esting is the research undertaken by Salman Rashid, going back to the origin of this grand highway to the iii

Introduction
4th century BCE, in the time of the Mauryans. He takes us on a fascinating journey of Buddhist, Mughal,
Sikh and British eras, bringing to fore vibrant & diverse history of Pakistan.

The book focuses mainly on highlighting the importance of Pakistan’s cultural heritage. I believe, through
this book, a significant effort has been made to raise awareness regarding need to preserve these mile-
stones pointing to our collective past. The book clearly reflects dedication and commitment of those,
who put their efforts in compiling this informative monograph. For this, I acknowledge the concerted
efforts of the Department of Archaeology and Museums under National Heritage & Culture Division,
who had completed the initial task of survey along this ancient highway and had identified all important
sites and monuments. I am sure this effort will prove a milestone in preserving our built heritage and with
it our history and this is what we owe to our future generations.

Shafqat Mahmood
Federal Minister for National Heritage & Culture Division
 Acknowledgements
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iv
Chapter Name

Fresco painting at Bedi Palace in Kallar Syedan.

The force driving this book from concept to fruition was Vibeke Jensen of UNESCO who conjured up
the idea. And there was Junaid Akhlaq, then of the Department of Archaeology and Museums, who had
that misplaced trust in me being able to do it in record time. I did not, and I griped about the rain when-
ever he asked how things were getting along. At UNESCO thanks is also due to Samar Majid and Jawad
Aziz, to the latter especially for putting up with my colourful outbursts and his unfailing propriety.

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Nothing would have taken off without Nicole Malpas of European Union who held the purse strings to
the travel expenses that I expended so liberally. And to Maha Ahmed of World Bank for not letting funds
lapse and paying me in full well before the book was completed which so tempted me to run away with
the money. To her colleague and my old friend Kamran Akbar also my gratitude.

The several archaeologists in Peshawar, Taxila, Islamabad, Rohtas and Lahore were invaluable with their v
advice and guidance which added so much value to the writing. In Peshawar I owe much to my civil ser-

Acknowledgements
vice friends Ikram Khan and Shakil Qadir Khan for their efforts to keep me out of trouble. I am grateful to
my friend Irshadullah Khan (major, retired) for his hospitality in Nowshera. In Lahore Raheal Siddiqui was
equally helpful with stories.

In the end, my gratitude to the designer Halima Sadia, the photographer Asad Zaidi and to
Afzaal Ahmad of Sang-e-Meel Publications for bringing out this book.

Salman Rashid
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The word ‘pass’ rings of romance and adventure; and not just in English. No matter what
language the word comes from, it raises goose bumps and a burst of adrenaline in the
hearer and the reader. Of them all, Khyber is ever more so. It has long been the passage
way into and from the subcontinent of peaceful migration and sanguinary invasion and
everything else in between. It has truly been the busiest route to shape the history of the
subcontinent.
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah Chapter Name
1
Passing into History
1
 ‘R oads make all the difference to women. They have treatment only when things got out of hand and the moth-
little meaning for men who can ride horses that we women er’s life was thought to be in peril.
can’t,’ said octogenarian Maranjan of the recently re-
named village Ali Mohammad Killi. Situated almost midway Maranjan had heard these stories from her mother. Her
between Peshawar at the bottom of the Khyber Pass and memory went back to the mid-1940s when the British
Landi Kotal at its head, the village now bears the name of had much improved the winding road through Khyber
a local journalist who had died in an accident. Pass and a once-a-day bus service plied up and down the
gorge. A railway line, which provided a daily up and down
I had asked Nusrat Naeem of Mardan to travel with me service, had opened only a decade and a half before
up the Khyber Pass from Peshawar so that we could get a Maranjan was born.
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women’s perspective on roads and transportation. Nusrat

Apa to all of us who know her from her decades of social Maranjan herself had been tied to a charpoy and brought
work, is a Punjabi who has lived all her life in Mardan and to the road to ride the bus to Jamrud for treatment in the
speaks perfect Yusufzai Pushto. early 1950s. Then her family lived some ways off the road,
her home inaccessible to wheeled traffic. But now, she
‘Even when they are unwell, men can ride horses as they said, roads go everywhere.
2
used to when I was child, Maranjan explained, ‘but a preg-
Passing into History

nant woman cannot, especially one with a complication. ‘It was such a hassle. Four men carried the bed and four
For women, the practice was to tie them on a charpoy to marched along as replacement detail for when the carriers
be carried down from the village to the road. There she tired. Also, another woman had to accompany the proces-
was put on a camel and taken down to the nearest medi- sion to deal with the patient’s problems. The jolting ride
cal facility.’ over rough ground sometimes brought on the labour and
the baby would be delivered right there by the side of the
This happened mostly when a pregnant woman developed path.’
complications near delivery time. In normal conditions the
matron of the family, much experienced in motherhood Maranjan went silent perhaps thinking of her own long
and who had helped deliver all the babies in the extended ago predicament. ‘Many times women died because of
family, would be in charge of operations in attendance improper care. But that was the will of God,’ she added.
with the village midwife. The sound of the smack and the ‘Now you say roads go everywhere. Does that mean
thin yowl would then signal a happy end to the pregnancy. women don’t have to be brought down tied to a bed?’
The woman expecting the baby had to face the charpoy asked Nusrat Apa.
‘No. They are still tied to the charpoy. Only now they ride were the alignments that descendants of those early
a pick-up truck to the medical facility.’ walkers followed on their horses and later in their motor
vehicles turning them into highways.
‘That means a lot of lives must have been saved
because of the road?’

‘Recent improvement of the road means speeding drivers

and accidents. And there are many. Women still die, some-
times in road accidents and sometimes even as they are
borne away to the maternity home by pick-up truck. This

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too is the will of God,’ Maranjan, no fatalist, finished with
hearty cackling laughter.

But Maranjan did not know if the road that went through
the Khyber Pass was the Grand Trunk Road. She only
vaguely knew that it was said all roads in the subcontinent
3
were built by the Afghan king Sher Shah Suri.

Chapter Name
Sadly for the Suri king, he came a bit too late to lay claim
to the artery British officials termed the Grand Trunk Road.
Arriving in the sixteenth century, he was late by more than
1500 years after the road was first written of as receiving
royal patronage. This road would, however, have exist-
ed long, long before that too. Perambulation is a basic
primordial action of humans and even before they became
traders and pilgrims humans were walking, walking, and
walking the earth in search of sustenance, survival and
better living. Millions of years of as many pounding feet At the western end of Khyber Pass looking towards the border post of
beat paths across grassland and rocky mountains. These Torkham. The distant mountains lie in Afghanistan.
 In January 326 BCE, Alexander of Macedonia descended Peace was negotiated between the warring sides and in
upon India. He claimed this invasion was to satisfy his consequence, ambassadors were exchanged. In 300 BCE,
desire of standing on the shore of the Eastern Ocean to Megasthenes arrived in the court of Pataliputra (modern
see the sun emerge out of the sea. In reality, he was drawn Patna, now the capital of Bihar in India) and remained
to the subcontinent by word of its immense material here serving the interests of Seleucus Nikator until 285
wealth and intellectual development. At modern day Jala- BCE. During his tenure, the ambassador travelled exten-
labad in Afghanistan, he divided his force into two: he him- sively across the Mauryan kingdom and became quite well
self led the bulk of his multi-national army by way of Nawa acquainted with its culture, history and geography. Upon
Pass to enter modern day Bajaur, while two of his generals, his return home, he wrote his Indica that still exists today,
Perdiccas and Hephaestion, brought their divisions across albeit in fragments. The book is an interesting mix of fact
the Suleman Hills through the contours of the Khyber. and fable but for the discerning reader there is an ample
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

They passed through Peshawar without pausing as they stock of historical significance.
hurried on to lay low the fortified town of Pushkalavati
(Peucelaotis to the ancient Greeks, whose ruins sit outside Megasthenes who became the source for later writers like
Charsadda town, thirty kilometres northeast of Peshawar). Strabo and Arrian tells us, among so much more, of excel-
lent administration in the Mauryan Empire that stretched
That two divisions of infantry and cavalry were able to along northern India clear from the Bay of Bengal across
4
pass down the Khyber gorge can only indicate that the the Indus to Pushpapura – City of Flowers – today’s Pesha-
Passing into History

road was in fairly good condition. The next we hear any- war. The empire also had sway across the Khyber all the
thing of the great east-west artery is from Megasthenes. way to Ortospana and south to Alexandria Arachosia.

After the death of Alexander in Babylon in 322 BCE, his Now, Ortospana was the Greek rendition of the Sanskrit
empire was divided up between his generals. One of Urdasthana – Lofty Citadel. Today fortifications like the
them, Seleucus Nikator, succeeded to most of what Alex- one in Peshawar and the war-ravaged one in Kabul are
ander had wrested from Darius of Persia. In about 303 called Bala Hissar of the same meaning. In the case of the
BCE, Seleucus resolved to pull another Alexander on India: classical Ortospana, scholarly consensus rests on Kabul.
he marched through Afghanistan to confront the Indian Arachosia was the Greek title for the Helmand River valley
king Chandragupta Maurya in the Khyber Pass. The site of in southern Afghanistan and Alexandria became Kandahar.
this battle where the Greek invader was roundly defeated Indeed, some believe the name is a corrupted form of
is believed to be at the eastern foot of the pass under the Sikandar, the Persian version of Alexander.
Mullagory Hill near Ali Masjid.
The administrative measures of the Mauryan Empire In Daily Life in Ancient India, French historian Jeannine
included, among others, a dedicated department looking Auboyer gives us greater detail. Ports in the gulf of Bengal
after roads, taxes, land management and water. Megas- attracted a great deal of Chinese sea-borne trade through
thenes wrote, ‘They construct roads and at every ten the Straits of Malacca. This trade passed up the country
stadia set up a pillar to show the by-roads and distances all the way to the marts of Pushpapura and across the
[to the next station and to outlying towns].’ In that far off pass to Urdasthana. The passage of trade which could
time, the road was Rajapatha – Royal Highway. In fact, only have been possible by good roads meant custom
since all major highroads received royal patronage, they duties, and road toll which went to government coffers. It
were known by the same cognomen. was therefore the express interest of kings and emperors
to maintain the road in the best fettle.
Now, ten stadia of the Greek measure equal an English

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

mile and a half. This in turn is somewhat less than the Auboyer tells us that even in ancient times all highroads in
Indian kos in plain country. However, the length of the kos the country had, besides toll posts, travellers’ rest houses
varies: in mountainous terrain it can be as little as an Eng- at regular intervals, each with its well to provide water
lish mile, while in plain country it is reckoned between two for human consumption and a large tree-shaded pond
and three miles. Of the pillars that the Greek ambassador for animals. The road itself was always raised on a bed
noticed, only two remain in Pakistan, both in Lahore. above the surrounding surface to ease travel during rain.
5
Trees lined all roads and water-filled ditches ran alongside.

Passing into History

Only today, having attributed the road to Sher Shah Suri, This paraphernalia could only be maintained in top class
we call it Jarnaili Sarak – General’s Highway. Great as he condition by a well-staffed department such as the one
undoubtedly was, the Suri king, having ousted the inept Megasthenes tells us of.
Mughal king Humayun, ruled India for a mere five years
from 1540 to 1545. Much of this time was spent fighting The superintendent of roads was not just in charge of the
the desert Rajputs and the Rawalpindi Gakkhars who had facilities along the roads; it was also within his purview to
aided Humayun as he fled before Sher Shah’s army. Having arrest and punish robbers on the way. Two thousand years
supplanted the Mughal kingdom, Sher Shah proved an ago, writes Auboyer, ‘there were unscrupulous merchants
unbiased, able and ironhanded administrator and in his who attempted to defraud the revenue officials by taking
brief tenure lawlessness was unheard of. However, even to side-roads when approaching toll-points.’ Understanda-
he, despite his team comprising the finest of the country, bly enough, old habits die hard.
could not have constructed a 3500-kilometre road in five
years. Modern day smugglers, coming down from the duty-free
haven of Landi Kotal at the top of Khyber Pass, give up the
from Landi Kotal to Wagah Chapter Name

6
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
7

Passing into History

The covered stairway leading up to the loop-holed blockhouse of the
British fortress overlooking Torkham. Common misconception makes it
a slaughterhouse where Temur the Lame executed his foes.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

8
Passing into History

With the railway line covered by tarmac, there is no

hope that Digai Tunnel built in 1922 will ever again be
used for a train.
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
9

Passing into History

Plaque on the Digai Tunnel names Malik Baz Mir Shinwari as the
contractor for this structure. In order to keep trouble-makers at bay,
British engineers hired local chiefs to work on the project who would
keep their clan in check. Mr Shinwari would have been one such person.
 road as they approach the customs checkpoint near the ravaged remains continue to be pillaged near Charsadda.
town of Jamrud. Laden with their contraband whether in In the Yusufzai Plain of Mardan, the road rested at modern
pick-up truck or on foot, they sneak past by a path about Shahbazgarhi, so named after a supposed visit by the saint
five hundred metres to one side, sometimes within sight of Usman Marwandi better known as Shahbaz Qalandar.
customs officials.
Had it not been for the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang we
While modern customs officials tend to overlook this would never have known how this ancient prosperous
trickery, those of the past were more vigilant and a cheat mart and Buddhist centre was known in antiquity. Our
discovered was immediately thrown into prison and his pilgrim calls is Po-lu-sha that scholars translate into the
goods confiscated. Such goods were sold in auction and original as Varusha. Here the great Asoka ordered stupas
the proceeds were shared between the treasury and the and monasteries that no longer exist but whose secrets
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

community, writes Auboyer. sleep beneath the foundations of modern housing and
today we know Shahbazgarhi only for the inscribed rock
Most people have only some vague notion of the Grand that still carries the edicts of that ancient king. From
Trunk Road and have never heard of the great web of Varusha, the road swung southeast for Hund, the ancient
officially sanctioned highways intersecting the country Udabhandapura – Water Pot City – the main ferry across
in ancient times. As already mentioned, all roads were the Indus. This was the very place that Alexander and his
10
constructed and maintained under royal orders, and were legions went over en route to Taxila.
Passing into History

all known as Rajapatha, the more important ones being

classified by their geographical location. The Grand Trunk Its other branch passed through Nowshera into the
Road that we know in Pakistan was thus the Utra Rajapa- hinterland past Nizampur1 to reach the less frequented
tha – Northern Royal Highway. ford of Bagh Nilab into modern Attock city. Babur, the
founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, mentions in the
Eminent archaeologist Dr Saifur Rahman Dar’s Historical early sixteenth century, frequent coming and going by this
Routes through Gandhara confirms what Megasthenes route indicating that downstream of Hund, this was the
tells us about byways when Dar writes that every main major road. In the 1580s, Babur’s grandson, Akbar the
artery was joined by side roads at frequent intervals. Great ordered construction of the impressive Attock Fort
Similarly, the Grand Trunk Road in our part of the subcon- and, right under its walls, the caravanserai of the Begum.
tinent was a set of different alignments. Leaving Peshawar, With it, he also had infrastructure built in the riverbed to
it branched off to the northeast via Pushkalavati whose moor a boat bridge when flow was at low flood. At high

1) Nizampur bears the name of one of the sons of the great warrior poet Khushal Khan Khattak. He and his elder brother
Ashraf remained steadfast by their father in his revolt against Aurangzeb.
flood, travellers braved the mewing eddies of the mighty swung east into wild and broken country to skirt Dhami-
Indus in flat-bottomed boats. In Akbar’s time, this became ak before coming out just southeast of Sohawa. In 1520,
the preferred crossing place, while Nilab was relegated to Babur used this way and called it the ‘sub-montane road’.
a secondary place. With this route gaining importance, Pe- Thence through Dina, it reached Jhelum town for the ferry
shawar and Attock were connected by the shortest route across. From Jhelum to Eminabad, the modern road sits
via Nowshera, the very road we use today. In the latter smack on the ancient alignment. At Eminabad, ten kilo-
Middle Ages, there were thus three alignments of the old metres south of Gujranwala, the road meandered east-
Rajapatha in what we now call Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. ward into forested hinterland before fetching up at the
main ferry on the Ravi at Shahdara outside Lahore.
East of the Indus, the alignment from Hund passed
through the Chach Plain directly to Taxila in whose waning

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glory Rawalpindi rose as the halting place to which all
southbound traffic came from the three roads. Southward
of Rawalpindi one alignment went south through Adiala
and Chakwal, through the village of Basharat into Jhangar
Valley in the Salt Range. Thence it made for village Ara
from where it headed down through a wild and desolate
11
gorge into the short and narrow pass of Nandna. About
the ninth century CE, Nandna became home to a school
and fortified temple complex whose ruins can be seen to
this day. Past the fertile farms at the foot of the Nandna
hill, the road reached several ferries on the Jhelum River.
Regimental crests of battalions that served in the Khyber Pass, by the
roadside outside Landi Kotal.
The Haranpur ferry made for Bhera, a thriving salt market
until two hundred years ago and believed to be the Though there were subsidiary routes, Khyber passed into
ancient Jobnathnagar. The other crossing at Rasul (now history because it was this way that nearly every influx into
famous for the barrage and irrigation canal network) went the subcontinent, whether peaceful migration or sangui-
through Phalia to the celebrated ford of Rasulnagar before nary invasion, came. In the second half of the sixth century
attaining the vicinity of Eminabad and the main axis of the BCE, the Achaemenian king Cyrus the Great of Persia sent
Rajapatha. his armies by way of this pass to lay claim to a slice of
modern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan as one of
The third branch having passed by Gujar Khan town, his satrapies. For two hundred years, his empire lasted as
he and his successors filled their treasuries with tribute White Huns too came by way of the Khyber Pass, they did
received from this possession. Then the powerful kingdom not hold the country for long. After the rout of their king
was undone by Alexander the Macedonian. Mehr Gul (Mihirakula of western literature) in early 528,
there followed five hundred years of relative peace as the
powerful Hindu Shahya kings of Kashmir gained ascend-
ency.2 These last were replaced by neo-Muslim Turks, fore-
most among whom is Mahmud who ruled from the Afghan
city of Ghazni from CE 997 until his death in 1030.

But if violent influx by way of the Khyber Pass is recorded,

we also hear the jangle of caravan bells as traders went up
and down this way between the marts of India and Cen-
tral Asia. And we know of Buddhist monks spinning their
prayer wheels and chanting their mantras as they trudged
their determined way up the snaking road in the pass en
route to the highlands of Afghanistan and beyond into
Central Asia. With them, the tenets of the Great Buddha
spread across this land.
Inside Tamerlane’s gallows.

Alexander was the first European to invade the subcon- The new creed appealed greatly to the highland Fire
tinent. Thereafter, the pageant of outsiders was endless. Worshippers: within a thousand years after they first con-
Alexander’s empire died with him and the brilliant Chan- verted to the new faith, they had painstakingly crafted the
dragupta, founder of the Mauryan Empire in northern great marvel of the gigantic carvings of Buddha at Bamian,
Indian, laid claim to this land in 322 BCE. Within a century sadly destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. One wonders how
and a half, his empire gave way to an influx of the Greek many believers would have fallen to their deaths from the
descendants of one of Alexander’s generals. They in turn rickety scaffolding erected to sculpt the face of their Lord
submitted to the Scythians in the middle of the first centu- fifty-four metres above the valley floor.
ry BCE. There followed the Parthians, Kushans, and eventu-
ally the Persian Sassanians, each holding Khyber Pakh-
tunkhwa for varying periods of time. Though the savage

2) The dynasty rose in the third century CE and remained in power, first in Kashmir and then all the way through Punjab and Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa to Kabul, until the beginning of the tenth century.
Our journey began at Landi Kotal at the top of the Khyber Three months later, on a hot and very dry afternoon as be-
Pass. My captain was Dr Abdul Azeem, the archaeologist, lievers kept the fast, I was again at the Michni viewpoint with
for he had travelled here before. From this beginning, we permission from the provincial Home Department to take
stayed together until the end of our explorations near a guide from the local police force for the short walk down
Wagah outside Lahore. In his fifties, he kept a boyish grin into the gorge and then up to Tamerlane’s slaughter house.
and coupled his deep knowledge of the glorious Gand- Young Shavrez Khan, lounging on a charpoy under the
hara period with a sharp sense of humour and the ability shelter of the Michni viewpoint, was assigned as my pilot
to segue from a very learned discourse on the life and by an older colleague of his. We descended into the gorge,
times of Kanishka to a risqué story or a Persian couplet crossed a dry streambed and climbed a modern looking
from modern times. cemented stairway leading up to the slaughterhouse.

At Michni as we stood at the viewpoint looking west to the

distant bustle of the border crossing at Torkham – Black
Bend, Azeem pointed to the irregular triangle of a small
fortification sitting atop a rocky crag in the middle dis-
tance. It was commonly believed that this was the slaugh-
terhouse of Temur the Lame (Tamerlane). If one were to go
by the stories, this could only be called a slaughterhouse:
here the fourteenth century Barlas Turk king, a descend-
ent of Chengez Khan, would have his prisoners flung from
a parapet into a pit equipped with sharp vertical blades.3
As they were impaled, their cries of agony were heard afar
striking fear of the Turk in the hearts of the Khyber tribes.
The reputed jailhouse and gallows built by the Mongol Tamerlane. One
The story is commonly believed by locals and is said to
wonders how the story became so prevalent when the brick building is
have been passed down through the generations. clearly a British structure. The fortress is tactically situated to provide all
round visibility and loop holed positions to engage fire from any side. It
reminds us of those uncertain times when the Shinwaris who inhabit this
It was late on a January afternoon as we stood there
part of the Khyber Pass periodically rose up against the British.
with the screams of the unfortunate victims of that long
ago ruthlessly savage king ringing in my ears and I knew I As he led me up the steps, Shavrez Khan spoke in a
would have to return to see those now rusty blades. mixture of Pashto and Urdu telling me Temur’s phansi-ghat

3) The Latinised Genghis is far from the true pronunciation of the Mongol name. I therefore prefer Chengez Khan.
 (gallows) was haunted. In the dead of night, one could been dyed that insane colour, came for me screaming like
sometimes hear the screams of those being done to death. a banshee. Why, he demanded to know, had I taken his
As we drew nearer, I said the brick structure clearly dated man on the walk in the afternoon when he was fasting. He
to the beginning of the twentieth century. It was a British himself gave them only light work that too only after the
fortress. fast, he raved. I told him I had permission from the home
secretary and asked for his name which he would not
‘No! You are wrong,’ Shavrez said sharply, ‘everyone knows reveal. Even so his rant did not end.
this is Temur’s phansi-ghat.’
What was my business snooping around a sensitive
The man resolutely believed in the haunting story, for border area, he demanded to know. If it was treasure, he
while I was photographing the exterior, he did not venture thundered without waiting for my reply, then I was in trou-
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

in alone. The entrance was from the east into a triangular ble. As long as he held his post, no treasure-seeker would
courtyard which combined the natural defensive nature be able to dig anywhere in Khyber. I wondered how many
of the crags on the north side with the fortification. Again, treasure hunters like me haunted this outpost of Pakistan.
Shavrez who was hanging back called out sharply for me
to get out of there. For my lack of Pashto, I could not ask Upon hearing that I was a writer he cooled down a bit.
if it was because of the ghosts of Temur’s victims or some Then he told me I ought to climb the ridge south of the
14
more natural cause such as snakes. phansi-ghat for on the crest I would find the remains of a
Passing into History

‘third century BCE’ fortification. He offered to send Shavrez

To the south, a roofed staircase led up to a semi-circular with me. Just five minutes earlier he had roundly berated
turret connected with an oblong room on the north side. me for taking the man and now he wanted us to climb
This room with large firing ports on three sides was once a rather more difficult hill. He claimed to have seen the
roofed, but the rafters and other timber fixtures had long interior of the phansi-ghat and knew all about the pit with
since been cannibalised. There was no pit with the blades the blades, but he could not tell me where exactly it was.
and heaps of skeletons from Temur’s time. Yet my basic He scoffed me when I offered that the building was only
Pashto-Punjabi amalgam could not convince Shavrez that about a century old. He also told me Sphola stupa lower
the fourteenth century king had long before turned to down in the pass was also third century BCE!
dust when the British raised this structure barely a century
and a quarter ago. Later I related the episode to Azeem and he said it was
usual for laypersons to make up stories like that from what
Back at the Michni viewpoint, a man with lavishly oiled hair they perceived as having gleaned from the conversation
and a thick moustache so dark that they could only have of visiting archaeologists whom they accompanied for
administration and security. Only some months earlier a No historical building is complete without its tale of buried
team of archaeologists had carried out a survey in the area treasure. Young Waliullah, a colleague of Azeem’s who
and it seems the man had listened in to their conversation accompanied us, was the teller of this yarn. Sometime in
to create his story of the two millennium old fortification the early 1990s, a local man having either dreamt or heard
on the ridge. from a mullah of a great treasure in the stupa began a
secret tunnel to reach its core. He was discovered in good
When the mountaineers of Bamian in Afghanistan were time and arrested, so the story goes. Since such stories
carving their giant Buddha on the cliff face, the believers do not go without their quota of bizarre twists suggesting
of Khyber were raising a stupa and a monastery in the tor- some evil supernatural influence, this one has the digger
tuous bends of their pass. The Sphola stupa, dating from going into a fit of crazed frenzy to murder his entire family.
the second century ce is the sole extant Buddhist relic in Nevertheless, the man seems to have been possessed of
the Khyber Pass and a reminder of Kushan rule in the area. singular determination and diligence for to reach the stupa
he would have had to dig through a couple of hundred
In 2012, I had photographed the stupa and below it the metres of solid rock. But we know of so many historical
abandoned railway line festooned across a gap in the hill. monuments in Pakistan laid low by ignorant treasure hunt-
Then the stupa stood alone on the crest of its low hill. In ers that the Khyber robber does not seem unlikely.
January 2019, an ugly modern blockhouse was in the final
stages of completion. The soldier on site only permitted

Passing into History

photography when Azeem had introduced himself as
being from the government. The barracks, said the soldier,
was being built to house a contingent of the Khyber Rifles
and I found myself wondering why some brilliant minds
could only think of planting the ugliness right next to an
ancient monument instead of a couple of hundred metres
to one side.

This was not a stand-alone stupa, said Azeem. A hundred

metres to the northeast one could once see the remains
of a monastery. That has long since been cannibalised and
taken over by modern construction.
Sphola stupa is the most notable and complete Buddhist monument in
the Khyber Pass. Built by the Kushans in the 2nd-3rd century CE, its view
is now marred by the structure in front.
At the eastern foot of the Khyber Pass, Ali Masjid is overseen by a British
fortress. According to history, it was in this field that Chandragupta
Maurya defeated the Greek Seleucus Nicator in the closing years of the
fourth century BCE.
Sphola was not the only centre of Buddhism in Khyber. ry. Nearly a century later (1607) at the same spot his
A few kilometres lower down, where the broad Pesha- great-grandson Jahangir was mystified by a spider ‘the size
war plain gives way to the first narrowing of the pass, the of a crab’ that had grabbed a snake ‘one and a half gaz
chunky, green domed Ali Masjid – Mosque of Ali –named (yard)’ long by the throat. Within a minute, so Jahangir tells
after the fourth caliph of Islam was once the site of a Bud- us in his memoir, the snake was dead.
dhist monastery and stupa. Back in the mid-1980s, when
Azeem first joined the Department of Archaeology, he Now, much like Babur, Jahangir was also rather curious
recalls seeing the last vestiges of that ancient monument. and observant who kept a personal diary that comes
Today no sign of it remains. down to us as the Tuzk e Jahangiri. But at Ali Masjid even
he was not moved to make any inquiries. Two centuries
Though there is no historical evidence of the fourth later, the remarkable Charles Masson, deserter from the

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

caliph ever having been in our part of the world, there are army of the East India Company, a much-learned man and
dozens of sites across the four provinces connected with a writer of a very interesting log of an extended journey
him. We see forty-five centimetre long ‘footprints’ in rock in this region, also failed to comment on the mosque. He
too large for a man reportedly short-statured, we have only tells us of the clear spring and the ‘numerous wasps’
his pats of butter turned to stone, we have depressions that ‘good-naturedly allowed [his party] to drink without
in rocks supposedly made by the hoofs of his mare. The annoyance.’4
17
list of evidence of Hazrat Ali’s adventures in the subcon-

Passing into History

tinent is long. And so, not to be left wanting, the Khyber We spent more than an hour at the mosque. We found the
Afridis commemorated the visit (that never occurred) of stream tainted, nary a spider or a snake and in mid-win-
the caliph to their area by raising this mosque at the exact ter no wasps. Every sign of the Buddhist monastery that
spot where the caliphal forehead purportedly touched the Azeem knew of had disappeared.
ground in prostration.
Beyond, hidden from sight, lay the city of Peshawar. The
In 1519, Babur paused at Ali Masjid and noted that the First City for all those who came down the highlands to
nearby spring provided excellent water. Rather unlike the rich and fertile plains of the subcontinent.
himself, Babur does not delve into the mosque’s histo-

4) Very little is known of this enigmatic explorer. Under the assumed name of Masson, he claimed to be an American, but in reality he was James Lewis, an
Englishman, born around 1798, who had for a few years served the Bengal European Artillery as a soldier. He deserted the service in 1826. Thereafter, in
fourteen years of travelling around in the area that now makes the four provinces of Pakistan and in Afghanistan disguised either as a mendicant or a Mughal
from Delhi, Masson proved himself an unrivalled and exceptionally observant explorer. His journeys are detailed in a set of four very readable volumes; three
titled Narrative of Various Journeys and the last Kalat.
If any edifice is the hallmark of Peshawar, it is Islamia College. It dominates the view as
one comes into the Peshawar suburbs down the Khyber Pass. So too for more than a cen-
tury has it dominated the culture of edification of the city. Founded by the dual endeavours
of Sir George Roos-Keppel, chief commissioner Peshawar, and Sir Sahibzada Abdul Qa-
yyum Khan, political agent Khyber, the college opened its first classes in 1913. The name of
the institution adheres to the strict religious views of the Pakhtuns, while its architecture
is richly redolent of the eastern building tradition.
 2

Peshawar: The First City

P eshawar is not about the clatter of armoury, the tramp It was April 1977, and I was wandering about Namak
of soldiers’ feet and the raging din of battle; it is not of a Mandi in Under Sheher (Inner City) Peshawar. In a narrow
city on fire and the cries of the dying. Peshawar is about street lined with stores and qehvakhanas, it leapt straight
murmured prayer, of the ringing of the temple bell and out of a storyteller’s repertoire: the caravanserai with its
the call from the minaret, the clang of the jaras – the bell open-to-the-sky courtyard accessible by a gateway twice
around the camel’s neck in the caravan – and the soft plop the height of a man and spacious rooms on all four sides.
of the animals’ feet on unpaved streets, it is of the vendor A timber staircase led to the floor above where smaller
crying his wares in streets where rows of shops run on rooms were equipped with fireplaces. But in 1977, the
either side crowded with buyers and sellers. Above the fireplaces were cold, the rooms empty and dusty, unused
shops are residential apartments, their ornate balconies for perhaps a couple of decades with cobwebs dancing in
festooned with laundry drying in the sun. Peshawar is the slanting light of the early morning sun. The downstairs
about long distance travellers, of caravanserais and of rooms served as warehouse for packaged goods.
storytellers.
The men working in the warehouse did not mind my pot-
tering around and in those few minutes I was taken back
through the centuries. I saw the caravans work their way
along the street, the camels – all double-humped Bactri-
ans – coming through the high gateway of the serai and
crouched in the courtyard to be unloaded. The travellers,
dusty and tired, wishing only the bath and then the tryst
with those famous tellers of ancient romances and adven-
tures in nearby Bazaar Qissa Khwañ. There, after the meal,
the tales would flow over endless cups of qehva. In 1977,
the streets of inner Peshawar were still the stuff of stories
written centuries before our time.

By all accounts, the city’s ancient name was Pushpapura –

City of Flowers. Two thousand years after being bestowed
this beautiful title, Pushpapura enthralled the Mughal
Early morning street scene in Peshawar
emperor Babur: waxing eloquent, he counts the colours
of the flowers grown in plots that ‘form a sextuple’. Here
‘as far as the eye reached, flowers were in bloom’. He for centuries, but as traffic to the wealth, culture and learn-
concluded that in spring the fields near the city were truly ing of our part of the world spread, the City of Flowers
beautiful with blossoms of every colour. became Pesh-Awar – the First Comer – the first city of the
subcontinent.
About the year 510 BCE, Skylax, the sea captain from
Karyanda, mispronounced the name of the city. Commis- The three Buddhist pilgrims from China noted that
sioned by Darius the Great of Persia (reigned BCE 521–485) Pushpapura had one huge stupa said to be no less than a
to map the Indus River, Skylax set down the Kabul River hundred and twenty metres tall (an obvious exaggeration)
near the city he calls Kaspatyrus. His work, cited by Her- and built on the orders of Kanishka, the greatest among
odotus and other Greek authors was extant until Alexan- the Kushan kings of this land. Beside this towering edifice,

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

der’s time, but was subsequently lost and we know of no there was a smaller one. This, they tell us, appeared mirac-
other detail the explorer noted about the city. ulously after the main dome was raised. They record that
on his visit to Peshawar, Buddha had foretold not only the
One thousand years after our Greek mapmaker, the name of Kanishka but also that he would build a stupa and
Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, Fa Hian passed through the city a monastery. When Fa Hian arrived in Peshawar in 400
he called Purushapura. And a hundred years later, in 518 CE, Kanishka had been dead for a century and a half. His
21
CE, came Sung Yun. He was to be followed in the year 631 magnificent stupa, however, was as good as new and it was

Peshawar: The First City

by the most celebrated Buddhist teacher Xuanzang. The the centre to which every Buddhist gravitated.1
three pilgrims concurred on Purushapura and Xuanzang
confirmed that it was the capital of Gandhara. And so a century after Fa Hian, Sung Yun too stood before
it in silent prayer with folded hands. He told us that a pipal
That all these luminaries setting out of China on their (Ficus religiosa) tree shading the stupa with ‘thick foliage’
quest for the true word of the great Buddha in India came was the very one the great Kanishka had himself planted.
through Purushapura tells us that the city lay on a major In 631, Xuanzang described the gilded dome of the main
travel route. As the great trans-Asian highway, now called stupa and mentioned a hundred other stupas surrounding
the Silk Road, dipped down from Samarkand to cross the it. He also noticed the pipal tree which would now have
Hindu Kush Mountains into Kabul, it extended eastward been over four hundred years old. Buddhism, the master
across the barren rocks of the Khyber Pass to make Pe- lamented, was on the decline and the monastery in decay,
shawar. The flowers of the city may have been celebrated however.

1) Kanishka’s period is somewhat moot. While he is generally placed about the middle of the second century CE, some historians assign him to a hundred
years later. As for Buddha’s visit to Peshawar or indeed any other city of what is now Pakistan, that is pure fiction.
 Of the three Buddhist pilgrims, it was Xuanzang whose ‘When a matter is directed by spiritual power what can
account, richly adorned with an adorable piety, is the most human resentment effect?’
detailed. Regarding the stupa, he tells us a very interesting
tale of Kanishka out riding by a swamp when he spotted a In 631 CE, Xuanzang found both stupas still extant. We are
white hare. Following the animal until it disappeared in its told that the stone used in the construction possessed the
burrow, the king came upon a young shepherd building a remarkable quality of appearing ‘a brilliant gold colour’ in
small stupa. The shepherd told the king that the Buddha full sunshine and as the light decreased, it turned ‘red-
himself had prophesised of the victorious ruler who would dish-blue’.
raise a stupa to contain a large portion of the Buddha’s
bodily remains. The exterior of the great stupa had carvings of Buddha in
different sizes together with a replication of the stupa itself
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

As is the wont of royalty, Kanishka flattered himself with in exact proportions. Such depiction of the elevation of a
the notion that Buddha could only have referred to him religious building we see on the façades of Hindu temples
and so, surrounding the shepherd’s little stupa he ordered from the ninth century onward.
his own larger one. As the king’s stupa began to rise in
height, the smaller one miraculously always rose a metre The work of Kanishka, however, was not the only miracle
above it. Persisting in his tussle with divinity, Kanishka kept in seventh century Peshawar. Our Chinese pilgrim goes
22
the building going until it reached a height of a hundred on to tell us another local yarn. Some centuries earlier, as
Peshawar: The First City

and twenty metres through five storeys. The circumfer- narrated to Xuanzang by the elders, a fissure in the stone
ence at the base was then one hundred and forty metres. foundation of the stupa brought forth a large number of
Only then did the miracle of the smaller stupa cease. ‘gold-coloured ants, the greatest about the size of the
finger, the longest about a barleycorn in size’. These ants
Overjoyed, the king ordered a topping of twenty-five gnawed on the stones to leave behind a deposit of gold
circlets of gilded copper above his stupa. Inside, he sand and the figures of Buddha on the stupa.
ordered the placing of the Buddha’s remains. Even as
he was making his offering, the smaller stupa once again There is something to be said on these peculiar ants.
miraculously appeared on the side of Kanishka’s structure. Nearly two centuries after the Maha Pari Nirvana (demise)
Dismayed at the thought that he may have upset his Lord, of Buddha, about the middle of the fifth century BCE,
the king ordered his building to be demolished. When the Greek traveller and historian Herodotus wrote his
work reached the bottom of the second storey, the smaller nine-volume Histories. In Book 3 he tells us of the sandy
miraculous stupa moved of its own volition to its original desert that lies near Kaspatyrus – the very same city from
place. In the words of Xuanzang, the king concluded, which Skylax the sea captain began his voyage on the
Kabul River to map the Indus. Local tribes sent men out es something very interesting: he had been told tales of
to collect gold that was plentiful in this desert. But this Gorkhatri and that it was a ‘holy place of jogis and Hindus
precious metal was guarded by ants ‘in size somewhat who came from far places to shave their heads and beards
less than dogs, but bigger than foxes.’ Never having been there’. Gorkhatri (properly Kor Khatri, signifying House of
to the land of the Indus, our historian gleaned this fanciful the Hindu), was located in the precinct of Begram in the
tale from Skylax’s report. city. To this house he rode from his camp at Jamrud. He
toured the place and even remarked on the ‘great tree’,
Burrowing into the ground where they lived, these ants surely the very one Kanishka had planted nearly thirteen
threw up heaps of sand which was laden with gold. The centuries earlier and on which the Chinese pilgrims had
gold-gatherers of Kaspatyrus came to the desert on marvelled. Babur made no mention of the great stupa,
camels during the hottest part of the day when the ants however. That the place was now called House of the

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

were resting in the coolness of their burrows. Quickly Hindu shows that by this time the stupa had crumbled to
filling up their sacks, the men made off with the greatest dust and Buddhism was all but forgotten in these parts.
speed possible for if the ants mustered out of their homes,
so vicious were they that not a single gold-gatherer or his But Babur found nothing of interest here. His guide, Malik
camel could escape. Herodotus also tells us that several of Abu Said Kamari, thinking his esteemed guest would find
these ants were kept as a novelty by the Persian king. That the dark and cramped space unsavoury did not show
23
is hearsay for the writer does not appear to have visited Babur the underground vaults. When, back in Jamrud,

Peshawar: The First City

the Achaemenian court. Babur complained about uninteresting Gorkhatri, the
guide confessed he had on purpose not led him into the
Though the story of the ants, whether the size of foxes vaults because of the difficult and narrow access. Babur
or gold-coloured, is clearly a fable, there seems to have roundly upbraided the man, but as the way back to
been a legend current in and around Peshawar about a Begram was long and the day almost over, Babur deferred
peculiar breed of the insect for a very long time. If Skylax the dungeons for a subsequent visit.
preserved it in his report to Darius the Great, it must have
been popular in the sixth century BCE. Thence it came The locality of Begram recalls at least two other similarly
down to the seventh century of the Common Era to Xu- named places in Afghanistan. One tradition makes it a
anzang. The kernel of truth, if there was any, that lay in the corruption of Vikram, while Charles Masson postulates
core of this legend is tantalising in the extreme. that it is a Turko-Indic compound of bey (chief in Turkish)
and gram (town/village in Sanskrit). Archaeologist Ahmad
Fast forward to 1504 and we have Babur, then ruling over Hasan Dani, however, believes it is a pure Sanskrit title
Kabul, in a thrall of the gardens of Parshawar. He divulg- from vara (best) and gram. That would make sense be-
 cause Peshawar, the first city of the subcontinent that In 1607, Akbar’s son Jahangir too paused here awhile
outsiders came to, seems to have captivated one and hoping to confabulate with some fakirs so that he might
all. Today the place name Begram is not part of the local ‘obtain grace’. But like Babur, he was sufficiently disap-
idiom; it is preserved only in the minds of readers of pointed to pass a rather harsh verdict: ‘But that was like
history. looking for the phoenix or the philosopher’s stone. A herd
without any religious knowledge came to my view, from
In March 1519, on his way to establish the Mughal Empire seeing who I derived nothing but obscurity of mind’.
in India, Babur paused at Gorkhatri for the express pur-
pose of exploring it. He found it ‘a smallish abode’ much
like a hermitage. All around was a large number of smaller
cells as in a Buddhist monastery recalling the time when Shortly after Skylax’s reconnaissance, Darius enlarged his
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

it was indeed that. Holding a lamp, Babur crawled on all grandfather’s kingdom to include in his empire all of what
fours into the dark oubliette through a mess of human hair. is now Pakistan. And so, together with Peshawar, the rest
The man was disgusted. He recalled his earlier visit and of the country became a tribute payer to the King of Kings.
how he rued being denied a peek. Now he wryly noted, Two centuries of peace ensued and here in Peshawar fol-
‘but it does not seem a place to regret not seeing.’ lowers of the new religion of Buddha lived besides singers
of Vedic hymns and followers of Zoroaster.
24
The aura of mystery and mysticism surrounding Gorkhatri
Peshawar: The First City

was not to be questioned, however. In 1581, Babur’s grand- In 326 BCE, Alexander’s generals Perdiccas and Hephaes-
son Akbar visited the place and Abu’l Fazal, one of the tion brought down two divisions of the army through
Nine Jewels of Akbar’s court and writer of his biograph- Khyber Pass and rested a few days in Peshawar. The
ical diary, wrote of it being the abode of saints. He also Greeks were as tolerant of different beliefs as their prede-
noted that ‘babblers’ spoke of the underground chambers cessors and even if the governor was changed, life went
as being endlessly long and dark. On a second sojourn, on undisturbed.
again in 1581, Akbar ordered Abu’l Fazal to go to Gorkhatri
and dole out gifts to the hermits. The needful was done But Alexander’s kingdom was short-lived. No sooner had
and employing journalistic licence the writer tells us that his body lost the colour of life in distant Babylon, there
‘thousands of needy persons’ benefitted. One can imagine began the great struggle among his generals to be ‘the
that royal largesse was responded to by the fakirs with strongest’. That is what the comatose king had said when
vociferous prayers for the long and successful life of his his generals asked him whom the kingdom would go to.
majesty for Abu’l Fazal concludes that ‘the treasure-house The Greek governor left Peshawar to find his fortune in
of prayer was filled’. that struggle and Chandragupta Maurya took control of
the country. The year was 322 BCE. and sacked. In centuries of political upheaval, Peshawar
had seen a few battles, but never such wanton brutality
Even if Chandragupta and his grandson Asoka are cele- and destruction. The city was left a smouldering ruin and
brated for the brilliance of their rule, it is only the nature the Chinese pilgrim Sung Yun lamented the ‘most bar-
of empires to rise to a zenith and then decay. And the barous atrocities’ of the ‘cruel and vindictive’ Mehr Gul
Mauryan Empire fell to the Greeks whose forebears had occurring only a hundred years before his time.
first entered India with Alexander. Having annexed Afghan- No sooner had the barbarians passed on to the east to be
istan, the Indo-Greeks, as historians today refer to them, finally defeated by a confederacy of Rajputs in Cholistan
established themselves by 180 BCE over much of modern in 528, Peshawar rebounded. Once again trading cara-
day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab. This was only the vans came down the Khyber; the bazaars thronged, the
beginning of the great pageant of dynasties that ruled over storytellers regaled their audiences and the flowers grew.

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

the City of Flowers. Once again peace returned to Peshawar, this time for five
hundred years. Now amid the ruins of Kanishka’s monas-
The Greeks gave way to the Persian speaking Parthians tery, the sound of Buddhist hymns gave way to the Vedic.
who were supplanted by Scythians enriched by Siberian In these years of peace in the Khyber Pass, the powerful
gold who, in turn, succumbed to the Kushans under the Hindu Shahya rulers of Kashmir extended their sway
brilliant builder Kanishka. By the end of the third century through Peshawar to Kabul and all remained well.
25
of the Common Era, the wheel had turned full circle to the

Peshawar: The First City

Persians. Now it was the turn of the Sassanian dynasty. In the closing years of the tenth century came the plun-
dering Turks. After the initial excursions of Subuktagin,
In the last quarter of the fifth century, the savage Huns a Turk from Barskoon in what is now Kyrgyzstan and the
poured down the western passes to ravage Peshawar. founder of the Ghaznavid dynasty, his son Mahmud was
Uprooted from the wind-scoured grasslands of Central unstoppable. Beginning in 997, Mahmud led no fewer
Asia, these squat horse riders, masters of the awesome than seventeen raids into India, in quest of spoil more than
power of the composite (wood and antler) re-curved bow dominion, and Peshawar suffered greatly. In time, however,
that could be used from horseback, were the first ‘scourge the city came to be spared vengefulness because of the
of god’ in our history. Xuanzang says that the great Buddha growing number of Muslims among its populace.
had prophesised that the stupa to be built by the pious
Kanishka would be destroyed and rebuilt seven times. There followed centuries of repeated upheavals with
Now the first devastation was upon it. Without remorse brief peaceful interludes. The Ghaznavids gave way to
and without regard for woman, man or child, the Huns, first the Ghorids who were supplanted by the Slave Dynasty.
under Tor Aman and then his son Mehr Gul, raped, killed If the tax collectors of these dynasties were harsh, the
 thirteenth century saw Mongol influx accompanied by That is how British administrators of the East India Com-
horrible rapine. Relative peace came only with the arrival pany found the city in the mid-nineteenth century. It was
of the Mughals in the early sixteenth century. The worst an island of peaceful businesspeople surrounded by a
trouble in these centuries was when the Mughal Empire host, staunchly religious, sometimes peaceful, hospitable
decayed and the Turk Nadir Shah of Persia set his eyes on and friendly, otherwise turbulent and troublesome. They
its wealth and, starting in 1738, mounted repeated incur- could be seen swaggering about in their large turbans,
sions on this sorry land. Peace returned with Ranjit Singh’s baggy shalwars and flowing collar-less kurtas with a tassel,
reign (r. 1801–1839). But that too was relative, for Sikh rule rather than buttons, on the side to tie the dress at the
rankled with the Pakhtuns. 2
shoulder as they did business with the vest and dhoti-clad
storekeeper.
Peshawar was never a city of Pakhtuns who spoke a lan-
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

guage rising out of ancient Avestan. It was a city of traders, In 1849, the British took Peshawar and strengthened the
professionals and scholars who spoke a language derived outer walls of the old fort before they set about con-
from Punjabi and Kashmiri with a sprinkling of Gujarati structing a cantonment. Among the earliest buildings was
from a long way off to the south. Even in the Middle Ages, the deputy commissioner’s residence built in 1849. On a
natives of Pushpapura would have been surnamed Chawla natural mound that very likely conceals the remains of an
or Arora or Piracha rather than Afridi or Yusufzai. Some- ancient past, they raised an edifice that was a clean break
26
time after the Pakhtuns converted to Islam in the ninth from the traditional fortified houses of tribal chiefs just
Peshawar: The First City

century, the language of Peshawar and indeed of other outside the cantonment.
cities of the province came to be known as Hindko after
the largely Hindu population. Visiting Pakhtun dignitaries would surely have found mad-
ness in the exposed veranda and absence of crenulations
As a city whose businessmen dealt with traders from or loopholes along the parapet of the building. Why, the
distant lands, Peshawar was multi-lingual. The Hindko very lack of the traditional high compound wall with its tur-
speaker was equally comfortable in the Pashto of the man rets could only mean the rulers were possessed of suicidal
come down from the Khyber defiles or from Waziristan as tendencies. It was either that or some hidden strength the
he was in Uzbek or a couple of other Turkish dialects. Two tribal folks failed to see. Whatever was thought of it, the
thousand years ago, even Greek would have echoed off administrators did not alter the building. It was only added
the ancient walls of the city within the walls. to and it eventually became the Governor’s House.

2) Pakhtun is singular for the race Pakhtana. The kh sound of northern Pakhto (or Pashto) turns to sh as the language progresses southward. The word Pa-
than is never used by Pakhtuns for themselves. This was a mispronunciation on Turkish and Mongol tongues that became prevalent in the subcontinent after
the twelfth century.
Even as the British built their churches, mission schools storekeeper. As he laid out bolts of material, not even a
and the Saddar Bazaar, life in the old city remained un- finger showed from under the burka as the women swiftly
changed. And so it continued to 1977 when I first became pulled the stuff in for inspection. Once the selection was
acquainted with Peshawar as a grown up. It was a city to made, the haggling was done in an undertone whose drift
fall in love with. The flowers that Babur had exulted over could easily be known by the responses of the shopkeep-
were everywhere: in parks, in every private garden, in the er. The bazaars of Under Sheher were replete with scenes
sprawling grounds of Islamia College and even along the from an imagination honed by Kipling.
roads and amid the tombstones of the Christian cemetery
until then safe from the hands of desecrators. In spring The air was so clean, that in the winter of 1977 when it
when the millions of roses were in full bloom in Peshawar, rained in Peshawar, we could espy new snow on the hills
the city was awash with fragrance. of Landi Kotal. Peshawar was just like that when I left it in

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

August 1978, telling my friends I would come to live here
Though there were no double-humped camels plodding in after retirement.
with their loads from the marts of Samarkand and Ferga-
na, the bazaars somehow retained the ageless colour. In I returned in 1985. It was as if centuries had elapsed to
open-fronted stores, the gentleman shopkeeper with his effect the huge change. Local registration plates were out-
dark vest and karakul cap leaned forward to speak softly numbered by TRP (Temporary Route Permit) ones meant
27
to the Khan from some village in Tirah or deeper still from since years before the Soviet invasion for visiting Afghan

Peshawar: The First City

the land of the Orakzais. You could tell the visitor was a transport. Countless boxy vans emitting dark clouds of
Khan for his chin was clean-shaven, his moustaches neatly smoke drove roughshod around the city. Boy conductors
trimmed, his shalwar-kameez crisp and he too wore the shouted in the Kabul dialect of Pashto (sometimes in Dari)
dark vest and karakul hat. But he also carried his pistol to draw commuters and there were Afghans everywhere.
and a belt full of ammo slung across his shoulders. They were termed either mujahedeen or refugees. Though
the flowers were still there and Peshawar girls as pretty as
They could well be talking of the next crop of maize to ever, there were more burka-shrouded Afghan women in
be brought in from the uplands or the set of copperware the bazaars. The diesel-smoky, noisy city was no longer the
needed for a wedding in the Khan’s family, but the very Peshawar I wanted to retire to.
air of frontier town Peshawar made me feel they were
conspiring. At the nearby fabric dealer’s outlet women, In 2013, my friend Dr Syed Amjad Hussain who had
three or four at a time, shrouded from head to toe in the migrated decades ago from his Meena Bazaar home in
folds of the shuttlecock burka, whispered to each other the city to Boston, took me walkabout in the old streets.
and in barely audible voices gave out their demand to the We ended up at the excavation at Gorkhatri. There we
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

28
Peshawar: The First City

Peshawar city’s houses dating back to the nineteenth century were celebrated
for their fine woodwork (left) and cut brick ornamentation (right). The bridge
connecting two structures meant close family connections between owners of
the two houses and for the ladies of the families to cross from one side to the
other without being seen by outsiders.
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
29

Peshawar: The First City

The wrought iron filigree in the spandrels of the arches and the
balustrades below the railing of the balcony were not local products. The
rich, who could afford such pieces of architecture, ordered the wrought
iron from foundries in Kolkata and Mumbai. These beautiful structures
line the newly restored Bazaar Kalan, restored by the Directorate of
Archaeology and Museums, KP, leading up to Gorkhatri.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

30
Peshawar: The First City

Top Left: A qehva-maker in Peshawar. The lip-sticking sweet brew of green tea is Top Right: The restored Bazaar Kalan with the gateway topped by the blockhouse
a delicacy that has made Peshawar famous for centuries. Word has it that it is this that Paolo di Avitabile used as his private apartment seen on the left.
brew that keeps Pakhtun bodies lean and fat free. Bottom Right: The west wall of the Palosi Piran mosque showing the bulge of the
Bottom Left: The towering dome of the tomb of Sheikh Imamuddin. Revered as mehrab. The dome of Sheikh Imamuddin stands to the left.
a saint in his lifetime, this man of God passed away in 1650. The mausoleum was
completed eight years later and surrounded by a garden laid out in the traditional
quadrangle style which has now been taken over by cultivation.
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
31

Peshawar: The First City

Top Left: The tomb of the dynamic and heroic Nawab Saeed Khan, the governor of Top Right: The tomb of Bijo. Tradition has it that the second Saddozai (Durrani)
Peshawar and Kabul under Shah Jahan, was once sited in a garden but is now in the ruler of Afghanistan Temur Shah secretly romanced Bibi Jan. Unfortunately for the
grounds of Mission High School. Saeed Khan died in Kabul in 1651. Between 1849 lovers, Temur’s wife caught on and had the poor woman poisoned. The grieving
and 1851, Harry Lumsden, the founder of the Corps of Guides, used this building king buried his lady love in Peshawar. Since the king himself passed away in 1793,
as residence and headquarters. In 1926, a lintel was added to create an upper floor the tomb would have been built some years before that. It is said the name Bijo
which has since served as the Mission Hospital Chapel. There is no sarcophagus (monkey) was shortened from Bibi Jan to deride the hapless woman.
because the burial was subterranean and the passage to that chamber is blocked off.
Bottom Right: The Chamkani baoli. The beautiful pavilion, a usual adjunct to all
Bottom Left: Once a decrepit and dusty heap of timber and metal, this fire truck stepped wells, is among the rarer ones because of the upper floor cubicle. The
dating to the first decade of the twentieth century has been faithfully restored by brink of the stairs leading to the well is just seen but the well itself on the left is
the Government of KP with the support of Vintage & Classic Car Club of Paki- now partially filled up. It dates to the early Mughal period.
stan. Notice the solid rubber tyres and the cranking handle to fire the engine. The
Merryweather London radiator top was a recognised symbol of the first name in
manufacture of fire appliances during the early decades of the twentieth century.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

32
Peshawar: The First City

Mughal period coins recovered from

the archaeological dig at Gorkhatri.
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
33

Peshawar: The First City

A Ghaznavid period (eleventh century) handled ewer A Mughal period pot with a bird design recovered
recovered from the archaeological dig at Gorkhatri. from the archaeological dig at Gorkhatri.
 stood looking down the pit into the layers of habitation near a swamp, a little beyond crowded habitation. As a
spread across two and a half millenniums. They were all child, I remember cycling past Shah ji ki Dheri. Much later
there: the Persian Achaemenian, Punjabi Mauryan, Greek, I learned that was where the stupa had once stood,’ he
Parthian, Scythian, Kushan, Sassanian, Hun, Hindu Shahya, said.
Ghaznavid, Ghorid, Mughal and Sikh. Gorkhatri was the
hub of ancient Pushpapura, said Dr Hussain. To many Shah ji ki Dheri, ‘Mound of the Shah’, would mean
it was connected to a personage claiming holy descent. To
Azeem, my archaeologist captain, brought me back to the me it always means the King’s Mound. The last time history
present as he drove through the maddening traffic around mentions the great stupa is in Kitab al Hind (Book of India)
what was once the south-western side of the walled city. of Abu Rehan al Beruni. This brilliant polymath of Central
The inhabitants of Peshawar were a peaceful lot, he said. Asiatic origin was forcibly brought to Ghazni by Sultan
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Outside the city, in Serasiya, there lived ruthless brig- Mahmud during one of his depredatory raids to the north.
ands who periodically erupted into the city to loot. In the In 1017, Al Beruni succeeded in getting permission to visit
middle years of the nineteenth century, this was such a India. En route, he paused at Peshawar and was enthralled
regular feature, that in order to restrain the bandits British by accounts of a lofty stupa that no longer existed. He
authorities built a wall around Serasiya village. A short referred to it as Kanik Chaitya – Kanik’s stupa – in roughly
stretch of that wall can still be seen near Serasiya Gate in the same locality as Shah ji ki Dheri. Collective memory
34
the old protective wall of the city. has strange ways of reaching back into antiquity and
Peshawar: The First City

though the stupa and its monastery were very likely laid
We talked of the pipal that Kanishka had planted near his low in the early sixth century during the barbarous Hunnic
stupa and under which fifteen hundred years later Babur invasion, the cognomen connected that old mound with
had stood. I told Azeem of the beautiful spreading pipal the Kushan king Kanishka.
trees I had seen in the old city back in 1977-78. He too
recalled having played under some of those as a child. Azeem said that over the past four decades the mound
On our 2013 walkabout in the city, Dr Amjad Hussain told was built over and was today nothing more than a disor-
me that on one of his visits home from the States, he had derly jumble of streets and housing. That was before the
found his favourite tree gone. The city’s lungs were slowly ancient cultural site could be investigated in any detail
being removed. to reveal what else had happened there after Kanishka’s
expression of piety. Yet I wanted to see and photograph
‘What of the stupa of Kanishka? Where would it have it, so he drove me around to the southeast side of town.
stood in the old city?’ I asked Azeem. If I had expected a lofty mound rendered higher still by
‘Not inside the city. Recall that Xuanzang says it was built construction, it was nothing of the sort. It was as Azeem
had described it: disorderly and over-crowded. The jumble (now Myanmar) who reburied the relics in Mandalay and
did not even make for a decent photograph. raised a beautiful pagoda above them. The metal casket
was preserved in Peshawar Museum, while its replica was
A thousand years from today, archaeologists coming displayed in the main hall where it can still be seen.
upon a mound outside a city that was once called Pesha-
war would excavate the disintegrating rubble of cement The figures on the casket were in high relief and even
masonry to discover the reality of twenty-first century life. though Spooner found them to be ‘particularly pleasing’,
Below this jumble, they will find the remains of life and he observed that the carving showed ‘manifest proof of
religion two thousand years older still. For the present at artistic decadence’. He concluded that by Kanishka’s time
least, the earth holds close to its heart the deeper secrets the once superlative art of Gandhara was in decline.
of life in that far off time. The inscription on the casket, in Aramaic script in use here

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

since circa 500 BCE, sought blessings for ‘all creatures’ and
In 1909, Shah ji ki Dheri was another place, however. gave the name of Agisalaos ‘the superintendent of works
Then the mound stood alone with nary a house upon it. at the vihara of Kanishka in the monastery of Mahasena’.
That year the archaeologist David Spooner set spade and
trowel to the dust of two millenniums. From its depth, he Here the name of the superintendent, being clearly
retrieved a relic casket, ‘a round metal vessel, five inches Hellenic, is of great interest. Agisilaos, and not Agisalaos
35
in diameter and four inches in height. The centre of the as spelled on the casket, is a Greek male given name

Peshawar: The First City

lid supports three metal figures arranged in a semi circle; meaning Gift of God. We know that in the second century
a seated figure of the Buddha in the centre, Indra the god BCE, the Euthydemid or Indo-Greek rulers controlled what
of heaven to his right, and Brahma the creator to his left, is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab and there was a
both of whom are standing in a state of adoration.’ large European population in this area. For two hundred
years after that most educated natives of cosmopolitan
Inside this casket was a ‘six-sided crystal bottle’ sealed towns like Pushkalavati (outside Charsadda) and Taxila
with a clay seal of Kanishka. Inside the sealed container were polyglots. Here they fluently spoke, besides their
was yet another casket, gold this time, containing three mother tongues, Greek, Avestan and even some Central
tiny fragments of burnt bone. Spooner concluded that the Asiatic dialects.
bones could only be the mortal remains of Buddha. For
the archaeologist this would surely have been a triumphal That a Greek architect named Agisilaos was living here
Eureka moment for until then the location of Kanishka’s in the second century CE, tells us that Peshawar was still
stupa was only conjecture. The crystal bottle and the gold very much a multicultural city. The misspelling of the name,
casket was gifted to the Buddhist community of Burma however, shows that the purer Greek of four centuries
 earlier had somewhat corrupted. Had the stupa lasted blers’ Alley). Though businesses have shifted, the names
until his time, Spooner would surely have found it adorned have stuck fast. Azeem remembers the nearby Bazaar
with fluted pillars and the much favoured Corinthian capi- Pakhisazan – Hand Fan Makers – that now deals in electri-
tals besides other features recalling Indo-Greek rule. cal goods. Today the only hand fans to be had are ornate
items for those nostalgically inclined to the past.

In Azeem’s childhood, the bazaar that we today known as

Azeem’s family, Barakzai Pakhtuns, moved into Peshawar Pipal Mandi after the several spreading pipal trees was
city from an outlying village more than a hundred years known as Ganj e Kohna – Ancient Treasure – perhaps
ago. He himself was born in the city where he spent his recalling a greater glory in years gone by when caravans
childhood and received his early education. Now in his unloaded in the now demolished caravanserais wares like
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

mid-fifties, his memory goes back to the early 1970s. On hand-knotted carpets from Bokhara and Samarkand or
the subject of women shoppers, Azeem said the most silks from distant factories in China. Not far was Shelay
numbers they would see in the bazaar would be during Kobañ where sifters removed grit from lentils and grain
the months of weddings which in the old days were before passing on the foodstuff to retailers.
usually immediately after either the wheat harvest in May
or the rice harvest in October. Then teams of men and As Azeem spoke, I imagined men, and perhaps women
36
women from outlying villages would descend upon the city too, sitting on the threshold of the stores lining the narrow
Peshawar: The First City

riding oxen and spread out across the bazaar in smaller street repeatedly tossing the grain on tray-like wickerwork
single-gender groups to make their purchases. items, the chhaj in Punjabi, to work the impurities to the
edge. In my mind’s eye, I saw the award-winning image:
All these buyers from the village were relatives or neigh- early morning or late afternoon sun slanting in from the
bours of the bride’s and groom’s families. Since the families long side of the alley highlighting the dust rising above the
alone could not handle purchases and other arrange- chhaj manipulators. Here too things have changed and for
ments, the entire village mustered out to help. Divided into some peculiar reason the lane is now Chiri Kuttañ, literally
groups, each with a specific order to fill, they shared the Sparrow-Beaters.
burden of the family from both sides. This was an admi-
rable example of collectivism. Azeem added that all such ‘On the subject of sparrows, Peshawaris love sparrow fried
burden-sharers would be guests at the wedding. in a spiced batter of ground chickpeas,’ said Azeem.
The lanes these buyers thronged were the Abreshamgran Right under the clock tower, Azeem remembered the
(silk weavers), Bazaar Misgran (Coppersmith’s Bazaar), man with a long, sharp thumb nail that he used as a knife
Bajaj Batra (Fabric Dealers’ Alley) and Mochi Batra (Cob- to slaughter the little birds. One swipe, a spurt of blood
and the bird was plucked, cleaned and dunked in the
batter before going into the pan. Incidentally, however, the
bird in question was not a sparrow, but a jungle babbler
(Turdoides striatus) that visits the northern parts of the
country in winter.

Having come through Bazaar Misgran, we had meandered

around Chowk Yadgar – Memorial Crossing – commem-
orating a certain Colonel Charles Hastings who died
in Peshawar in 1892. We paused to read the plaque on
Cunningham’s Clock Tower. Built in 1900, its clock was

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

not working in the late 1970s when I first saw it. But now,
thankfully, it has been put in order again. Cunningham was
at one time commissioner of Peshawar division and the
tower’s builder was one R. B. Balmokand. The full inscrip-
tion on the plaque above the locked door of the tower
was quaintly fawning.
37

At the top of the street, heading east from the tower sits
the entrance leading into Gorkhatri that had so disap-
pointed Babur. The lofty gateway was built in the 1830s
and topping it is a now ruinous apartment house that folks
even today recall as the residence of the tyrant Abutabela.
Many years ago, an elderly shopkeeper in the street had
recounted how the man would summarily try and hang
Afridi or Mohmand men reported for raiding Peshawar.

From a farming family of Naples in Italy, Paolo di Avita-

bile joined the ascendant army of Napoleon and rose
A house in Bazaar Kalan (Great Bazaar) that runs up eastward from
through the ranks as an artilleryman. After the rout of Cunningham Clock Tower to Gorkhatri (popularly known as Tehsil).

Waterloo, like so many others of his calling, he drifted The superlative stone work of the mock domelets and pilasters gives the
impression of being carved in wood.
through Europe to eventually fetch up in the Persian army.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

38
Peshawar: The First City

Top Left: Amin Tajik, who runs the antique shop was born and raised in Peshawar. Top/Bottom Right: Brassware in the antique shop of Amin Tajik in Bazaar Kalan not
His family are natives of Ghazni from where they migrated in the late 1970s. Tajik far from Cunningham Clock Tower.
believes that the famous Gardner crockery was manufactured in Tajikistan and
exported to Russia. This may indicate that there was a copycat Gardner in Central
Asia.

Bottom Left: Gardner Crockery. One wonders if this is the genuine item actually
manufactured in the Francis Gardner factory just outside Moscow, or a copy. Gard-
ner established his factory in 1766 and it continues in production to this day. After
the Bolshevik revolution, the name Gardner was suitably replaced, however, it was
restored with the fall of the Soviets.
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
39

Peshawar: The First City

Top Left: The famous Sethi House in Mohalla Sethian. An affluent business family Top Right: Stained glass in Sethi House.
of the nineteenth century, these Sethis handled trade through Afghanistan to Cen- Bottom Right: Inside the mosque of Mohalla Sethian
tral Asia and as far away as Russia. Their hundis (letters of credit) were honoured
across all these countries earning them substantial profits. To match their wealth,
this family cultivated fine artistic taste that is evident in the homes they still own.

Bottom Left: The courtyard of Sethi House is an exquisite display of the finest
woodwork to be found anywhere in Peshawar.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

40
Peshawar: The First City

If Peshawar can boast of one jewel in its crown, it is surely the mosque of Mahabat Khan
with its exquisitely painted interior. There were two men by this name in the seventeenth
century Mughal court. Zamana Beg titled Mahabat Khan or Khan Khana I by Shah Jahan
died in 1634. Going by the architecture of this beautiful house of worship, it appears to have
been built later. This would be his son Lahrasp Khan also titled Mahabat Khan. This latter
served both Shah Jahan and his son Aurangzeb in various appointments. For several years
the mosque has been in fits and starts of restoration. In 2019, it was impossible to take a
reasonable image of the mosque exterior because of the web of scaffolding on the façade.
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
41

Peshawar: The First City

Fading frescos in the prayer chamber of Mahabat Khan’s mosque.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

42
Peshawar: The First City

All Saints Church, Kohati Gate. Consecrated in 1883, this beautiful and iconic
worship house was built in true oriental style recalling mosque architecture.

Interior showing the altar of All Saints Church. The stained glass window
was gifted to the church by Lady Emma Edwardes in memory of the service
to Peshawar by her late husband Sir Herbert Edwardes.
 43

from Landi Kotal to Wagah Peshawar: The First City

After four years of service there, he arrived in Punjab in ‘a savage among savages’. Be that as it may, history tells us
1827 where the brilliant Maharaja Ranjit Singh gave him that during his rule Peshawar was a peaceful city. From the
command of an artillery regiment. By the time he retired vantage of the rooms above the lofty gateway, Avitabile is
and left Punjab in 1843 to return to his native land, he said to have kept watch over the crowded bazaars spread
had risen to the rank of general. In between, he served as out below him.
Ranjit Singh’s governor at Wazirabad and later at Pesha-
war. It was here, in the lanes and bazaars of Peshawar that
his name came to be corrupted to Abutabela, a title that
has outlived the man by nearly two centuries.

The east gate of Gor Khatri.

In the years leading up to and during the First Anglo-Af-

ghan War – in which Britain suffered its most humiliating
defeat – Avitabile provided liberal logistical and admin-
istrative support to the army of the East India Company.

The west gate of Gor Khatri. The towering blockhouse was Avitabile’s
Unsurprisingly, in the few years between his departure and
private residence. After years of remaining abandoned in dilapidated the consolidation of British rule over Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,
condition, in 2019 it was in the process of restoration.
Peshawar remained troubled and anarchic. Surely it would
Europeans visiting him in his governorships were appalled have been at this time that predatory tribes from Serasi-
by his harsh and arbitrary methods of awarding punish- ya raided the city whose legends were preserved until
ment, including execution. Henry Lawrence, the brilliant Azeem’s childhood.
soldier-statesman who died in the War of Independence
of 1857, having seen Avitabile at work, referred to him as Meanwhile, newly posted to Peshawar in 1834, the Nea-
politan governor needed accommodation. And so while Khan while in Peshawar and used Elphinstone’s line on
his blockhouse above the western gateway of Gorkhatri Ali Mardan filling the country with fine monuments. In the
was being built, Avitabile took over a lovely palace that centre of the garden chocabloc with fruit trees and rose
may have been abandoned at that time. Only twenty years bushes, Mohan Lal saw a lovely three storeyed building
before him, the Scottish statesman Mountstuart Elphin- surrounded by fountains. He said the garden, criss-crossed
stone had noticed this building. Among the abundance by tree-shaded walking tracks, was named Shalimar. One
of minarets and cupolas of ‘Mohammadan tombs’, he would have wished for someone to have described Ali
wrote of one that rose to ‘several high towers’ and from Mardan’s villa a little better, but both Elphinstone and
afar radiated an ‘appearance of grandeur’. But on closer Mohan Lal stop short.
inspection he was disappointed. The ‘garden-house’ built
by ‘Ali Merdaun Khaun’ had once indeed been ‘splendid’ But more of Ali Mardan Khan when we reach Lahore

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

but in Elphinstone’s time, it was ruinous. Relying purely on where he is buried. For the time being, as we stood in the
conjecture and hearsay, he goes on to tell us, incorrectly, shadow of Cunningham’s clock tower, Azeem suggested
that this man had filled the country from Mashhad to Delhi a change of direction. We headed away from the old
with very fine tombs and religious buildings that were ap- quarter to see the first accommodation for Avitabile: the
preciable all the more because of the gardens surrounding garden-house that had failed to impress Elphinstone.
them.
45
Now imprisoned within the protective walls of the Pesha-

Peshawar: The First City

In 1832, Mohan Lal, a highly educated Kashmiri, and war corps headquarters, the mid-seventeenth century
secretary to the adventurer and part diplomat Alexan- edifice had once stood well outside the bustle of the city.
der Burnes, arrived in Peshawar with his employer. They Here on slightly high ground amid open fields, it looked
were on their way to Kabul where Burnes was to earn the out on a magnificent vista of the hills surrounding Pesha-
hatred of the Afghans for, besides being a tireless wom- war. Today it is right within the clench of military housing
aniser, an active player of the Great Game. In the unrest and offices. The good thing is that it has recently been re-
of 1841, the Scotsman was ruthlessly murdered in the stored to a bit of its old glory. In fact, when we went there
beginning of November. Mohan Lal survived and returned in January 2019 and again two months later, the atrium
to India. His memoir Travels in the Panjab, Afghanistan was still criss-crossed by steel scaffolding.
and Turkistan, written in English, gives us a rare glimpse
from Indian eyes into the carryings on of that fateful time Shortly before conservation work began, there was talk in
in Kabul. the corps headquarters of demolishing the three hundred
and fifty year-old building. Because of its location inside
Mohan Lal wrote of visiting the garden of Ali Mardan the military headquarters, it was inaccessible to the public
and in its dilapidated condition the building was of no use ters’ budget. At his level, most military officers have other
to the authorities. One sane mind intervened and invited priorities making this man a unique example to be emulated.
the Department of Archaeology to see what could be
done about it. The man was Lieutenant General Nazeer Today, with the general long since having left the post and
Ahmed Butt. retired from the service, the villa of Ali Mardan Khan has
been brought back from the brink. While some little bit
Having been used at different times as soldiers’ quarters still remains to be done, it is nevertheless a fine example
and stores, the building was in poor state. It was run-down of how a derelict and ramshackle historical monument can
and literally ‘hanging on by a thread,’ said the general. be resurrected. The restoration project has uncovered
Since it was within the premises of his office, he felt it was subterranean conduits that once fed now defunct fountains
his obligation to do something to protect it. While the and flowing water channels and reveal a bit of the genius of
Department of Archaeology raised most of the money, Mughal hydraulic engineering.
General Butt chipped in with the rest from his headquar-

We meandered through the old city to Dabgari and the

Afghan Mission Hospital and school. Inside the compound
reared the lofty dome of a Mughal building, surprisingly with
a cross on the parapet. Azeem said this was the only Muslim
tomb he knew of in Pakistan that had been converted into
a church. Acquiring permission to see the church entailed
a rather protracted meeting with the principal who thought
we were writing a book on her school and provided a lot of
detail about achievements of the school. This was followed
by a tour of the deserted classrooms (it was summer vaca-
tions) before the prelate arrived to escort us to the church.

The Shah Jahan period building was taken over as a resi-

dence by the British when they first took over Peshawar in
The villa of Ali Mardan Khan. Notice the dry water channel in the the 1840s. Subsequently, the ground floor fell into disuse.
foreground that was once punctuated by playing fountains. The stubby
Using the upper floor galleries to anchor girders and beams,
pillars and arches on either flank of the main building were added
during the Sikh period. a chamber was created under the dome to house a small
chapel. The tomb has since been a worship house. The In 1638, Ali Mardan Khan, whose garden mansion Avitabile
priest led us up the stairs and told us about his parish. We later used, bolted from allegiance to the Safvid king of
listened politely, until he said the stairs leading under- Persia and wrote to Saeed Khan in Peshawar expressing
ground (to the burial chamber) actually went into the loyalty to Shah Jahan. That he landed right in the Mughal
opening of the tunnel to fort Bala Hissar. lap was entirely because of the acumen and diplomacy
‘Rubbish! There is no tunnel here or anywhere else,’ of this brilliant man. For his loyalty to the crown and his
Azeem waggled his hand in the priest’s face in the subcon- unstinting services, Saeed Khan was granted the honorific
tinental style of dismissal. Bahadur Zafar Jang – Valorous Victor of Battles. After

I loved this vehement and outright rebuttal of a foolish-

ness that is rampant across Pakistan. Every medieval
monument is supposed to be connected with every other
place by a tunnel. Yet we never hear of royalty travelling
from, say, Lahore to Delhi by the subterranean route.
The poor padre who had proudly peddled his hokum to
anyone who cared to listen was swiftly crestfallen.
‘But that is what everyone tells us,’ he almost pleaded with
Azeem to let the tunnel exist. But the archaeologist did
not oblige.

Sitting on a high plinth, the octagonal building is said to

be the tomb of Nawab Saeed Khan.3 He was the dynamic,
Detail of partially restored fresco on the first floor of the villa.
swashbuckling governor of Kabul and Peshawar under
Shah Jahan. His military prowess kept the Pakhtuns under years of a vigorous and victorious life on the battlefield
his sway in order. Any infringement anywhere and Saeed and an equally rewarding one as an administrator, Saeed
Khan was in the field swinging his sword or directing artil- Khan died peacefully of old age in January 1652. The
lery fire. If truth be told, he is one character who actually subterranean vault under the dome of the church behind
flashes across the pages of the Shah Jahan Nama like a Mission Hospital contains the mortal remains of this truly
lightning bolt. admirable man.

3) There is some confusion about the name. Pakhtuns pronounce it as Sad (with a soft d), while the archaeologist Ahmad Hasan Dani lists him as Sayid. The
Shah Jahan Nama spells the name as Sa’id Khan making clear distinction between Sad and Sayyid. I therefore prefer Saeed.
 From the villa in the garden created by Ali Mardan, He then hauled the two corpses to the governor Sultan
Avitabile moved into his new Gorkhatri accommodation Mohammad Khan who was at that moment entertaining
as soon as it was ready and from here his proverbial iron Mohan Lal’s employer Alexander Burnes. It seems that
thumb came down on the citizens of Peshawar and all Mohan Lal was present in this meeting for he noted that
those who sought to make trouble in the city. the party ‘praised the tailor for his intrepidity and resolu-
We entered by the east gate of the large compound be- tion’.
cause the west gate with Avitabile’s apartment was closed
for restoration. The apartment itself was a jumble of caved The houses of Peshawar, we are told, were made of
in roofs and sagging floors. Clearly it will take a while unbaked bricks on wooden frames and were three or
before it will be open to attract visitors. four storeys high. The streets were narrow but they were
paved and were ‘larger and cleaner than those of Lahore’.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

In Gorkhatri, Mohan Lal had found Hindu men, women Mohan Lal also noted the branches of the Bara River run-
and children bathing in a pond fed by a fountain. He said ning through the town.
this was a usual Sunday ritual. He noted that the pond
and fountain was fed by the clear water of a river – which Four decades after Mohan Lal a most remarkable woman
could be none other than the now heavily polluted Bara. passed through Peshawar. She fell in love with the city
From his reading Azeem knew that the river did indeed and its people, much as most folks did until the late 1970s.
48
flow through the city in Mughal times. And barely three Lady Charlotte Canning, wife of the viceroy Lord Charles
Peshawar: The First City

decades ago when it followed the present bed, it still Canning, was in Peshawar with her husband in March
provided potable water that was considered a curative for 1860. Charlotte was not just a writer of a very readable
arthritis and gastric trouble. diary; she was also an outstanding water colourist. Had it
not been for our very own raconteur par excellence Fakir
Murder under the misnomer of ‘honour’ killing was alive in Syed Aijazuddin, her work would very likely have remained
Mohan Lal’s Peshawar. We are told of a mullah who had a hidden from Pakistani eyes ensconced as it is in the home
not-so-secret affair with the wife of a tailor. One afternoon of the Earl of Harewood, a descendent of Her Ladyship’s.
when the tailor was absent, the mullah thought it ‘a good Aijazuddin accessed the work and turned it into a de-
opportunity’ for a bit of frolic under the covers. It seems, lightful collection of paintings and prose, a most readable
however, that the cuckolded man was not as clueless treasure house of history and a collector’s item.
as the lovebirds would have thought. Finding the door
locked, the tailor, quiet as a prowling cat, climbed over a When she arrived in Peshawar, Charlotte was taken by
wall, and with his sword killed the pair in bed. Pakhtun looks: she found them better looking than the
Sikhs. She thought them vain but ‘the finest face’ she had
ever seen. One of her paintings shows a walled city and cultured, she fulfilled this ‘important position with grace
another, quite evidently made from the walls of Gorkhatri, and dignity’, wrote Annmarie Schimmel in The Empire of
looks out to a ‘magnificent’ view of the fort, trees, valley the Great Mughals.
and distant mountains. As for the city:
Shortly after assuming this role, when she was but seven-
It was crowded & lighted like Lahore only the teen years of age, Jahan Ara was granted the very impor-
houses had been dressed up with hundreds of tant office of Keeper of the Royal Seal. A year later, she
little flags & shawls. The streets are wide & have was in charge of preparations for the wedding celebration

trees & streams running along many of them. The of her younger, and favourite, brother Dara Shukoh with

small painted houses with so much wood about whom she shared a profound interest in mysticism. The
following year, she repeated her success for the wedding
them gives the look of a Turkish town to Peshawur.

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

of the next brother Shah Shuja. But in 1637, she excused
There is little about it to remind one of India.
herself when it came time for Aurangzeb to wed, who, it is
easy to gather, she was not very fond of.
Back in the present and in the spacious compound of
Gorkhatri, I commented on the rooms running around the
Like her father, Jahan Ara was a noted builder. Delhi owes
walls as if this was a caravanserai.
its famous Chandni Chowk to her. Here she also built a
49
‘It was indeed that,’ said Azeem, ‘and one that the remark- caravanserai known, appropriately enough, as Begum ki

Peshawar: The First City

able Jahan Ara Begum ordered. She named it Jahanabad Serai; a garden (now named after Mahatma Gandhi) and
Serai after her father Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal king of a public bath. She also bequeathed mosques, one each
India.’ to Agra and to Kashmir. As a patron of learning, Jahan Ara
commissioned a multi-volume work on Sufism and com-
And what a woman this Jahan Ara Begum was! mentaries on the work of Maulana Rumi. All this she paid
for from her own purse that she had inherited over the
The second of fourteen children of Shah Jahan and Arju- years from her father.
mand Bano Begum better known as Mumtaz Mahal of Taj
Mahal fame, Jahan Ara (World Adorner) was born in April In 1658, having imprisoned his father, the cruel and ma-
1614.4 The king noted her acumen and gumption early on licious Aurangzeb set out to usurp the right of his older
and upon the death of the queen in June 1631, Jahan Ara, brother Dara Shukoh, clearly the heir apparent. Jahan
referred to as Begum Sahiba or Badshah Begum, took the Ara came forward to write an impassioned plea to him
role of the First Lady of the empire. Highly educated and to forbear opposition to their father’s choice of heir to

4) The first born, also a daughter, died in infancy.

 the throne. Her appeal fell on deaf ears. Later, after Dara century, when the Sikhs took Peshawar they razed the
Shukoh was defeated and on the run, she bore priceless mosque and with the passage of decades, the bath went
gifts to Aurangzeb hoping he would agree to come to his the way of dereliction and eventual demolition. To my
father’s terms of dividing the empire four ways between mind, it seems that the pond that Mohan Lal and others
the brothers. But all efforts failed and the heartless refer to as the bathing place of pilgrims could be the last
Aurangzeb executed his elder brother and his son. In reminder of Jahan Ara’s bath. But the temple dedicated to
those final eight years of Shah Jahan’s confinement until Goraknath, founder of the jogi sect, remains.
his death in 1666, Jahan Ara was forever by the broken
emperor’s side.

Though Jahan Ara never travelled to Peshawar, she evi- In days of old, caravaners having rested in any of the sev-
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

dently had an eye even on distant outposts of the empire. eral serais of city, would strike out in an easterly direction
She appears to have based her assessment on reports for the ferries on the Indus. In a line as straight as an arrow
of the need for an inn spacious enough to house a large southeast of Gorkhatri, our point of reference in Pesha-
number of travellers and their draught animals when she war, and 4.36 kilometres away, the old Grand Trunk Road
ordered her serai on the site of the famous House of the crosses the Bara River, the very one whose clear branches
Hindu where jogis resorted. In her lifetime and for almost Mohan Lal noticed running through the city. The river is
50
two centuries after, it was the most spacious inn of the city now tainted with sewage and industrial waste. Yet today
Peshawar: The First City

providing over a hundred rooms for travellers and enough dozens of boys frolic in its filth leaving one to wonder if
space for over two hundred draught animals. Then it fell they ever suffer from skin problems or gastric trouble from
into decay. the water they are sure to swallow. Nearby men wash their
pick-up trucks and rickshaws in the river.
Long after Paolo di Avitabile had left this home and office
and retired back to Italy, Gorkhatri became the administra- The river here is spanned by a beautiful early Mughal
tive office of the sub-division (tehsil). Today, a visitor asking bridge. On the far side, a little east of the river, a huge
for Gorkhatri is met with blank stares and shrugs. But banyan tree shades the road and on either side, amid a
ask for tehsil and everyone within earshot opens up with growing number of houses, green fields spread into the
directions. distance. The notable feature of the bridge are the eight
towers, four on either side of the carriageway. The towers
Waliullah, the young archaeologist assigned at the office in are topped by fluted domelets to pleasing effect. The
Gorkhatri, spoke of the mosque and the public bath built ten openings for the passage of water are flanked by mini
at the time the serai was raised. Early in the nineteenth towers reaching up only to the parapet. These are topped
by half domes of the same design as on the main towers. ‘During summer rains it was red, but in winters it was clean
For symmetry of design, two mini towers are flanked by to drink and you could see the fish in it. People came here
two main towers. to picnic. In summer afternoons my father used to take all
of us under the bridge. In the bay that had no water, we
As I was pottering about with my camera and tripod, a would spread out our sheets and nap. The bridge was so
white-bearded man came around to chat. I asked him beautiful but now no one looks after it.’
whom the bridge could possibly be attributed to.
‘Sher Shah Suri?’ he said a bit uncertainly quickly adding, The old woman felt someone needs to tend the bridge
‘That is what everyone says.’ and keep it in good fettle. As for the river, she rued that
they had killed it. Now there were no fish in it and the
At least, the man was doubtful of the prevalent belief. I water could not even be touched, leave alone drinking it.

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

told him that brilliant as Sher Shah was, the Afghan king It was nothing but trash, she said vehemently. The folks
ruled India only five years. In these brief few years, he had who came to the bridge are gone. No one comes, she said.
no influence in this part of the country. We talked of the The only visitors are filmmakers now. Mehr Taj Bibi had no
possibility of Akbar or his son Jahangir having ordered idea how old the bridge was and if the old Grand Trunk
this bridge because both made at least two trips each Road passed by her home, but she was remarkable for the
between their capital cities and the outlying possession of way she felt about the world around her. Her feeling for
51
Peshawar and Kabul. However, the histories of both kings the river, the bridge and the old banyan tree was admira-

Peshawar: The First City

make no mention of the ordering of this bridge. ble.

On a later trip with my friend Momina Sanam, we got talk- A few degrees north of east from the bridge and exactly
ing to the elderly Mehr Taj Bibi who lives in the house by 3.88 kilometres away in a very straight line was anoth-
the right bank right on the side of the river. She said she er marker of the old road. The baoli or stepped well of
was born here, wedded here and lived all her life by the Chamkani. In company with Azeem and his photographer
Bara River, the bridge and the beautiful banyan tree. Kashif, we came through the village and past the squat
‘The tree and the bridge are for each other. They were green dome of the tomb of Mian Omar Baba. Locally
made for each other and they have always been together. much revered, the mausoleum draws large crowds every
You think of the one and the other comes straight into Thursday.
your mind; they are a unity,’ she said. Nearly four decades
ago, I had heard a Kalasha shaman speak of rivers and We did not pause at the tomb to meet with the descend-
trees with similar feeling. ants of this holy man as another traveller had done nearly
‘The river was once so beautiful and clear,’ she sighed. two hundred years before us. In 1827, the tireless itinerant
 52
from Landi Kotal to Wagah Chapter Name
Charles Masson took an outing from Peshawar to Cham-
kani to visit the widow of ‘a celebrated saint, herself emi-
nent for her virtues and liberality’. He gives us no name for
this woman who excused herself from seeing him for, since
the death of her husband, she had seen no male outside
her nearest family. Her messenger also informed Masson
that twenty odd years earlier, Mountstuart Elphinstone
had come bearing her gifts that she still preserved and
cherished greatly.

The traveller recounts that although it was past mealtime,

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

the widow insisted on feeding him and his party. The meal
comprising a number of dishes was immediately brought
in. Masson admits that he was utterly taken by the high
standard of the preparation. He writes that in times gone
by this family was very wealthy and famous for ‘costly hos-
pitality’ and that though times were not the same for them,
53
they kept up appearances.

Peshawar: The First City

The nameless widow was remarkable for her time in a
Pakhtun setting. That claiming holiness, she was yet able
to freely entertain men, shows how much has changed for
women in the past two centuries in our part of the world.

Past the jumble of shops and houses, we headed out on a

tree-shaded country road southeast of Chamkani. Just a
kilometre from the tomb of Mian Omar, by the side of the

As the medieval traveller set out of a Peshawar caravanserai they would

first of all cross the Bara River by this early Mughal bridge now known
after the nearby village of Choa Gujjar. Of all Mughal bridges in Pakistan
this is surely the most picturesque with its minarets and onion domes.
Today, more than four hundred years after it was built, the bridge can
take the weight of laden lorries.
 road, stood the stepped well where travellers would once The mortar, three centuries old, was peeling from the
have paused to water their animals and rest a while. The foundation upward and a couple of holes in the masonry
smallish square pavilion and the well were aligned in an seemed to indicate the malice of vandals.
east-west direction with the pavilion on the east and the
stairs leading down to water level. The interesting feature It was a classic and true to form baradari – twelve-doored
of the pavilion was the little domed cubicle on the roof apartment. Facing north, it had five doors front and rear
accessible by a staircase on the north side of the pavilion. and one each on the east and west. The building dates
very likely to the mid-seventeenth century, that is, Shah
A man came around to talk and said until a few years ago Jahan’s period.
the steps leading into the well were covered up with earth
and brambles. He had no idea who had cleared it out and Behind the building, on its south side, was a depression
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

why they had left the well filled in. His father told him tales that Azeem said was supposed to have been a water tank.
of the time when his father was a child who would watch But there was no sign of any masonry. A picture of what
passing caravans halt at the well. He said he was the only may have been was given by Anwar Shah who I met on a
old resident of the area, all others were beneficiaries of later visit. In his childhood, he had seen the depression
the burgeoning real estate business around Peshawar filled with water considered a cure for scabies. Afflicted
and had moved here after selling their properties in the folks came around and wallowed in the mud as buffaloes
54
cramped confines of the old city. do and plastered themselves with it, he said. For him it
Peshawar: The First City

was not just hearsay because many years ago his daughter,
The day was still young and we made a beeline for our then four years old, suffered from a skin rash which was
next marker. In a straight line 37.1 kilometres east of the cured by the mud.
Chamkani baoli was the well-known Rang Mahal – Painted
Palace – by the little village of Valai. We took the modern He said his mother was the person to talk to about the
road, past Nowshera turning south at the level crossing of baradari. But she spoke only Pashto and so Momina
Vatra to reach the monument six kilometres from today’s Sanam came in helpful again.
Grand Trunk Road.
Chaman Bibi estimated she was in her mid-eighties. Going
Lost Glory were the two words that came to mind as I by her heavily wrinkled face, it seemed she had gained
climbed up the steps into the single ground level cham- one line for every year of her life. But as a youthful woman,
ber. The frescos in the alcoves above the doorways, once she surely would have been very beautiful. She spoke
bright and lively, were faded and smeared with graffiti of softly in a voice husky with years.
ignorant people, having no regard for their built heritage. ‘Rang Mahal has been there long before I was born. Or
even my grandmother. As a child I saw a very pretty build- the imposing battlements of Akbar’s Attock Fort, this
ing where they held poetry recitals by the side of the pool. was the major crossing place from the sixteenth century
The whole was thickly shaded by trees,’ she whispered. onward. We have noted already that the other fords in this
Literature of the past, she said, had given way to commer- neighbourhood were downstream at Bagh Nilab another
cial work. She knew that now only ad-makers came there upstream at Hund.5
with their cameras and made up models.
In Khairabad, Momina and I ended up at the house of
We were joined by her daughter-in-law Farzana. In her Ghulam Nabi Khattak. If he believed the Grand Trunk
mid-thirties, she said she too remembered the trees. Road was built by the Suri king, his seventy-year-old
‘Where are the trees now?’ I asked. mother Dilshad Bibi, speaking with Momina, said Sher
‘Cut! Gone to the timber markets, all of them. Now every- Shah had nothing to do with the old road because it ‘had

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

one wants only money.’ always been there, long before his time’. The fort was of
course Akbar’s handiwork and its gateways are named
Chaman Bibi spoke again, the same whisper, ‘My elders after the cities they face, she said.
spoke of the Moghul king Shah Jahan who ordered this
pleasure garden right by a very ancient road. I remember From Momina’s narration, it was clear that Dilshad and
it as such a joyful and lovely place where visitors came Ambiya Bibi, about half her age who had married into
55
from far off just to spend time among the flowers.’ Wist- Khattak’s family from Swat, were more informed than the

Peshawar: The First City

fully she added, ‘The area had a profusion of flowers that men I met outside. Ambiya was indignant that Hinduano
no one planted. They just sprouted when the season was Mohalla of pre-partition days had been renamed Islam-
right. Now there is only perdition.’ abad Mohalla. Why, she asked, did they have to change
history like that?
Chaman Bibi brought me to the verge of tears. Where, I
wondered, are people of my generation and those after Zahid Malik sauntered into the men’s area and by way of
me with such intense emotion for history and for nature as introduction my host said he ‘fancied himself a writer’. And
this wonderful woman? Her passion was so strong it had nowadays everyone was writing official history, not the
rubbed off on to her daughter-in-law Farzana. real one for that takes too much research, he said. Despite
these put downs, Malik remained unfazed. He offered to
Exactly due east of Valai sits Jahangira and a few kilo- send me his recent book and asked for my address. I said
metres southeast where the Kabul River pays tribute I would write it down as soon as I was done with the tea
to the Indus, is the hamlet of Khairabad. In full view of and biscuits. Then I steered him away from the subject

5) Curiously, the Mughals knew the Kabul River as the Kama. Both Babur and Jahangir in their diaries refer to it as such
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

56
Peshawar: The First City

After the building of Attock Fort by Akbar, the Grand Trunk Road having
passed through Nowshera swung southeast to make a beeline for the
Attock ferry. En route it passed through the broken, hilly country of Valai.
Sometime during the reign of Shah Jahan this delightful baradari was laid
out. The legendary pond that older people know from tradition would
have been in the depression hidden behind the building. The area in
front and not visible in this image, now covered by cultivation was once
a garden, very likely the quadrangle or chaharbagh as favoured by the
Mughals. Today no sign remains of that garden
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
57

Peshawar: The First City

The spandrel of the main entrance still carries four
hundred year old paint. However, total disregard for
historical monuments has added ugly graffiti all around
this heritage site.
 58
from Landi Kotal to Wagah Chapter Name
until we departed.

Back in Peshawar, I went to the Gorkhatri dig again. The

archaeologists at hand said there were layers below the
bottom and boasted that Peshawar was the oldest living
city of Pakistan. I knew it was no empty brag. No matter
what they said about Lahore, those of us who have read
their ancient geography and history know that Lahore
became a city only when Peshawar was already two thou-
sand years old.

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

If Peshawar could live through all the upheavals that the
layers of cultural remains show in the Gorkhatri excava-
tion, surely it can come out of the damage inflicted upon
its soul in recent decades. Call it what you will: Push-
papura, Kaspatyrus, Purushapura (from which our pious
Chinese called it Po-lu-sha-pu-lo), Parshawar or Peshawar,
59
its flowers still bloom and scatter their fragrance.

Peshawar: The First City

Peshawar will come through for it is still the City of
Flowers.
Located some ways off the main cluster of the Taxila complex, Bhamala, tucked away in
the upper reach of the Haro River, can rightly be called the Hidden Monastery. Like Mohra
Moradu, this has a cruciform stupa (right background) rather than of the usual circular
form. However, when the Huns came with fire and sword, they did not spare even remote
Bhamala for signs of arson and violence have been found here. Recently, a seven-metre
statue of Buddha in the Maha Pari Nirvana (demise) was discovered in these ruins. Layper-
sons incorrectly refer to it as the Sleeping Buddha.
 3

East of the Indus

 M ore than four thousand years ago, the Indo-Aryans, They were acquainted with seas like the Caspian or Aral
having set out of their Central Asiatic grasslands and where the far bank could not be seen. For them this
meandered across Afghanistan, were poised to cross the stream the likes of which they had never seen became
Suleman Hills into the Indian subcontinent. Until then Sindhu. In their language the name signified a very large
they had seen rivers that were but piddling flows. Even in river or even the ocean. A millennium and a half was to
spate, streams like the Syr Darya or the Waksh Ab (Oxus) go by before the Persians would borrow the word for this
generally remained confined to their beds. There were no magnificent stream, the giver of life to the western part
floodplains a score or more kilometres across. When they of the subcontinent, and alter its name according to their
first came down the Suleman Hills they met the mightiest own usage.
river they had ever beheld.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Borrowing a Sanskrit word beginning with s, ancient

It must have been at the height of a summer monsoon Persian interpolated the initial letter with h. Thus, Sindhu
when the waters were swelled by distant glacial melt and became Hindu. The land where this mighty river flowed
rainwater washing down the lower hills. The red-brown was accordingly Hindustan – Land of the Hindu [River]. We
swirls and the huge whirlpools gurgled and mewed like a have already heard of the sea captain Skylax who under-
living being as the newcomers stood in awe by its clayey took the exploratory voyage on the Indus on orders from
62
banks. They would have shrunk in horror as the mighty Darius the Great of Persia. Borrowing outside words, the
East of the Indus

flow reached out to swallow yet another large chunk of Greeks habitually dropped the initial h sound rendering
land not far from where they stood as it claimed a wider the river’s name as Indu. Append that with the s ending of
stream for itself. Greek proper nouns and we have Indus from which they
called its land India that spread from the Suleman Hills to
The leap of the blind dolphin, too swift and short for them the Gangetic Plain.
to determine its size and shape, would have intrigued
them. For the first time they would have seen the slither- In the middle of the first millennium BCE, the land of India
ing horror of the river crocodile as it slunk out to grab an intrigued the Westerners, whether Persian or Greek. Here
unsuspecting sheep from their herds. What other manner was a country of immense learning, art and literature; a
of denizens peopled its dark waters, the newcomers must country whose masters did not hold their erudition close
have wondered. And as they watched that flowing, living to their breasts as they did in China and Persia. This was
being, the strangers could not spot the far bank: all there a country, where commoners thirsted for learning and
was to behold was a vast eddying flow of earth-coloured masters spread it without restrain. In that long ago age, the
water. land of the Indus River was as much the coveted centre
of desire for learned Westerners as the West is today for little pillared cubicles. The one placed in the back sits on
the semi-literate who now live here. While those ancients a high plinth, while the other on the right as one enters
came this way for the learning and to experience the su- the complex, is at ground level. The pillars are simple, but
perior culture, the westward movement now is for wealth the arches are multi-cusped and clearly late Mughal. Folks
and a better life. know it as Behram’s Baradari and in his time the little cubi-
cles would have been laid out with lavish spreads for the
At the bridge on the Indus river, in full view of the brood- master to repose upon.
ing battlements of Akbar’s Attock Fort, we were poised to
enter the heart of the Indus lands. Long years ago, before Behram was one of the several sons of Khushal Khan
the road bridge currently in use was built, road traffic Khattak, the poet and warrior whose poetry raises goose

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

veered right (southward) to take a long detour to the bumps even today, three and a half centuries after it was
railway bridge which was also used by motor traffic. In the penned. Starting out as a Mughal loyalist he was, in 1641,
1960s and indeed even in the decade after, I frequently acknowledged by Shah Jahan as the chief of the Khattaks
heard that the old railway bridge rested not on girders, but and appointed guardian of the Grand Trunk Road from
on the femur of the prophet Adam. ‘In days of old, giants Attock to Peshawar. Aurangzeb, however, failed to rec-
walked this earth,’ the teller would end the fable with a ognise the worth of this great and good man. The words
63
solemn face. By advocates of this yarn, it was only about of Olaf Caroe, the well-known historian of the Pakhtuns,

East of the Indus

a millennium ago that mankind suddenly shrivelled to its should effectively cut short the long story of the falling
present size. out:

That road skirted the entrance to Akbar’s fort that has, All said, we have to judge between two men.
since the late 1950s, been the home of Special Service Which voice is the more authentic, that of the
Group of the army and out of bounds for civilians. Below King who killed his brothers and imprisoned his
the fort, by its northern rampart the fortified caravanserai father to reach the throne, and, with all his genius
of the Begum is likewise not accessible.
and persistence, led an empire to corruption and
decay; or that of the warrior-poet whose words still
Not far from these off limits heritage sites, is a small
kindle fire in the hearts of his compatriots?
Mughal baradari almost sequestered away from wander-
ing eyes. One has to look hard for it to spot it on the south
In 1658, Khushal Khan was imprisoned on the orders of
side of the Grand Trunk Road. Besides the now ruined
Aurangzeb. Upon his release six years later, he spent the
water works, tanks and fountains there are two lovely
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

64
East of the Indus

The baradari of Behram Khan. His father, the patriotic Khushal Khan
Khattak, would not have approved of his selling out to the Mughals.
When Behram reposed in the cubicle in the middle (accessible by the
steps), he would have seen the Indus flowing in the near distance. Today
the view is blocked by the raised bed of the Grand Trunk Road.
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
65

East of the Indus

An overview of Behram's baradari giving an idea of
the waterworks and the central fountain in the garden.
 rest of his days on earth struggling to unite all Pakhtun ing the identity of the courtesan. I persisted and Azeem
tribes against the Mughals. Aurangzeb made several at- grinning wider said something about the lifestyle of kings
tempts to run the warrior to ground but failed. But where in those days, winked and said, ‘Get the drift!’
the force of arms fell short, lure of lucre became an effec-
tive weapon and for bribe whose value we do not know Behram had opted against his father’s life of principled
Khushal Khan’s own son Behram turned against him. He resistance not without reason. He garnered wealth and
who forsook his father was rewarded by the crown with status from royal patronage. Like all men of status, the
chieftainship of the area. It was during his years of power man seems to have kept a mistress whose memory lingers.
that he built this complex in or about 1681. Surely, as he reposed in the apartment on the high plinth
directly looking north to the mighty Indus, he would have
Khushal Khan died in 1689. His eldest son Ashraf buried had the nameless woman’s company. Both lover and
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

him on a quiet hill a goodly ways off the Grand Trunk beloved might have kept her name secret by design for
Road where the ‘dust of Mughal horses would not reach’. there is no tablet on the simple grave inside the mausole-
Khushal’s legacy lives on and as Caroe notes, does indeed um. Behram who coveted wealth and glory was likewise
set hearts aflame not just of the Pakhtun but of anyone forgotten and we have no word on his burial.
who values liberty and whose heart is instilled with love
66 for the land. On the other hand, Behram is just somebody
who built this pretty little pleasure house from where he
East of the Indus

would have watched the Indus whether in violent brown With Azeem alternating between discourses on Gandhara
summer flood or in languid green winter flow roll past. statuary and the work of modern makers of fakes that
Behram is forgotten; few even remember that he was one teem around old Gandhara sites, we weaved our way
of the sons of Khushal Khan Khattak. through disorderly traffic and along narrow serpentine
lanes to the majestic shrine of Panja Sahib at Hasan Abdal,
Less than a kilometre eastward of the baradari stands the just below once beautiful, verdure-draped hills that now
lofty dome of Kanjri da Maqbara – Tomb of the Courte- stand ravaged by decades of uncontrolled quarrying. Years
san.1 It has always been known as that, though never did before the man Hasan the Abdal who left nothing behind,
anyone disclose who this courtesan was and why she mer- nary a legend, save his name for this town, the place was
ited this tall dome. Azeem had a mischievous smile as we called Haro after the river that having risen in the Murree
stopped by it and, having crossed the road, went looking hills flows nearby on to its junction with the Indus near
around its walled enclosure. But he said nothing regard- Attock town.2

1) Kanjri is a dancing girl or a prostitute and in Punjabi carries a more pejorative sense than courtesan.
2) Abdal is the highest level of spiritual attainment in Islamic mysticism. The least being Wali followed by Ghaus and Qutb as communicated to me by my
archaeologist friend Mian Attique Ahmad. Haro is pronounced Her Row with emphasis on the second syllable.
Among the important holy places connected with Baba guru’s spring welled up. To this day the followers of Guru
Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of the Sikh faith, the beauti- Nanak Dev believe the story with all their heart and long
ful white and gold of its dome, domelets and vaulted half to be given the chance to visit the shrine and bathe in its
domes rising above a stone foundation, this gurdwara is a holy waters.
fine example of the best of Sikh architecture.

The shrine is sacred to the hand print on a rock above a

bubbling spring in the courtyard of the shrine. The print is
said to have been miraculously left behind by Guru Nanak
Dev. The story is that the guru came upon this place tired
and thirsty after a long trek and found Wali Kandahari

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

– Holy Man of Kandahar – sitting by a spring of water. It
is variously believed that Wali was either sitting on the
hilltop where a shrine marks his baithak (place of repose)
or at the foot of the hill on slightly higher ground.

Taking the Muslim ascetic to be a brother in spirituality,

the guru asked for a drink of water. Wali Kandahari was The nameless courtesan’s tomb sits right by the Grand Trunk Road, not
far from the baradari. It is believed to have been built by Behram Khan
enraged by the presumption of a man who carried no title
for the mortal remains of his secret lover.
to show his rank. Why, how could he, a non-believer, ask
a Wali for water. Secure in his own position, he tossed a Now, the great Guru Nanak was born in November 1469.
stone at the guru. Again it is variously told that the stone In 1505, when Babur first came into India, the guru was at
was either one huge boulder or a small pebble that grew the youthful height of his evangelical career of a syncretic
in size as it tumbled in the direction of Guru Nanak Dev. religion and it is right possible the two met somewhere in
As it neared the guru, it was large enough to crush a man. Punjab. Though the Babur Nama (Babur’s self-written dia-
But the guru raised his hand and without even letting it ries) contains no mention of the guru, stories abound. Sikh
come in contact with the boulder, guided it down to the lore has an encounter between the two where Babur sat
ground. Miraculously, his hand was imprinted upon the in awe of the holy man’s wisdom with an attentive ear to
hard substance of the rock. Then he commanded the his expositions. Another tale concerns the miraculous mill
earth to give up its supply of clean drinking water. One in Eminabad near Gujranwala. Enraged over something, so
version of the story also has it that the spring that Wali the believers relate, Babur ordered Guru Nanak Dev to be
Kandahari was so proud of ran dry immediately as the put to work a mill. When the Mughal later visited to see
 68
from Landi Kotal to Wagah Chapter Name
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
69

East of the Indus

The Panja Sahib gurdwara is an exquisite beauty of cupolas, bay windows,
cusped arches, domes and fluted pillars. As one of the holiest of Sikh
shrines, it vies for first place as architectural gem among several others
in Pakistan.
 how the punishment was chastising the man of God, he Jahangir writes in his Tuzk that the flowing water creates a
was surprised to see the holy man in relaxed repose even basin in the middle of which Akbar’s trusted courtier Raja
as the mill worked all by itself. And so to this day, we have Man Singh, another of his Nine Jewels, had raised a small
a Gurdwara Chaki (mill) Sahib in Eminabad. building. This tank teemed with fish that were as much as
forty-five centimetres in length that he caught with a net
We hear nothing of the guru from Babur’s son Humayun, and after ‘putting pearls into their noses’, set them loose
but we can excuse that for the man lived in a fog of opium again. The Tuzk records that the king tarried here three
smoke and lacked the interest his father had in the world days drinking wine with those who were intimate with him.
around him. Akbar, whose history comes to us from a
faithful court diarist and one of his Nine Jewels Sheikh Jahangir tells us that he asked local story-tellers about the
Abu’l Fazal, also travelled through Hasan Abdal en route tale of Hasan Abdal who gave the town its name and not
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

to Peshawar. But the otherwise detailed compendium fails one could tell him anything. But historian Mir Masum Shah
to notice either the town or the shrine. Indeed, it does not (died 1634 and author of Tarikh e Masumi, an authorita-
even mention the natural beauty of flowing waters and tive history of Sindh) who served as governor of Bhakkar
forested slopes at this place. We know that the emperor (Sindh) under the Mughals lists Baba Hasan Abdal among
camped at this delightful spot en route to the crossing the saints buried in Kandahar from which place he original-
point where he later built his monumental Attock Fort, ly hailed. Having travelled to Arabia for the great pilgrim-
70
exactly a day’s march away. Yet the fame of Hasan Abdal age, the man returned home where he was visited by Shah
East of the Indus

as a centre of spirituality went unnoticed. Rukh Mirza, the ablest son of Tamerlane who then ruled
over Afghanistan from Herat. When he died, the holy man
Jahangir, the fourth Mughal emperor of India, who like was buried in Kandahar and his last rites were attended
his great-grandfather was a writer of diaries, notes Hasan by the Mirza.
Abdal sitting on the great highroad between India and
Kabul and expresses an appreciation of its scenic beauty. Shah Rukh Mirza died in 1447, twenty-two years before
In all, between the years 1607 and 1626, Jahangir passed the birth of Baba Guru Nanak Dev. Therefore, there is
through this town all of six times and thought it an ‘en- no truth in the meeting of the Kandahari and the Punjabi
chanting place’. On the last day of April 1607 – his first saints in Hasan Abdal. Having said that, we have some
ever visit here – Jahangir exulted over the waterfall east inference to the former’s journey through this part of
of town (it is actually south) where the stream ‘rushes with Punjab in the final years of the fourteenth century. He may
great force’ which he thought had no match anywhere on have halted a fairly long time in the town that carries his
the road to Kabul though there were, he tells us, two or name to have become sufficiently celebrated for the name
three like it on the highroad to Kashmir. of old Haro to be altered. But this celebrity did not outlive
the man for even though his name stuck to the place, it Muslim saint who had not been known just two hundred
was quickly forgotten what his fame lay in and within two years earlier when Jahangir stopped here for a while.
hundred years Jahangir’s inquiries drew blanks. Apparent- At just three hundred years old, Sikhism possessed the
ly his prowess as a man of religion had failed to impress most ardent followers who believed the story of the mira-
local folks. cle. And the rest is not just history but one of the most im-
pressive Sikh religious monuments in Pakistan and millions
The Gazetteer of Attock District of 1930 preserves a of devotees who fervently believe the legend to be true,
remarkable little story that the followers of the great guru despite Delmerick’s assertion that old residents of Hasan
would prefer expunged from its pages and from human Abdal insisted that before the reign of Maharaja Ranjit
memory. While memory can be obliging, the written page Singh, there was neither a shrine nor a place of worship at
has a way of surviving for inordinately long and sometimes Hasan Abdal.

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

vexing periods of time. The story is told by historian and
author James George Delmerick (1830-1915) who claims Finally, it is intriguing that Mountstuart Elphinstone who
that it was also known to and narrated by some very passed through this place in the first decade of the nine-
devout Sikhs of Rawalpindi and Hasan Abdal. teenth century, took no notice of the miracle while the
East India Company’s veterinary surgeon, that admirable
Kamma, a Muslim stonemason, was one day idling by William Moorcroft, visiting only a decade and half later,
71
the spring of water right below the hill now associated found Hasan Abdal sanctified where Sikhs came in pilgrim-

East of the Indus

with Wali Kandahari. Having nothing better to do with his age. He thought the story was ‘the probable invention of
hands, he carved a print of it on the rock. Several years a very recent date’ which only exemplified ‘the credulity
went by and Ranjit Singh having risen to power, sent of the people’. His conclusion was that the Afghans having
his army to raid Hasan Abdal. As the terrified populace held Hasan Abdal until only a few decades earlier would
abandoned the village and fled into the hills, one mendi- not have tolerated a Sikh shrine and pilgrims in their area.
cant named Naju remained. This man evidently had a very
sharp mind and a sharper imagination: in order to save his Muslims too have their counterpart in the hilltop shrine
skin, he invented the story of the miraculous hand print marking the place where Wali Kandahari is supposed to
during the tussle between the founder of the Sikh faith have spent forty days in worship. When I visited it in the
and the Muslim saint. early 1980s, it was a lovely little spot scoured by cool
winds and accessible by a walking path. The little domed
One wonders, however, whether the invention was in- cubicle was shaded by a solitary phulai (Acacia modesta)
stantaneous or the man had been toying with the notion tree and several eucalyptus. Nearby, perhaps to recall
for some time. It is remarkable that the man recalled the the nature of the tiff, was a row of earthen pitchers from
 where the keeper who reeked of hashish would offer
unwashed tumblers of water to visitors. But all who came
were not curious people like me. They all came seeking
benediction from the saint who lies buried a thousand
kilometres away in Kandahar. I saw women and men pros-
trate upon the threshold of the little room mumbling their
petitions to the long dead man who was not even buried
there. Question their belief and they challenge you with
the assertion that people have had their heart’s desires by
putting their forehead in the dust of the cubicle’s thresh-
old.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

In 2019, the once beautiful hill with grand vistas all around
especially to Wah Gardens, just over two kilometres in
a straight line to the southeast, is ugly with spikes of half
a dozen microwave transmission towers. The hill itself is
viciously raked with sharp vertical escarpments, the result
72
of mindless quarrying to feed the cement factories of the
East of the Indus

rich and powerful. This is surely not the state the saint of
Kandahar would approve of.

Back to Jahangir’s memoir, we find the emperor so taken

by this lovely place that he bequeathed nine thousand
rupees apparently to build resting places where royalty
could stay on subsequent visits. In 1622, on yet another
outing to Hasan Abdal, Jahangir killed thirty Punjab urial
(mountain goat) after they had been trapped in a circle of
beaters. It needs be said that both he and his father Akbar
were wanton killers of wildlife for in their respective times,
The tomb of the Hakim brothers whose acumen as medicine men was they destroyed some two thousand wild goats and ravine
much valued by Akbar the Great. The building had earlier been raised by
deer in the Nandna hills of the Salt Range.
Khwaja Shams ud Din Khwafi, another Akbari courtier, perhaps for his
own burial. It was appropriated for the brothers on royal orders.
Having done my photography, I sat alone by the tomb of held ministerial office during the reign of Akbar. For what
the two brother hakims, physicians versed in traditional purpose this squat and sturdy building was raised is not
medicine. In 1985, I had been here marvelling at the fish in known and one can assume the Khwaja would have either
the water tank overseen by the tomb. Now, but for some used it simply as a resting place or may even have wanted
water boatmen (Corixidae bugs), the water was lifeless. A to be buried in it.
couple with a small child and a teenage boy were sitting
across from me taking selfies. I could hear they were talk- There were two others that Akbar valued greatly: the
ing about me. The man called out to me asking, in English, hakim brothers Abu’l Fatah and Hamam. These two men
where I came from. I replied in Punjabi that I was from were as close to Akbar as Khwaja Shams ud Din and the
Lahore and the woman burst out laughing. king greatly valued their expertise as men of medicine. In
‘Are you making a video?’ Since every other person with a fact, Abu’l Fatah was so trusted that when Akbar had to

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

camera at such places now masquerades as a film-maker, assign the office of Keeper of Intoxicants, he chose this
my camera on the tripod never fails to fool people. man. In an age when regicide was not unknown, this was
an assignment of utmost trust. When Abu’l Fatah died in
I said I was just doing still photographs and the man asked 1589, the emperor ordered Khwaja Shams ud Din Khwafi
why I did not use my cell phone. From my pocket, I dug to conduct the body to this pleasant spot for burial in this
out of my simple cell phone and held it up for them to particular building. Six years later, his brother Hamam’s
73
see. The woman let out a squawk of mirth again. The man lifeless body was also brought to the same building for

East of the Indus

asked what I proposed to do with the images. internment.
‘I am a writer, and these images will go in my book.’
‘Do you also write television dramas?’ On his death bed in 1605, Akbar sorely missed Hakim
This was a question I have been asked often before. Abu’l Fatah. Having roundly censured one Hakim Ali for
‘his pretensions to medical knowledge’ and failure to
Speaking across the now fish-less water of the pond, I provide a cure to his ailing monarch, Akbar compared his
asked them if they knew who was buried in the octagonal dead medicine man with Galen of old.
building just behind them. ‘Lala Rukh?’ asked the man
uncertainly. ‘And who was this Lala Rukh?’ The couple at the pond asked why everyone called this
I countered with my own question. ‘We have no idea, but place the tomb of Lala Rukh. Lala Rukh whose name
everyone says she was a princess.’ means Iris Face is said to have been a princess fathered
either by Akbar or his son Jahangir. But we know noth-
The octagonal two-storeyed building and this pond was ing of her and I told them no one had any idea where
built on the orders of Khwaja Shams ud Din Khwafi who the name Lala Rukh comes from. A hundred metres to
 the northeast of the tomb of the hakim brothers, Lala
Rukh’s simple sarcophagus sits on a high plinth within an
enclosed garden whose walls and their corner turrets
are clearly early Mughal. However, the histories of the
purported fathers do not mention a royal daughter of this
name.

If our Lala Rukh was indeed a daughter of either of the

two kings she would have been dead for more than a
century when the Irish poet Thomas Moore wrote his epic
love poem Lalla Rookh. Moore makes his heroine a daugh-
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

ter of ‘Aurangzebe’ who is travelling to Kashmir to wed the

local prince. Her entourage comprises among others a
young bard who composes and sings to the princess four
melodramatic poems en route. Unsurprisingly, Lala Rukh
becomes enamoured of the young man and just when
she is about to refuse to marry her intended beau, she
74
discovers that the poet is the very man she has been sent
Chapter Name

out to wed.

Moore wrote his poem in 1817, which sets me wondering

if some imaginative British traveller of that era having read
Lalla Rookh might not have plastered the name on a tomb
romantically situated in a walled garden. Two travellers of
the 1820s who could possibly have had the name in mind
and who passed through Wah were William Moorcroft
followed by Charles Masson, the erudite deserter from
the army of the East India Company. Though neither made
any mention of the princess or her burial in their respec-
tive travelogues, could it be that a carelessly tossed name
Tomb of the mysterious Lala Rukh. In March 1860, Lady Charlotte
Canning found it a ruined heap of bricks. picked up by an attendant became legend?
What convinces me that it was never known with certainty The pavilion that Jahangir tells us of as having been built
who was buried in the walled garden, is the fact that Lady by Raja Man Singh in the middle of a tank would once
Charlotte Canning refers to ‘Noormahal’s tomb’ at Wah. have stood in Wah Garden but is no longer extant. This is
Lying a little off the road, it was, in March 1860, ‘a ruined a right delightful little paradise, a very pleasure for a king.
heap of brick in an enclosure’. The two old cypresses tow- The pure waters of the gushing river fill a large stone-
ering above the burial told her that it was a ‘cared for spot’. lined tank from where the water flows into an even larger
Nevertheless, despite the lack of identity, the tomb seems one with a pedestal on the southeast perimeter for royal
to have been an attraction of sorts for the Cannings were seating. From here, the best of Mughal hydraulics fed the
taken out to see it while halted at what we now know as fountains. On the far side of the pond, is the two-winged
Wah Garden. baradari – twelve-doored pavilion – which is not actually
twelve-doored. The two halves of this edifice have a water

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Azeem and his sidekick Ali Raza brought me back to the channel with fountains running between them.
present. We drove back to the Grand Trunk Road and took
the turn south to Wah Gardens where the clear Jublat It amazes me how much of the actual construction was still
River brings life to verdure and fish. In 1610, three years after extant just two hundred years ago at the time of Moor-
Jahangir’s first trip to Hasan Abdal, William Finch, itinerant croft’s visit:
British trader who left behind an account of his journeys in
75
India, tells us that Akbar was so enchanted by the beauty of The chambers in the southern front of the western

East of the Indus

this place that the appreciative exclamation ‘Wah!’ escaped wing …… constitute a suite of baths, including cold,
his lips. And the place has been Wah ever since. hot, and medicated baths, and apartments for
servants, for dressing, and reposing, heating rooms
In 1985, I was told by an elderly man lounging on one of the and reservoirs: the floors of the whole have been
benches in the garden that the ‘Wah!’ was, in fact, Babur’s.
paved with a yellow breccia, and each chamber is
Finch’s yarn was copied and narrated by William Moor-
surmounted by a low dome with a central skylight.
croft who passed through this place in 1823. Moorcroft’s
Fresco paintings of flowers and foliage in the com-
two-volume compendium is an excellent account of Ladakh
partments embellish the walls, and unless injured
through Kashmir and northern Punjab to Afghanistan where
by mechanical violence, the colouring has lost little
he died under mysterious circumstances in Balkh. No one
of its original lustre. Although possessing nothing
would have read the travels of Finch or Moorcroft, but
majestic or imposing, the baths at Wah bagh must
somehow the ‘Wah!’ tradition travelled through time. From
history we hear no such anecdote, however. have been both commodious and elegant.
 Today the frescos are damaged and the breccia flooring
exchanged with a modern veneer. The plaster on the
exterior too is gone exposing brick and mortar. In the mid-
1980s, very little work had been done on this site. Later,
archaeologist Shahid Ahmad Rajput showed what Moor-
croft had described was buried beneath the accumulation
of two hundred years. More than that, excavation revealed
the ingenious gravity-based hydraulic system that Rajput
terms ‘a marvel of hydraulic engineering’ that was ‘very
simple but amazingly perfect’.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Having determined the working of the system, Rajput was

of the idea that his work would lead to restoration of the
hydraulics to ‘serve as a prototype’, perhaps to be replicat-
ed in other places. He laments no effort has been made to
revive the system.

76
East of the Indus

From the maddening noise and rush of the Grand Trunk

Road as it nears Rawalpindi, we turned into the bazaar
to make our way to the quiet of Taxila Museum. We had
come by the road Babur used in the early sixteenth
century; not by the one Alexander had taken from his
crossing of the Indus at Hund and through the Chach Plain
of Attock district. Alexander was not anticipating hard
fought battles because Ambhi – Omphis or Taxiles to the
Greeks, the king of Taxila – had already presented himself

The tank and pavilions of Wah Garden. The pavilions once looked out
on water flowing in channels and playing fountains, now dead for many
decades. Despite a thorough investigation into how the waterworks func-
tioned, no effort has been made to restore them.
 77

from Landi Kotal to Wagah Chapter Name

to Alexander when he was still in Nangarhar in the vicinity found a tribute from Ambhi: a substantial amount of silver,
of modern Jalalabad (Afghanistan). There he had made a three thousand oxen and more than ten thousand sheep
dramatic speech about why would he wish to fight Alex- for sacrificial purpose. Beyond the fertile plain of Chach
ander. If he, Ambhi, had greater wealth, he would willingly lay the city that the historian Arrian deemed ‘the most
share it with the Macedonian. But if Alexander were the considerable between the Indus and the Hydaspes’.
richer, Ambhi would feel no indignity in asking for his
largesse. Alexander just loved it. He accepted the Punjabi Alexander and his men were completely taken by Taxila.
king as an ally. Officers in Alexander’s army were writing away what they
saw: a city of three different religious persuasions, namely,
Buddhism, Brahmanism and Zoroastrianism, that yet lived
in utter peace with itself; where theft and trickery were
unknown; where the most exacting standard of rectitude
was the natural way of life and where masters of erudition
were held in the highest esteem and much sought after
and almost worshipped. Oh, how we have converted!

Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to the court of the

great Chandragupta Maurya at Pataliputra (Patna), howev-
er, gives greater detail of Taxilian life in those distant times.
Now, the Macedonian empire lasted only as long as rigor
mortis had not set in on Alexander’s handsome frame.
In 322 BCE, encamped at Babylon and preparing future
expeditions, he was struck by a fever. In the first week of
The pavilions of Wah Garden where kings and their queens once June that year as his breathing became more and more
reposed to look out on water channel and fountains. laboured, his generals gathered around the deathbed to
On the far side of the Indus River, Alexander had gone ask whom the empire would go to. ‘To the strongest,’ is
up into Swat fighting as he went. He descended into what Alexander is reported to have whispered with some
the fertile Yusufzai Plain by way of the Ambela Pass and difficulty.
made his way south to the ford of Hund, the ancient
Udabhandapura. The fighting was behind him now for he Then he took off his signet ring and handed it to his gen-
found his general Hephaestion had bridged the river and eral Perdiccas. And there began the great struggle to de-
organised large boats for the troops to cross in. He also termine who the strongest would be. At the end of several
years of warfare between erstwhile friends, the Macedoni- Greek geographer, philosopher and historian Strabo (BCE
an Empire that had stretched from Libya, through Turkey, 63–CE 23) and the soldier historian Arrian (CE 92–175).
Persia, Central Asia and Afghanistan into what is now
Pakistan stood fragmented between the generals. One To begin with, Megasthenes found it ‘truly remarkable’
of those was Seleucus Nikator who took what was once that slavery was unknown to this wonderful land because
the Achaemenian Empire of Persia and which had been it had been frowned upon by ancient philosophers. The
dismantled by Alexander. world has learned a great deal from our forefathers for
law that they held dear more than two thousand years
In 302 BCE, Seleucus took it into his head to pull another ago belongs today to a universal charter of human rights:
Alexander on India. With a large army, he marched east ‘no one among them shall, under any circumstances, be
to meet Chandragupta Maurya at the foot of the Khyber a slave, but that, enjoying freedom, they shall respect the

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Pass. It is moot if the Mauryan king inflicted a decisive equal right to it which all possess’, Megasthenes assures
defeat, but we do know that the Greeks were discomfited us. Interestingly, a strong caste system existed, even so the
to some extent. Peace was negotiated and the European supposedly lowest in social standing were free people.
general gave either his daughter or a niece in marriage to
Chandragupta. In exchange he received a number of war Coming to Taxila just twenty years after Alexander’s
elephants. Also a treaty resulted in the establishment of passage, Megasthenes recorded the prevalent customs.
79
diplomatic relations between the two kingdoms. And so Business was transacted not by written deeds and mem-

East of the Indus

it was, that Megasthenes came to the Pataliputra court in orandums, but by word of mouth. Yet, he observes, the
the year 300 BCE. courts of Taxila did not have a single case of fraud. Theft
was unknown in this city. Folks left home without securing
His ambassadorial stint lasted a full fifteen years during their properties with locks. It was not that poverty was
which Megasthenes travelled extensively around the absent; he tells us that an indigent father unable to wed
northern part of India. Taxila, being a second capital of the off a marriageable daughter would bring her to the town
Mauryan kingdom, was one place where he seems to have square where boxers would fight for her. The maiden
either spent considerable time or visited several times would, understandably, go to the last man standing.
over the fifteen years. The result was a book titled Indika
which he wrote upon returning home in 285 BCE. Though Perhaps the earliest example of punk hair styles in the
the book comes down to us in fragmentary form it is yet world is recorded from Taxila. Gentlemen of the town had
a reliable compendium of Indian life in the fourth century their hair dyed the whitest of white or blue, purple, green
BCE. Of course, it contains some delightful fables as well. or red and as they went about their business, the better
This Indika became the basis of the work on India by the off among them with servants shielding them from the
 sun under wide parasols. The men wore platform shoes enness, there would have been taverns in town. I imagine
to seem the taller and their cotton dresses were embroi- students from the university gathering there with clay
dered with gold thread and studded with precious stones. tumblers of the best rice wine to lubricate the discussions
on the meaning of life and history of the human race and
Taxila was home to three religions: the followers of the its place in the greater scheme of things. As they spoke,
Boutta, the Brachmanes and those who put their dead out crowds of laypersons gathered around to listen, rapt and
for wild beasts and birds to eat. And there was no con- awed. Perhaps even offering the learned ones a round or
flict between followers of the three religions. Taxila – and two.
indeed much of the rest of the Mauryan Empire, if we are
to trust Megasthenes – was the very epitome of Utopia.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

The oldest residential university of the subcontinent was With Nasir Khan, curator Taxila Museum, expounding on
in Taxila. Here men like Panini who hailed from Salatura, the bane of the many makers of fake statuary and coinage
just across the Indus, formulated for the first time ever the to fool unsuspecting visitors we walked around the ruins
rules for Sanskrit grammar. He would surely have attend- of Bhir just outside the museum. Only partially excavat-
ed this university as a young man. And Vyasa, the brilliant ed, this was a sprawling city in Alexander’s time. Here he
virtuoso, who collected the epic Mahabharata in the form and his closest chums would have had the nightly binges
80
of a book too passed through the corridors of the same they were famous for. But when he was sober, Alexander
East of the Indus

university before sitting down in the shady glens of Taxila wanted to meet the philosophers of Taxila whose fame
to execute his monumental work. Ghosha, the medical spread beyond the frontiers of their country.
man specialising in diseases of the eye too lived and
studied here. They said in those far off days that he could With an invitation for these men of thought and learning
restore sight to the blind. A few centuries later, perhaps to come to the royal dining table, Alexander sent Onesikri-
even as Alexander tarried at Taxila, the brilliant Chanakya tos, his aide, and when the king sailed, the helmsman of
Kautilya taught here. Surely it was the years of intellectual the ship. Beyond the clump of habitation, in a sylvan dale
exchange and private contemplation that led this great where a pure stream passed, the gymnosophists – naked
thinker to write his unbeatable political treatise Arthshas- philosophers – engaged in their business. I had always
tra. It was from Taxila that this great mind moved on to wondered where their abode would have been and one
become advisor to Chandragupta Maurya. day it came to me in the days I spent cycling around Taxila
in the mid-1990s. It was almost epiphany. The philoso-
It is not difficult to imagine what life in the afterhours phers abode was where half a century later Asoka would
would have been. Though Taxilians frowned upon drunk- build his fabulous stupa and monastery of Dharmarajika.
With his entourage, Onesikritos headed out across the We read that Mandanis heard Onesikritos with a ‘com-
clear, bubbling Tambrah rivulet and up the slight incline placent smile’ without lifting his head from his pillow of
shaded by trees that our ancestors held sacred, trees like leaves. The passion of Mandanis, his detachment from this
the pipal and the banyan. On the far side of this hillock he worldly life and his lofty courage in resisting power is clear
found the philosophers clad only in loincloth, sprawled out in his response:
or sitting cross-legged on the rocks heated to an unbeara-
ble degree by the May sun. God, the supreme king, is never the author of inso-
lent wrong, but he is the creator of light, of peace,
A young philosopher, the first one Onesikritos came upon, of life, of water, of the body of man, and of souls,
mocked the foreigner. The tenderfoot wanted to learn his and these he receives when death sets them free,
philosophy when he was so expensively attired. He would being in no way subject to evil desire. He alone is

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

be well advised to undress and lie next to the sage on the
the god of my homage, who abhors slaughter and
stones. But an elderly man, considered the master of the
instigates no wars. But Alexander is not God, since
philosophers whose Hellenised name we learn was Man-
he must taste of death; and how can such as he be
danis, rebuked the youngster and called the Greek over to
the world’s master, who has not yet reached the
himself. Onesikritos greeted him:
further shore of the river Tiberoboas, and has not
yet seated himself on a throne of universal domin- 81
Hail to you, oh teacher of the Brahmins. The son of
ion? ….. Know this, however, that what Alexander

East of the Indus

Zeus, king Alexander, who is the sovereign lord of
offers me, and the gifts he promises, are all things
all men, asks you to go to him, and if you comply,
to me utterly useless….. The earth supplies me with
he will reward you with great and splendid gifts,
everything, even as a mother her child with milk…..
but if you refuse will cut off your head.
Should Alexander cut off my head, he cannot also
destroy my soul. My head alone, now silent, will
We must recall that Megasthenes came to our part of the
world a quarter century after Alexander. Mandanis, who remain, but the soul will go away to its Master, leav-

was already quite old when Onesikritos met him, seems ing the body like a torn garment upon the earth,

to have passed away and what the ambassador records whence it was also taken….. Let Alexander, then,
is hearsay. But the thing is that the events of that recent terrify with these threats those who wish for gold
past, the unprecedented resistance to ultimate power by and for wealth, and who dread death, for against
a defenceless man, were deeply ingrained in the minds us these weapons are both alike powerless, since
of the Taxilians who must have repeated the events again the Brahmins neither love gold nor fear death.
and again and kept them alive.
 82
from Landi Kotal to Wagah Chapter Name
The philosopher concluded by telling the Greek to tell
Alexander that there was nothing he possessed that
Mandanis had either need for or desire. But if there was
something Alexander sought from the sage, it would be
unbecoming of the king to not go to him.

What a man Mandanis was! Now more than two thousand

years since his passing we are so much the poorer for we
find no Mandanis among us.

It must have been a dejected and overawed Onesikritos

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

who returned to Alexander to recount the exchange.
Megasthenes tells us that Alexander ‘felt a stronger desire
than ever to see Mandanis’. Here was Alexander, the sub-
duer of so many kings, who finally met a challenger clearly
more than his match, writes the Greek diplomat.

83
History records that two of the philosophers eventually

East of the Indus

did accept Alexander’s invitation to dine with him. What
we are not told is how that came to pass. But I can imagine
that intrigued by Mandanis, as he clearly was, Alexander
may well have gone out himself to invite the savant of
Taxila to his banquet table.

We also know that Alexander requested the philosophers

to travel with him to Greece so that en route when he had
time, he could learn of their philosophy. Mandanis refused
point blank. But another elderly man Kalanos agreed and

The Bhir mound ruins of Taxila, the city where Alexander tarried in May
326 BCE. Only this small portion of a once bustling and rather large city
has been excavated. Many of its secrets still lie buried under the dust of
ages.
 left Taxila in the Macedonian’s train. Alexander lay dying in that Mesopotamian city.

In Taxila Megasthenes heard common people celebrating Meanwhile, in Susa Arrian records a momentous funeral
Mandanis for his supreme values and his rejection of the procession for the Taxilian philosopher. A horse of the
conqueror’s overtures. Here they had a model to emulate. finest breed available, was brought for the master to ride,
Even today, as I walk among the ruins of Dharmarajika, but all strength had left his body and he had to be borne
I wonder how many young men would have sought the on a litter. A solemn procession of horses, elephants and
presence of the ageing sage to learn the same higher soldiers in armour followed. Kalyan’s countrymen, who
values. Megasthenes tells us that on the other hand, were also in the Macedonian army, sang hymns to praise
Kalanos (whose name derives from Kalyan) was reviled all their gods as the bier wound its way through the streets
around for succumbing to lust for material wealth. of Susa. As he mounted the pyre, the master handed the
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

reins of his horse to Lysimachus, a Greek student of his.

Alexander’s historian Arrian writes in the second century Among all his other friends he distributed the gold and
CE that Kalyan having travelled with the army all the way silver goblets that had been offered to him as tribute.
through modern Pakistan, having suffered the scorching Having performed his last rites, Kalyan laid himself down
heat of the Makran Desert in early October, eventually on the pyre. As the fire was kindled, there was, by Alex-
fetched up in Susa (Persia). Kalyan, who had until then ander’s order, an impressive salute. Bugles sounded, in
84
never suffered ill health, became unwell and one day told unison the soldiers roared out their battle cry and, not to
East of the Indus

Alexander that his body and soul were worn out and be left behind, the elephants joined in with shrill trumpet-
he thought it better to mount his funeral pyre. The king ing. The master, Arrian informs us, sat motionless amid the
protested. Why, there was so much more he wished to leaping flames until life left him and all that remained of his
learn from Kalyan and Alexander had not even attained a mortal body was a charred coal.
fraction of the sage’s knowledge. The self-inflicted death
had to be deferred, begged the king. However, at home in Taxila even after twenty years, Kalyan
was reviled for submitting to lust and repudiating the
But the master declined and on the appointed day, just way of life of the Indian master. This was not strange. The
as Kalyan was about to mount his pyre, Alexander once philosophers were highly esteemed teachers. They seldom
again approached him asking for him to relent. Arrian came into town, but when they did, people thronged to
tells us that the sage closed the discussion with a strange them to hear them speak. Folks invited them into homes,
utterance. He told Alexander not to worry for within the begging them to dine there, shopkeepers offered them
year they were destined to meet again in Babylon. And items from their display free of charge and others came
sure enough, ten months later the great conquering hero with oil for their hair or with water to wash their feet.
Azeem and Nasir Khan were unanimous that these sto- who sometimes wore ram’s horns with his diadem. The
ries were unknown to common folks. Why, they did not Quran records a short adventure of this unidentifiable
even comprehend the cultural importance of Taxila. This Zulqarnain where he imprisoned Gog and Magog behind a
brought us to my old lament: Pakistanis consider sites of rock wall steeped with molten lead before going on to the
built heritage only as picnic spots. They come with their place of the setting sun. There he saw the sun setting in a
hampers, eat their greasy food, and strew about their dark pool.
Styrofoam plates right next to a rubbish bin. They care
nothing for the place nor do they have any desire to learn The shopkeeper also revised some more history for me.
about it.‘That’s because nobody ever tells a schoolchild He snickered when I said the fort of Rohtas was built by
what Taxila or Pushkalavati stand for. An understanding Sher Shah Suri. Why, the Pakhtun king was but yesterday.
and appreciation of our historical heritage should be It was Shahabuddin (also known as Muizuddin) Ghori to

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

inculcated at the earliest level. And that is not happening,’ whom the fort is attributed.
said Azeem.
With no desire to improve my knowledge any further, I
To find out how much the average person understood, asked our host to please find us an elderly woman and
I returned to Taxila two months later with my friend presently Fatima, all of fifty-five or so but completely worn
Sheherbano, Sherry to all of us. We were visiting with a out, waddled in. She had never, neither in her youth nor
85
relative of hers who had been requested to invite some after her marriage, been to Taxila Museum or the various

East of the Indus

elderly women for us to talk to. The relative, with hair dyed excavated sites. Her children, even her daughters, went
an uncanny black, said he had invited ‘local historians’ to sometimes. Sherry asked her if she asked her children
teach me everything I needed to know about Taxila. what they saw there.
I protested that I needed to talk to elderly women only, ‘No. I’ve never asked and neither have they ever offered
but the foul deed had been done. Three men were ush- to tell me,’ Fatima spoke clearly baffled by this question. It
ered in, one of whom was a storekeeper and part-time was as if she wanted to ask what was there to see in Taxila
historian. The other was a ‘professor’ who also wrote other than a few stones.
newspaper articles and the third one just kept to himself.
The storekeeper told me there were two Alexanders or The average person with the usual government school
Sikanders. One was Sikander Unani (Ionian) and the other education is simply not tutored from childhood to com-
was Sikander Zulqarnain. prehend what would only cultivate in the mind a sense
of pride in the land and its culture and of belonging to
Zulqarnain – Two-Horned – of the Quran could either be it. This has sadly become the privilege of the better off
Cyrus the Great who wore a horned helmet or Alexander who attend good schools before ending up at universities
 abroad. This realisation came a couple of weeks after this Within half a century, the sons of the very man that Chan-
interview when I was again in Taxila with Emily Macinnes, dragupta had defeated, having expanded their influence
the young Scottish film maker. from distant Syria into Afghanistan, had set their eyes on
the fertile land between the five rivers.
In the museum we got talking to a bunch of youngsters
and their parents who lived abroad. One young man said We know them as the Indo-Greeks or Bactrian Greeks
when he left the country several years ago he had no for they had set up their base in Bactria (Balkh) to control
idea what he was abandoning. Now, having completed his most of modern day Afghanistan. History also remembers
education and on the verge of beginning work, he had re- them by another name: the Euthydemids after Euthyde-
turned to learn about the land of his ancestors. Now as a mus who first took Bactria. By about 180 BCE they had
foreign national, he seemed to have no desire to live here marched across the Khyber Pass and possessed Peshawar
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

permanently, yet he did not want to be ignorant of what and Pushkalavati. Within a couple of years Taxila and San-
once was in the country that we call Pakistan. gala (Sialkot) fell to them.

Nasir Khan, Azeem and I did a tour of the monasteries: the Demetrius, son of Euthydemus, whose coins show a rather
magnificent Dharmarajika, the quiet and peaceful Mohra handsome square-jawed man, copied Alexander, errone-
Moradu before heading off for Bhamala. Sitting on an elon- ously regarding him an ancestor. He was the leader who
86
gated spur on the right bank of the Haro River, the stupa carried Greek arms and influence for the third time across
East of the Indus

of Bhamala is unique for its cruciform plan. The recent find the Suleman Hills into the Peshawar Valley. With reference
here is what everyone, even newspapers and politicians, to his taking of India, the local issue of his coins represent-
calls the Sleeping Buddha. Azeem, the Gandhara special- ed him with the elephant scalp head-dress. If Alexander
ist, pointed out to me that it was Maha Pari Nirvana, the had found Taxila an agreeable place, Demetrius thought
Passing of Buddha. A colossus at about seven metres, it is otherwise. The jumble of housing and shopping areas in
Buddha lying on his right side with a hand under his cheek, winding streets was not entirely to his liking. The Greeks
eyes half closed. This is enough for the layperson to classi- preferred cities aligned with the cardinal points and laid
fy this as they do. on a grid.

After the passage of the Macedonians in 326 BCE, Taxila A kilometre and a half northeast of the old city, the Greeks
thrived under the Mauryans. It is, however, the way of all laid out the foundations of a new Taxila that we today
dynasties to rise and fall. Chandragupta and his grandson know as Sirkap. The main street, bordered by houses and
Asoka were brilliant administrators, but after the latter’s shops, stretched from the north to the south with inter-
death in 232, his kingdom passed on to weaker kings. mediary lanes intersecting it at right angles. The town was
girded by a hefty masonry wall with entry from a strongly
bastioned gateway facing north. Funnily, people of the
very land where four thousand years before the Greeks,
cities were laid in grids had forgotten that orderly town
planning. Somewhere along the line, something had dis-
rupted the link with the ancient past.

Though Hindu nationalists clamour for the world to be-

lieve that the Aryans rose from the Gangetic Plains, the
truth is that they did come from elsewhere. Their home
had once been the wind-scoured grasslands of Central
Asia where they travelled about in horse or ox-drawn
wagons in search of sustenance for themselves and their
large herds. When they halted, the chief’s wagon became
the centre of the temporary habitation with the tents of
his followers radiating outward in lines following the peck-
ing order. Having arrived in the Indus Valley, they found its
magnificent cities already decaying because of flooding. In

Chapter Name
the manner they were accustomed to, they set down their
townships with the chief occupying the centre. Over the
centuries, the old system of orderly cities was forgotten
until it was taught to us again by the Greeks in the second
century BCE.

Greek rule lasted a mere seven decades when, once

more, fierce horse-riding nomads burst out of their home
on the Central Asian grasslands and came to possess the
Indus Valley. Enriched with Siberian gold, these Scythians,
Buddha in a typical preaching pose at Bhamala. This monastery is home
or Sakas as they were known locally, were no savages, to the recently discovered seven-metre statue of Buddha in Maha Pari

however. Years of interaction with their old kinsmen the Nirvana, that is, demise. By many it is erroneously referred to as ‘Sleeping
Buddha’. Remote as this monastery was from the rest of Taxila, it was yet
Parthians had taught them to respect and take advan- not spared by Hunnic savagery. Here too archaeologists found signs of
tage of superior cultures. Ruling from Taxila, their king arson and violence.
 88
from Landi Kotal to Wagah
Maues (Moga in the local dialect) blatantly followed the
Euthydemid design of coins, even calling himself Basileos
Maues or King Maues in Greek.

The death of Maues in about 53 BCE, was followed by a

flurry of quick regnal changes over three decades. Gon-
dophares the Parthian king brought stability in 19 CE when
he took over Taxila whose fame he certainly would have
heard even before he left his homeland on the shores of
the Caspian Sea. Six years later, in the year 25, the city
was laid low by a devastating earthquake. Gondophares

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

quickly set to rebuilding the city The ashlar masonry
employed by the Greeks in place of the coarse undressed
rubble used in old Taxila was discarded in favour of the
finer diaper style: the interstices between the dressed
blocks were neatly filled in with chips for greater stability.

89
All around the main city, schools and monasteries thrived.

East of the Indus

If Asoka’s Dharmarajika Stupa – Stupa of the King of the
Faith – and its monastery were humming with murmured
prayer, newer places of worship were coming up on the
outskirts of the city. If there was a cosmopolitan city in
Punjab, it was Taxila. Here one heard a babble of languag-
es and met travellers and traders from distant lands as
one walked the streets of the city.

If Buddhism was the predominant religion of the period,

the fire-worshipping Gondophares gave a boost to Zo-
roastrianism. Across the green fields and just a kilometre
due north of the north gate of the city that Gondophares

The ruins of Sirkap housing with the Stupa of Double-Headed Eagle in

the foreground.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

90
East of the Indus

Detail of stone carving from the plinth of the stupa of the

Double-Headed Eagle. Notice the Greek influence of a work
rendered in the first century CE.
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
91

East of the Indus

Top Left/Bottom Left: Imagery from the Dharmarajika stupa. Top Right: Imagery for Votive Stupa, Mohra Moradu monastery.
Bottom Right: Imagery from the Dharmarajika stupa.
 raised from the rubble, sat on slightly raised ground a the city’s philosophers. These, he knew, were the very
beautiful Greek style temple of Jandial. With massive ones whose ancestors had astounded Alexander with
pillars resting on large bases to support a high roof, the their wisdom.
temple is believed to have been built about the middle of
the first century BCE. This was a time when Taxila was held King Gondophares had instituted that no foreigner may
by the Zoroastrian Scythians. Consequently, archaeolo- enter the city without permission from the administration.
gists favour the theory that it was a fire temple. The rank and status of the permission-giver was commen-
surate with the stature of the visitor. Common traders
Amateur historians as well as some archaeologists believe would have to petition someone perhaps from the munic-
Jandial to be the temple that features in the story of Apol- ipality. But important persons like teachers and diplomats
lonius of Tyana who visited Taxila in or about the year 44 were admitted only after the king himself granted permis-
CE. Having travelled from his hometown in central Turkey, sion.
this Greek philosopher fetched up in Taxila to meet with
And so, in the course of the few days waiting for his
petition to enter Taxila to reach the top of the pile on the
king’s desk, Apollonius and the young prodigy Damis who
accompanied him as diarist, waited outside the city in a
92
temple. Damis describes the temple as built of marble
whose external walls were adorned with large copper
plate murals showing vivid scenes of battle. In these, Alex-
ander was the victor and Raja Paurava in defeat.3

What remains of Jandial temple is sufficient to show that

it was constructed of limestone blocks and not marble. To
my mind it, therefore, cannot be the one where Apollonius
and Damis would have tarried. The eminent archaeologist
Dr Saifur Rahman Dar points out that back in the early
1960s, he had seen the remains of a temple outside the
village of Mohra Maliarañ, a little way off from Jandial. He
Jandial Temple at Taxila. The massive pedestals in the foreground are the
believes this and not Jandial was the visiting philosopher’s
bases of pillars that once held up its roof. Their size recalls the impres-
sive building that it once was. temporary abode. Today not even a vestige of that ancient

3) Paurava, a dynastic name, was the learned person’s pronunciation. On the tongue of commoners it was Pora which the Greeks transliterated to Porus.
temple remains for the land is now under cultivation. Raja Paurava when he received word of Alexander’s death
in Babylon in June 322 BCE. Now, we have seen that in the
Royal permission granted, an escort was sent out to bring year Alexander died, the city of Taxila was what we today
the man of learning to the presence of the king. As they call Bhir. The murals would initially have been installed
neared town, Apollonius would surely have remarked on some building in that city. A century and a half later
upon the city’s protective wall with its massive turrets Demetrius built New Taxila leaving the old to the work-
and the houses rising above in the background. Entering ing class and artisans. It seems he ordered the murals to
through a wicket gate, the escort would have asked his be removed to the new site. To have done that, he must
charge to notice how new the city looked. It was true, surely have admired them greatly for had he left them in
he would have said, that in his few decades of life he the old city the would have been eventually vandalised
had never experienced an earthquake the likes of which and forgotten.

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

ruined his beautiful city only a quarter century earlier. In a
way, he might even have added, this was for the better be- The ruins of the Taxila of Demetrius sit six metres below
cause the ramshackle old houses of half a century earlier the surface of the one Apollonius visited. In those two
had now been replaced. hundred years between the two, the city was destroyed
several times and rebuilt on its own rubble raising its level
As they walked along, the garrulous escort would have to the Taxila of Gondophares. Each time that happened,
93
asked the visitors to notice the wares on display in the the murals were faithfully removed and perhaps even

East of the Indus

stores fronting the houses on either side of the street. He restored with colour to be installed afresh on some newer
would have boasted of the trade Taxila had with distant building. Clearly, these murals were held in such great
lands and especially remarked on the fine gold jewellery esteem by Taxila’s kings and commoners that three and a
worked by second generation Scythian Taxilians. About half centuries after Raja Paurava had them installed, they
halfway to the king’s palace, the escort paused in front were still there in very good fettle.
of the temple of red marble on the right side of the road.
Damis once again writes of its outer walls decorated with To my mind this indicates two things. For one, as the diary
large copper plate murals showing scenes of battle be- of Damis tells us, the artistry of the murals was very true to
tween Paurava and Alexander where again the latter was life which would have made them admirable for the public
the winner. He remarked on the exactness of colour and and the kings. Secondly, the message conveyed by the
drawing for it seemed one beheld an actual scene instead murals was worthy of being remembered and followed.
of a painting. We are told that Raja Paurava, upon receiving word of
Alexander’s death, ordered the murals so that history may
The visitors were told that these murals were ordered by never be subverted.
 Consider: Alexander was dead in far off Babylon, his of exceeding physical ugliness: large, bulbous nose, fleshy
Greek governor and the army left behind in this part of jaws and chin, bull neck and narrow head. Mehr Gul with
the world had bolted to take part in the War of Succes- his frightful grimace has a particularly demonic look. What
sion. Ambhi was dead; Paurava was now the master of we know from history is that both father and son had only
the land between the Indus and the Ravi. He could have one ambition: to destroy civilisation as it was then known
ordered anything and within the space of twenty years, and it seems they killed humans for sport.
he would have been celebrated, wrongly, as the only man
in history to vanquish Alexander. But here was a man Humans were not all the Huns enjoyed massacring,
browned by the Punjabi sun, of character far loftier than however. In Kashmir, Mehr Gul saw a military elephant
his towering physical self. He did not wish for history to be accidentally slipping over a sharp verge into a deep ravine.
undermined even if that truth did not flatter him. The terrified scream of the poor beast so delighted that
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

barbarian that he ordered several more elephants to be

Sadly, modern day faux historians fall over themselves forced into the abyss. The exact spot of this cruel sport is
to ‘prove’ the crushing defeat inflicted by Paurava on his to this day known as Hastinavanj – Elephant Went.
Macedonian rival. In their crude attempts they take away
so much from the greatest monarch of the early history of The most chilling account of Hunnic barbarity we read of
the Punjab. in the Rajatarangni – Chronicle of Kings. Written in the
94
middle of the twelfth century, six hundred years after the
East of the Indus

We had empire-building kings among the Greeks, Scyth- event, this was the master work of the Kashmiri Pundit
ians, Parthians and Sassanians who, even when they had Kalhana. The eight-volume work covers the rule of Kash-
to fight over Taxila to win her, built her with feeling. We miri kings from the early Middle Ages down to the time of
also had aberrations like the Huns who only destroyed. the writer. Though the chronology of the book is sometime
Afghanistan fell to Tor Aman in the last quarter of the out of kilter, it is still a great read not only for the historian
fifth century CE and, as if the vicious monster had not had but for the novice appreciative of the literary hyperbole
enough of rape and slaughter in the highlands, he moved employed by writers of that age. Writing six centuries after
east. As word of his ruthlessness preceded him, the pop- the event, Kalhana relied on existing local sources that no
ulace would have rejoiced when in 502 they heard of his longer exist and much real history is to be gleaned from
death. the effusive prose.

But the sense of relief was short-lived for he was suc- Kalhana tells us that the killing was so wanton and
ceeded by his son Mehr Gul who was twice as cruel and thoughtless and the count of bodies in the wake of the
blood-thirsty as the father. Coins show them both to be advancing Hunnic army was so huge that a dark cloud
of crows and vultures followed the horde to feed on through the buildings.
the dead. Those that were not killed by the sword, were
drowned in the rivers as if for sport. Rape and plunder The savages moved on and the centuries of the sound of
were without measure. murmured prayer was overtaken by a hush that was to last
fifteen hundred years. It was broken again by the clank of
In Taxila, as indeed in the fabulous cities of Pushkalavati metal in 1913 when John Marshall began his investigation.
and Peshawar, a record of arson dating to the first decade This time it was not the sword of the barbarian, but the
of the sixth century is clearly seen. The stupas and mon- spade of the archaeologist. From the glens of modern day
asteries of Dharmarajika, Mohra Moradu, Jaulian were laid Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the narrow valleys of Taxila, ruins
low. Even the outlying Bhamala monastery revealed a layer of the monasteries show a layer of ash and charcoal dating
of ash and charcoal when first investigated. to the first decade of the sixth century CE. The rusted

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

arrowheads and spear points recovered from the dust
I can imagine an early morning with thin skeins of mist and ash of centuries are the accusing finger pointing at the
swirling around the open fields amid the low hills topped Huns.
by the stupa and the monastery of Bhamala. Done with
their early morning ritual of ablution and prayer, the monks Having undertaken a long and arduous journey, Xuanzang,
would have been preparing to set out for town, begging the Buddhist master from the seminary of Chang’an (Xian),
95
bowl in hand, to secure their day’s sustenance. In the dis- arrived in Taxila. The mission he followed with single-mind-

East of the Indus

tance they might have seen the dark cloud of carrion-feed- ed conviction was to procure the true word of his Lord
ing birds so easy to be mistaken for a raincloud. But then Buddha so that the corrupted texts in China could be set
the din of the advancing horde would have drawn nearer right again. The year was 631, only a hundred and twenty
and nearer until the clash of armoury and the cries of the years since the savagery of the Huns had swept through
victims would have reached the monks. the land. In Taxila, Xuanzang saw many monasteries in
ruins and deserted and the city had only a few priests. The
Some would have panicked and escaped into the hills. only consolation was that the masters still followed the
The more devout would have stayed, not to fight for that Mahayana code of Buddhism. Mehr Gul was still remem-
went against their creed, but to die for their belief. They bered as was his defeat at the hands of the Rajputs in the
may even have attempted to hide the most valued images south.
of Buddha, but that was futile for there was no time. And
then the bloodthirsty host was upon them. Within hours, What the Huns wrought had a long lasting effect on Taxila.
with scores of bodies littering the once quiet and peace- It went into decline whose speed was only added to by
ful precincts of the monasteries, raging fires were licking another event. Xuanzang noted that the ruling family was
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

96
East of the Indus

The massive drum of Dharmarajika stupa that is, to this day, Asoka’s
greatest gift to Taxila. The monastery surrounding the stupa was once the
largest and busiest in the city. Signs of arson remind us of the barbaric
attack of the Huns in the early years of the sixth century CE.
 97

from Landi Kotal to Wagah East of the Indus

Mohra Moradu monastery.
 dead and Taxila was in the throes of political squabbling.
From the Rajatarangni we know that the king at the time
of the pilgrim’s visit, Narendraditya Khinkhila, a pious
follower of Lord Shiva, focussed his attention on feeding
the clergy and establishing newer places of Vedic wor-
ship. There was little focus on governing the vast kingdom
stretching all the way from Kashmir across the Suleman
Hills into Afghanistan. This lack of oversight led to a time
of anarchy speeding up the decay of the city that had
once been the finest between the Indus and the Jhelum
rivers.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

In 631, when he came down the western hills and again

in 646 as he headed home to China, Xuanzang was the
last person in history to know the city by its old name:
Takshasila whose name scholars tell us meant Rock of the
Takas, or Takshas after a tribe living in the area. In 1017 or
98
the year after, Abu Rehan Al Beruni, the polymath from
East of the Indus

Uzbekistan, was in a moribund Taxila. The city was called

Babarkan or Babar Khana – House of the Tiger. Rendering
the name Babrahan, Al Beruni added that lying halfway
between the ‘rivers Sindh and Jailam’, it was the ‘best
known entrance to Kashmir’. The new name for the city
stemmed from the legend of Buddha feeding a starving
tigress with his own flesh. The city was all but dead.

The Takshasila that had drawn men of learning and wealth

to its gates, died without so much as a whimper. The
empire builders of old, kings like Chandragupta Maurya,
Demetrius or Gondophares, who had built this city with so
much love were long gone. Five hundred years of unbro-
Votive Stupa, Mohra Moradu monastery. ken peace since the passing of the Huns had ended with
the repeated incursions of Mahmud the Turk who ruled It was Taxila, they were told. Over the years and for nearly
over Afghanistan from his capital at Ghazni. Those who a full century ‘Taxila’ was a synonym for ancient ruin or
lived within the city’s walls moved away and slowly but in- archaeological excavation for locals. Only they could not
exorably silence and the dust of time began to settle over pronounce the name right. They called every ruin Tuskla.
housing and worship place alike. In the 1990s I repeatedly heard the phrase, ‘So, you
want to see the Tuskla of Mohra Moradu or the Tuskla of
Within a few centuries all that remained were high clayey Jaulian?’
mounds, some scattered with finely dressed stones, others
perhaps spiked by the upper part of the umbrella topping Today even that is passé.
a stupa. If the grandeur of Taxila was dead and buried
along with its name, its splendour remained alive in the

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

collective memory for they called the several mounds
Dheri Shahan: Mounds of Kings. Robbers moved in to dig
and plunder the supposed treasures buried with the city.

A full millennium after Al Beruni, British archaeologist

Alexander Cunningham who had read his Alexander in
99
detail came following up on the ancient conqueror. At the

East of the Indus

Mounds of Kings he paused to ask. But Taxila had faded
from human memory. Cunningham’s cursory exploration
in the 1860s confirmed what he had suspected: this vast
sprinkling of mounds was indeed the very Taxila where
Alexander had tarried. Within two decades after him
engineers of the Raj laid their railway line past the Mounds
of Kings. They named the station Taxila, surely much to the
bafflement of the locals who had never heard the name.
Another couple of decades passed and John Marshall’s
men in tweed jackets and thick-shelled solar hats came
with teams of labourers to carefully peel away the veneer
of dust and for the first time in a thousand years let the
masonry walls of Taxila resound with human voices.
Curious locals came to ask what the excavation revealed.
The Margalla is said to mean Cut (Mar) Throat (Galla) Pass. Tradition has it that brigands
hiding in its bends would fall upon passing caravans to kill and plunder. The lofty obelisk
known to one and all as Nicholson’s Memorial celebrates the general who died aged thir-
ty-five. History remembers him as a bully and a psychopath, but for his followers, Punjabis
and Pakhtuns alike, he was a hero for his unflinching courage in battle.
 4

Over the Cut Throat Pass

 A zeem, his archaeologist’s instinct in full flow, did not was the little drinking fountain housed in a beautiful little
want me to miss the famous Lohsar baoli (stepped well) in Greek stoa.
the cantonment of Wah. We had to go through a military
security check and one of us had to leave his identity card I have been seeing the stoa since my childhood when the
with the guards against which we were given a pass. Larger Grand Trunk Road was single-lane two-way. Then it stood
than most others I have seen, this Mughal monument was smack by the berm of the highroad. Now we have a two-
the one that no alien or even a passing local tourist would lane double track and the stoa still stands a little off the
be permitted to visit without a protracted and frustrating berm. Azeem had the answer: in the 1980s, with govern-
song and dance. ment coffers fattened with the aid received for fighting the
war in Afghanistan, road widening was at a frenzied pitch
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

The gateway of the steps leading down to the water had all across Pakistan. A bureaucratic mind worked some-
been restored, and rather nicely too, in the last years of where and the lovely little building, instead of being torn
the past century. The brickwork, after more than three down, was dismantled, its granite blocks numbered and
centuries, is still in good fettle and the cross-spans in the the whole reassembled at the present spot.
stairwell are beautifully crenulated. However, the sad thing
is that without proper expert oversight, the left side (as We climbed up to Nicholson’s memorial obelisk. The door
102
one descends the stairs) has collapsed sending down a leading into the little cubicle at the bottom was open and
Over the Cut Throat Pass

huge amount of debris blocking the way to the water. Im- there on the front wall was a black plaque with the dedi-
mediate restoration by those who have the right expertise cation to John Nicholson, Brigadier General. However, the
is urgently needed. But the nightmare that authorities will iron ladder leading to the lighthouse like upper chambers
employ local ‘engineers’ to ‘renovate’ this historical build- was fixed in such a way cutting diagonally across the tablet
ing with modern cement and bricks is a real possibility. so as to prevent photography. It reads:

And so we passed into the Margalla Pass. Tradition has This column is erected by friends, British and
it that the narrow, twisting road through this low pass Native to the memory of Brigadier General John
was the haunt of ruthless brigands. Not satisfied by the Nicholson, taking a hero’s part in four great wars
plunder alone, these bloodthirsty thugs were never averse for the defence of British India. Kabul 1840, First
to killing their helpless victims. Since they cut (mar) the Sikh War 1845, Second Sikh War 1848, Sepoy
throats (galla), so the name. To our right (as we proceeded
Mutiny 1857.
in a southerly direction), atop a hill towered the granite
spire of Nicholson’s Memorial. On our side of the road
Nicholson, who died during the War of Independence
(Mutiny to the British1) of 1857, barely five months shy of wrested his musket from his grasp. In a loud voice he or-
his thirty-sixth birthday was a man whom history looks at dered the soldiers to arrest their own guard commander.
in varying colours. For some, he was a hero of the First Half asleep and unable to grasp what really was going on,
Anglo-Afghan War; of battles against the Sikhs and of the Sikhs obeyed and Attock was taken by a mere thirty
the mutiny of 1857. For one historian he was an ‘imperial men without firing a shot.
psychopath’, while his own sister had termed him a ‘bully’.
The fact is that this tall, imposing man of reportedly great A day later in the Margalla Pass, Nicholson rode into the
physical strength was courageous to the point of being Sikh garrison and told the commandant that he had one
completely mad. We hear of what sort of a man was this hour to submit failing which the entire garrison would be
John Nicholson from Charles Allen’s Soldier Sahibs. eliminated. For the duration of the allocated time, the

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Sikhs argued among themselves as Nicholson sat motion-
In July 1848, Akbar’s great fort of Attock was securely in less on his horse. When the hour was done, the comman-
Sikh hands. And the British wanted it to keep an eye on an dant came up and surrendered.
Afghanistan they so coveted. Nicholson, then all of twen-
ty-seven, rode out of Peshawar with a band of sixty Pakh- Thereafter, in his administrative assignments Nicholson
tun irregular cavalrymen and two companies of recruits. won fame and the respect of Pakhtun and Punjabi alike
103
After a day and night of hard riding when he arrived at the for his fair dealings and sense of justice. Indeed, even

Over the Cut Throat Pass

ferry of Attock, the recruits had fallen way back while of today we hear of the Nikkalsenis, a Sikh cult that reveres
the hardy Pakhtuns only thirty had been able to keep up Nicholson as a saint. Unsurprisingly, when his admiring
with the gruelling pace. They forded the Indus at daybreak countrymen began the granite obelisk commemorating
and at an hour when the Sikh guards at the gate did not John Nicholson, there was no resistance. Completed in
expect such company, Nicholson rode up. 1886, it is to this day, a monument – and a rare one – that
has suffered no vandalism.
In a remarkable show of derring-do as he passed through
the first gate, Nicholson shouted for the guards to gather Just below the obelisk, right across the road from the
their weapons and follow him. In the enceinte, the star- drinking fountain, but caught behind a truckers’ stand
tled Sikh troopers raised their weapons to the intruder. and sure to be missed by the casual tourist is a stretch
Nicholson dismounted, walked up to the nearest man and of flagstoned road. It was a quiet early morning when I

1) The difference is a matter of perspective. For the East India Company, their soldiers had risen up on the perceived view that the bullets for the new rifles
were coated either with cow or pig fat. The former unacceptable to Hindus and Sikhs in the service and the latter to their Muslims colleagues. For the rebels,
however, it was an attempt to rid India of British dominion.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

104
Over the Cut Throat Pass

The old flagstoned Grand Trunk Road and the two

obelisks that mark the beginning of its ascent into the
Margalla. This paving is from Jahangir’s period.
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
105

Over the Cut Throat Pass

Four centuries of countless feet passing over it, the paving
is still in perfect fettle. Today only two hundred metres of
the old paving remains.
 went there alone. The mechanic who had just opened his discredit a layman like me, but that an archaeologist had
nearby workshop came around to chat. said something seemed to make sense.
‘You’ve come to see Sher Shah Suri’s road,’ it was more a
statement than a question.
‘No. I’ve come to see the road that Sher Shah had nothing Southward lay the city of Rawalpindi. I had been on the
to do with.’ road for days that I had lost count of and I was not yet half
way between Landi Kotal and Wagah. For that I blamed
The man smiled an uncertain smile as if to say, ‘you’re kid- more winter rains than we had known in recent years. They
ding me’. I reeled out my spiel done so many times before. had hounded me and destroyed the wheat fields of many
Despite all his admirable qualities, the Suri king could not sorry farmers. It was on another rainy afternoon when
have made the road, built inns and dug stepped wells in Azeem and I turned north from the Grand Trunk Road at
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

his five years as king before being killed by a mining device the sign saying ‘Serai Kharbuza’. About three kilometres off
gone wrong. The mechanic had been told by ‘professor the highway we stood under the massive but now com-
sahib from Taxila’ that Sher Shah had ruled for close to pletely ruined walls of the serai mentioned by Jahangir in
fifty years. his memoirs.

I told him that the Gakkhars who had sworn allegiance to Jahangir says it was built in ‘earlier times’ by the Gakkhars
106
Babur and his family had not permitted the Pakhtuns to who used it as an octroi station. The name, he tells us, is
Over the Cut Throat Pass

advance any further west than Rohtas. because a dome here was shaped like a melon. Melon Inn,
‘So who built the grand baoli in Wah, the one they call if I may call it that, sits fifteen kilometres from Taxila, a lei-
Lohsar?’ surely day’s march. In 1994, having read Jahangir’s diary for
‘Consider Akbar or his son Jahangir,’ I suggested. ‘You the second time, I stopped here. Two sides of the enclosing
know, we wrongly attribute every stepped well to the Pa- wall and its turrets were gone and inside the compound
khtun king and if we find one on Mars, we’ll be convinced were a number of houses jumbled close together. Flush
even that was built by him.’ The man guffawed and with the west wall was a ruinous mosque whose dome was
slapped his thigh. indeed shaped like a melon.

This brought us back to the two hundred-metre stretch This time around, the decay was even greater with only a
of flagstoned road. I told him what I had learned on the bit of the wall and two corner turrets remaining. The melon
earlier trip a month before from my archaeologist friend dome was gone; the mosque forgotten.
Azeem: that this surviving bit could be attributed to Ja-
hangir. I could see he was perplexed. He could easily have
Ammad Ali is the living encyclopaedia of Rawalpindi. A With a young talkative man as our guide, Ammad and I
native of Kahuta, a little ways northeast of town, he has climbed across a rocky spur and descended into and over-
spent years walking around the streets, exploring the grown area known as Bagh Jogian – Garden of the Jogis.
rugged ravines outside town, discovering crumbling ruins It was thick with bhekar (Adhatoda vasica) and phulai
and writing very interesting articles for a weekly newspa- (Acacia modesta) where spider webs brushed our faces
per. He is an incessant talker who segues from subject to and jujube thorns caught on our clothing. The interior of
subject and one has to keep one’s ears and mind open the tiny domed building was thickly overgrown, but it was
so as to not miss anything. With him it is easy to lose the clearly from the late eighteenth century. Fearing snakes,
thread of his conversation. When asked, he had readily I did not enter to see if there was a sarcophagus. Behind
agreed to lead me to the fifteenth century mosque built this tomb was a roofless rectangular room with a banyan
by the Gakkhars just outside their grand fort of Pharwala. tree growing from its stone wall. It seems that there was

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

a time when Mukarab Khan’s sons resorted here, then a
We drove out on the road to Kahuta and at one point garden of sorts. Here passing yogis may have found a few
turned in the direction of the little village of Bhimber Trar. moments of solace for it to be named after them.
Ammad said next to the mosque, in an overgrown area
there was a small domed building that kept the remains I was returning to the ruinous and abandoned fifteenth
of Sultan Mukarab Khan, who lived in the middle of the century mosque after twenty-four years. A building that
107
eighteenth century and was the last independent chief of had withstood the ravages of over five centuries had

Over the Cut Throat Pass

the Gakkhars. He was, if anything, a remarkably opportun- changed little in the past quarter century. Only the wild
istic man. Having fought against the Yusufzais and defeat- growth had encroached closer upon it. The three-domed
ed them, Mukarab teamed with Ahmed Shah Abdali, the worship house has three small bays and a courtyard in
first king of independent Afghanistan. During Mukarab’s front whose wall has collapsed, its stones cannibalised for
chieftainship, Gakkhar influence expanded east of Gujrat other buildings. The left dome is cracked and all the plas-
to the vicinity of Eminabad for the first time. ter inside and on the exterior has peeled away to reveal
coarsely dressed stones beneath. The call of the muezzin
Mukarab Khan’s star set when Gujar Singh Bhangi has not echoed out of its prayer chamber perhaps since
trounced him in battle and he sought refuge with his the time of Mukarab Khan’s passing.
kinsman Himmat Khan of Domeli who had a keen eye on
events and foresaw the rise of the Sikhs: he treacherously Across the clear bluish water of the Soan River, here an
slew Mukarab and flaunted his heroic deed for the Sikhs ankle-deep trickle when it is not raining, stood the bulky
to notice. Not long afterward, even Himmat got the short ramparts of Pharwala Fort. In February 1519, Babur was
end of the stick from the Sikhs. camped on the banks of the Soan River in the vicinity of
 Rawalpindi when an emissary from the Salt Range Jan- ground until ‘the blackness of Parhala (sic) showed itself
juas sought audience. The envoy was well received and from two miles off’, so the Baburnama tells us. Babur
presently the chief of the Janjuas had a hearing with the put his army in battle order and stormed the walls of the
Mughal. fort. Behind the rampart attacked by the Mughals, waited
Hathi Gakkhar, a man of gigantic stature and phenomenal
A month later, Babur having journeyed to Bhera across the strength. It is said that when he stood on the ground in his
Jhelum River was back in Janjua country where the chief, bare feet, he yet towered above a mounted warrior. With
Malik Asad, saw his chance to set Babur against his old him rallying his forces, the Mughals were soon routed. The
enemy. Chief of the Gakkhars, Hathi was the bad man in way Babur glossed over the failure in his diary, it is clear
the area who gave no man peace; he robbed on the roads the retreat was rather undignified.
and brought everyone to ruin and he ought to be severely
punished, pleaded Asad the Janjua. Babur called in the reserve and a resolute attack was
mounted a second time. This time the Gakkhars were
With a guide provided by the Janjua chieftain, Babur beaten. As the Mughal force poured into the fort from
made a forced day and night march through rough, broken Hathi Gate named after the chieftain himself, Hathi dis-
solved into the forested gully beyond Bohri vala Darwaza
(Banyan Gate), on the far side of his fort. But a fortnight
108
later, he sued for peace and made friends with Babur.
Over the Cut Throat Pass

However, he did not get to live long after that. His neph-
ews, Sarang and Adam whose father he had slain only a
few years, earlier had been waiting for the chance to get
even. Finding the opening, they dispatched Hathi and in
his stead submitted to Babur. Later, when Babur returned
again to possess India, the brothers Sarang and Adam
joined his victorious train to Delhi.

In 2015, returning to Pharwala after a gap of eighteen

years, I was sorry to see the deterioration in its state. Since
most educated Pharwala men go to work in Rawalpindi or
Islamabad, the village inside the walls is mostly deserted
during the day. On this occasion we met a man who told
Pharwala Fort, the medieval redoubt of the Gakkhars stands above the
Soan River. On the right Begum Darwaza (Gate) can be seen. us that those who lived in the fort, including himself, had
been cannibalising material from the fort walls to enlarge fortification. He was badly burnt and only stayed alive until
their own homes. word came to him that the fort was taken.

Appalled, I rebuked him for being a Gakkhar and destroy-

ing Sarang Khan’s legacy, whose descendent he and all
others in Pharwala claim to be. The man looked at me
blankly. The fort, whose battlements first went up per-
haps as early as the thirteenth century to be repaired and
improved periodically, has always been a Gakkhar home,
yet it was of no significance to the illiterate man. Though
he lived within its walls, he did not seem to belong to
Pharwala.

Babur may have been an astute ruler, his son Humayun

was an utter failure. Within years of the father’s death, the
The old mosque outside Pharwala Fort. So completely abandoned that
son who forever lived befuddled by opium, had fought
not even rock pigeons and owls roost under its domes.
two disastrous wars against an ambitious and energetic
Sher Shah Suri and lost them both. In 1539, the first battle However, during his lifetime, he tried to bring the Gak-
was fought at Chausa in Bengal and carried by the master khars of the Potohar Plateau to terms. But Sarang and
tactician Sher Shah in a lightning strike. The second, fought his brother Adam Khan were men true to their salt: years
a year later near Kanauj, once again spelled ignominious earlier they had sworn allegiance to Babur. It was not their
defeat for Humayun who made off from the field on a lame way now to abandon Babur’s son, not even when he was a
nag. fugitive in a distant land with scant hope of ever regaining
his father’s kingdom. Guarding the roads through their
Sher Shah Suri pursued Humayun through Rajasthan territory, the Gakkhars harried Pakhtun troopers passing
whence the Mughal fled through Sindh and Balochistan through.
to seek refuge with his friend Tahmasp I, the Safvi king of
Persia. At home, the brilliant and tireless Pakhtun became This could not go on. Encamped at Bhera on the east
king of India and set about consolidating his hold. But bank of the Jhelum River, Sher Shah sent a message to
fortune gave him a mere five years. In 1545, overseeing the the defiant brothers to present themselves in his camp.
mining of the walls of Kalinjer fort in Rajasthan, Sher Shah Sarang Khan replied with a pair of maces and a couple of
got in the way of an explosive charge rebounding of the arrow-filled quivers. Gakkhar lore has it that he also sent a
 pair of lion cubs with the taunt, ‘You call yourself “Sher”, so way into narrow alleys with literally no room to swing the
I send you these cubs that you try to imbibe the qualities proverbial cat. Constantly dreading some leaky drain
of these noble creatures. It is doubtful, but you may yet dumping sewage on my head (which thankfully did not
acquire some of their character.’ occur), we wound our way to the haveli of Sujan Singh.

The Gakkhars, inured to war and hardship, kept to harass- It would once have stood in an open piazza, but was now
ing travellers on the Grand Trunk Road passing by their encroached upon from all sides and had a dark aura of
stronghold. Meanwhile, Sher Shah’s advisor who knew aggressive abandonment. Its tastefully carved door was
these hill men better advised against open all-out war. padlocked and dusty. After years of occupation by the
They had to be contained by a strong permanent garrison police which had left it in a poor state of upkeep, in 2006
on the borders of their country. A survey showed a low, the government ceremonially handed over the building to
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

broken hill on the banks of the Kahan River as an ideal the Fatima Jinnah Women University. Subsequently, there
place for the cantonment. And so, in 1541, work began on were plans for it to become the Rawalpindi campus of the
the building of Rohtas. National College of Arts, Lahore. But when or indeed if
ever anything will happen is not known.
Sher Shah died in 1545. It took Humayun ten years to
muster the courage and strength to attempt to regain I did not know of Sardar Sujan Singh, the master of this
110
India. When he came down through Afghanistan, the Ga- tasteful house; Ammad pointed me in the direction of
Over the Cut Throat Pass

kkhars were there to greet him at Pharwala. A year later, Lepel Griffith’s Punjab Chiefs. We are told that this son
in 1556, in a wet and humid August, Humayun’s rebellious of viceregal courtier Sardar Nand Singh was a ‘successful
brother Mirza Kamran was arrested by the Gakkhars man of business’ from an old moneyed family. He made a
faithful to the Mughal crown. On his brother’s orders the living by securing large contracts and farming leases and
prince was promptly blinded by a heated lancet and des- was a very prominent and public-spirited gentleman of the
patched on a pilgrimage to Arabia. city. During the Afghan Campaign of 1880, Sujan Singh
supplied fodder, grain and fuel to the British army. Griffith
tells us that this responsibility he fulfilled sometimes under
great difficulty for which he received official commen-
In Rawalpindi Ammad Ali walked me in the narrow lanes dation. The man’s crowning glory came in 1889 when he
off Raja Bazaar showing me one building after another that received the title of Rai Bahadar. The family continued to
would have once been home to rich Hindus and Sikhs. All live in Rawalpindi until Partition in 1947 when they were
of them are now homes to those whose parents migrated forced to move to India.
from India in 1947. Through Bhabhra Bazaar, he led the
The house, built about the closing years of the nineteenth Rawalpindi, a son that the city was once proud of. His old
century, is a beautiful amalgam of wrought iron, cut brick, and crumbling haveli is a priceless piece of our built her-
intricately carved doors and arches within arches. The itage that needs to be preserved. If the will can be found,
first floor windows are designed to create trefoil arches, a this forlorn piece of heritage can yet be brought back from
throwback to the shape of the entrance in Hindu Shahya the brink of oblivion.
temples built in the Kashmiri style during the Middle Ages.
Sadly, however, the years of neglect has caused much
of the timber work of the fine lattice and the balconies
on the first floor to rot away and the ledges of the old
balconies are sagging. Ammad, who had seen the interior,
said there were some fine frescos waiting to be restored

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

to their original glory.

An Urdu newspaper article forwarded me by Dr Abdul

Azeem says that in 1947 after Sujan Singh’s sons had fled
to India, the forty-five-room haveli spread over 2230
square metres was allotted to forty families of refugees
111
from Kashmir. That is, the mansion where an aristocrat
lived with his wife, two sons and two daughters, was

Over the Cut Throat Pass

crammed with perhaps as many as three hundred persons!
In 1982, the building, then in a poor state of upkeep, was
vacated to be restored. However, after several years of
half-hearted non-starters, it was recently handed over to
the National College of Arts and locked away. The article
also tells us that many years ago Sardar Gurbachan Singh,
a grandson of Sujan Singh, served as the Indian ambassa-
dor to Pakistan. One wonders if during his tenure he ever
visited the premises where he spent his childhood or if
he petitioned the government of Pakistan to preserve his
grandsire’s legacy.

The haveli of Sardar Sujan Singh, one of the richest gentlemen

Regardless of his religion, Sardar Sujan Singh was a son of of Rawalpindi town in the early twentieth century.
 112
from Landi Kotal to Wagah Chapter Name
 113

from Landi Kotal to Wagah Over the Cut Throat Pass

Main entrance of Sujan Singh’s haveli
As we exited back into the main bazaar, we were followed form who rode a bicycle and brought letters from loved
by two pre-teenage girls who pestered me to photograph ones living in other cities or even in other countries. The
them. Having done their bidding, I took out my notebook girls looked at each other and back at me. But the light
and asked them for an address to send the images to. Ad- of recognition was missing from their eyes. Both of them
dress? Puzzled, they looked at each other and giggled. shrugged.
‘What address?’ one of them asked.
‘An address where I can post your pictures to you,’ I turned to the man standing nearby enjoying our ex-
I explained. change.
‘We don’t have an address,’ said the girl who had spoken ‘These girls don’t know what a dakia is,’ I remarked.
before. ‘Who would? Especially when everyone now uses this,’ he
‘Doesn’t the postman ever come to your home?’ smiled holding up his smartphone.
I asked using the Urdu word dakia.
‘What’s a dakia?’ The girls’ bafflement was complete That was the twenty-first century for me.
and genuine.

I explained that the dakia was the man in the khaki uni-
We headed for Kohati Bazaar where Ammad had another
heritage piece to show me. I asked if he knew who the city
was named after and he said Jahangir, the fourth Mughal
king, had mentioned Rawalpindi in his memoir. The Tuzk e
Jahangiri tells us that in April 1607 the emperor halted at
Rawalpindi which was ‘founded by a Hindu named Rawal,
and pindi in the Gakkhar tongue means a village’. He
tells us of a ‘stream’ flowing nearby which is the Lei, now
nothing more than the main sewer of the city. Back then, it
formed a pool about two hundred and fifty metres across,
the depth of which, the king’s Gakkhar attendants said,
was never measured because it was believed to be alive
with crocodiles.

Ever the curious man and with a mean streak to boot,

The girls who had never heard of a dakia or postman Jahangir ordered a sheep to be thrown into the pond.
It swam clear across to the other side. Then the king just behind me. With his face right up close to mine, the
ordered a servant to get in. With faltering heart and on bearded man demanded to know with whose permission
his lips many breathless prayers and surely a few curses we had entered the premises. His eyes seemed to focus
for his king, would the man have stepped into the murky
water. But even he, having swum around, came out unmo-
lested. ‘There was no foundation for what the Gakkhars
had said,’ concluded the king. However, long before it was
turned into a sewer, it was a clear water stream that would
surely have teemed with all kinds of aquatic life.

A few weeks later, Jahangir was back in Rawal’s village.

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Here he ordered a qamargah – hunting ring from which
hapless animals had no escape – where he so proudly
killed twenty-nine antelopes. His sons killed several more.
As well as that, twenty-seven ‘red deer’ and sixty-eight
‘white deer’ were also killed. Today, if we do not find any
ungulates in the hills around Rawalpindi, we know who to
115
blame for the most part!

Chapter Name
In Kohati Bazaar Ammad knew of the Kalyan Das temple.
He said it once possessed grounds spreading over seven
acres which were all now built over. Most of the land was
taken over for housing in 1947 when refugees from East
Punjab ended up in Rawalpindi. Even the land directly
around the temple was now occupied by a school for
blind pupils built in the early 1980s. Named after a rich
businessman of the area, the temple was consecrated in
the 1880s.

We entered the school through the open gate and as I

was volubly admiring the fine stucco artistry on the façade
and the frescos in the veranda, I was hailed by someone Kalyan Das temple in Kohati Bazaar, Rawalpindi
 Frescos in the veranda of the temple.
116
from Landi Kotal to Wagah Over the Cut Throat Pass
 117

from Landi Kotal to Wagah Over the Cut Throat Pass

Frescos in the veranda of the temple.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

118
Over the Cut Throat Pass

Top Left: The main entrance of Rawat serai The façade criss-crossed by all sorts of Top Right: Graves of those Gakkhars who lost their lives in the struggle against Sher
cable, however, shows how not to do things. Shah Suri. The lofty dome in the background is believed to be the tomb of Sarang

Bottom Left: The interior of the serai with the mosque in the background. The Khan, the chief. There is no cenotaph in the building, however.

name Rawat is a corruption of Rabat, the Arabic word for caravanserai. However, Bottom Right: Mankiala stupa built in the second century CE during the reign of the
its tall gateway and crenulated walls have led people to believe it is a fortress rather great Kushan ruler Kanishka was believed by Buddhists to have been the site where
than a serai. Buddha fed his body to a hungry tigress. The redness of the earth (likely from the
presence of subsoil salt) was pointed as proof of Buddha’s largesse. The stupa and
accompanying monastery (no sign of the latter remains today) were destroyed by
fire and over the centuries the stupa was damaged by treasure hunters. Jean-Bap-
tiste Ventura, a general in the army of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, investigated this site
and removed some artefacts that are today part of the British Museum collection.
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
119

Over the Cut Throat Pass

Top Left: Detail of decoration on the capital of mock pillars adorning the drum Right: Corner turret of Pakka Serai
of Mankiala stupa with the date of restoration during the British Raj.

Bottom Left: The west gateway of the fortified Pakka Serai. In the early years of the
seventeenth century, both emperor Jahangir and the travelling English merchant
William Finch stopped here on their respective journeys. The wide interior of this
fort too is a growing village.
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120
Over the Cut Throat Pass

Top Left: Exterior of Bedi Mahal, Kallar Syedan. Top Right: View of first floor rooms.
Bottom Left: Detail of woodwork on the front entrance. Bottom Right: The atrium of Bedi Mahal is resplendent with frescos
whose richness has not faded in a century.
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121

Over the Cut Throat Pass

Right/Left: Detail of frescos from Bedi Mahal.
 on something just above my head and behind me. And and I found one overcast afternoon threatening to let
then I realised the school for visually impaired children loose and hurried out to Gulyana, ten kilometres south
had, appropriately enough, a visually impaired watchman. of Gujar Khan. Ammad said a certain Baba Gulla, octoge-
If that was not a contradiction in terms, I cannot say what narian Gulzar Ahmad, lived near a lovely little temple and
can be. told tales of the village. Asking for directions in the village,
we were pointed to a drain running along the middle of
I fibbed that I was a director from the Department of the alley and told to follow its flow to the very end and we
Archaeology (though I did not sound half as convincing as would end up at the temple. The modest little temple with
my archaeologist friend Azeem) doing government work a Samadhi next to it is used as a storage room by local
and threatened to put him through to the joint secretary farmers. The exterior is plain, but the interior still blazes
in Islamabad. The watchman asked his sidekick to call the with frescoes that have preserved their bright colours.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

principal of the school who upon hearing that I was an

officer of the government at once permitted me to pro- The painting in the middle of the vaulted alcove on the
ceed with my work. The watchman who said his name was wall opposite the entrance was resplendent in blues, reds
Mubashir then ordered tea for Ammad and me. and greens. The figures were partially defaced and I had
no idea what I was looking at. My anthropologist friend
The exterior ripples with fine stucco work, bay windows, Zulfiqar Kalhoro revealed the secret: the crowned male
122
mock pilasters and arches. Frescos on the exterior have figure was Lord Rama attended by his consort Sita. The
Over the Cut Throat Pass

all been washed away, but in the veranda they are still in flanking figures were Laxman on the right and Hanuman
colourful glory. Gods of the Vedic pantheon and worship- on the left. Hanuman’s extended right hand probably held
ful humans fill the spaces between forests of flowers, vines some offering which might have particularly offended
and leaves. But now the sound of prayer does not hum some modern day iconoclast for the hand is scratched off.
through the temple, said Mubashir’s assistant, because
the locked idol chamber contained old and broken school Ammad sent word out for Baba Gulla and presently we
equipment. had the talkative old man telling us of the several rich
Hindus and Sikhs he remembered from the years before
As we were leaving, I looked back and felt it was just as Partition. The striking ruins of the large haveli we had
well the temple was now inside a walled government passed on our way to the temple was the property of Tara
property. Any other way and it would have been torn Singh, the lawyer, said Gulla. He said Gulyana was home
down to raise an ugly shopping mall. to some of the richest people of the district. They all left
in 1947 and local poor people moved in to occupy their
With few sunny days between rainy interludes Ammad agricultural lands.
‘Only two or three people died in the riots. Here the thugs the closed end of a rocky limestone gorge. Water spilling
focussed on looting instead of killing,’ he said without down the sharp verge had beautifully festooned the rock
emotion. with creepers. On the crest grew a few banyan trees
whose roots were suspended nearly to the bottom of the
gorge like some prehistoric giant snakes.
I made the fatal error of mentioning the ‘Buddha Caves’
outside Islamabad by the little hamlet of Shah Allah Ditta.
‘Rubbish!’ said Azeem. ‘There is absolutely no proof of
Buddha ever having come to what is now Pakistan. Zero!’

Having said that, he confirmed that the place was known

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

as Sadhu da Bagh – Garden of the Sadhu. Until 1947,
with a large Hindu and Sikh population, the place was a
favourite haunt of sadhus, Hindu religious ascetics who
spend their life wandering God’s earth and practicing a
strict mystical discipline. Then there was a large mural with
paintings which lasted until a couple of decades ago. It is
123
not known if it fell victim to natural decay or the malefi-

Over the Cut Throat Pass

cence of humans, but today there is neither a mural nor a
Sadhu.

But long before humans mastered speech, our early

ancestors would certainly have sheltered under these
overhangs. Here they would have crafted their stone tools,
butchered and perhaps cooked their hunt and here they
would have procreated and died for tens of thousands
of years. But if those early residents left any sign of their
presence, it has never been found.

We rolled past sector D-12 of Islamabad through the

village of Shah Allah Ditta to what was once a pristine
and wild little garden of mango and mulberry trees at The temple of Gulyana
 124
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 125

from Landi Kotal to Wagah Over the Cut Throat Pass

The temple of Gulyana
 Here the porous rock, having eroded over millions of and coins from the third century BCE. Recently a few coins
years, had created a couple of overhangs. They were just of the Mughal era have also been found. The one thing
that: overhangs. Some mind wild with imagination but that is missing is Buddhist religious iconography. Now ex-
unlettered on the life of Buddha had turned the shallow perts view this relic as a way station on the shortest route
overhangs into caves and supplanted Buddha in them from the various monasteries and townships of ancient
a long way off from where he ever was. By and by folks Taxila to the city of Rawal.
began to resort here to glean some of the residual, but
spurious, two millennium-old piety. Once deserted, in time In 1823, the vetrinary doctor William Moorcroft passed
the place acquired a resident ascetic who had no fables to this way. He mentioned ‘the pass between Shaladatta
relate. [Shah Allah Ditta] and Khanpur’. As he was travelling
westward, he could espy the Tamrah rivulet of Taxila in the
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

By 2018, the so-called Buddha caves had turned into a valley in front and referred to it as the Dhamrai.
picnic spot. Then it was only a matter of time for the mush-
room growth of cheap eateries to forever kill the aura of Carrying on westward, en route to Taxila, a short descent
the place. Today freshly bulldozed dirt roads snake up the brings one to the spacious pond of Ban Fakirañ – Pond of
hill on which cross country vehicles zoom up and down to the Fakirs. Once stone-lined and perhaps much deeper,
remove what little atmosphere the place had . A spot of it is now ruinous. Most of the stone lining is lost, canni-
126
solace, peace and beauty has been destroyed forever. balised for modern housing and centuries of rains have
Over the Cut Throat Pass

washed down soil from the surrounding hills to fill up the

However, there is one little side trip up a recently pre- pond almost to its brink. Near its western corner there
pared trail to the so-called Buddhist stupa on the direct stands a small ruined hulk. The mihrab facing west indi-
and shortest path from Bhir and Dharmarajika Stupa to cates this was once a mosque.
Islamabad. At the highest point on this trail from where
one can see the villages around Taxila there lay amid pine A good walker could carry on and in an hour and half
trees and bhekar bushes a tumble down heap of dressed fetch up in the shadow of magnificent Dharmarajika. If
stones. Years ago Dr Ahmad Hasan Dani designated it a there is a trail in Islamabad yet not polluted and crowded
stupa and for everyone it was that. The pile has received a with walkers, it is this pleasant walk from Sadhu da Bagh
recent makeover and in keeping with what the late profes- through the way station on the top of the pass and the old
sor had said, they have given it the shape of a stupa. pond.

The truth is that this is not a stupa at all. Archaeological

investigation back in 1963 revealed some iron arrowheads
The Tuzk e Jahangiri brought the story-telling Jahangir tion opposite to Jahangir’s, making Rawat our first stop.
from Lahore to Peshawar whereas we were travelling in Until about twenty years ago, the crenelated walls of the
the opposite direction. His journey from Rohtas to Rawal- serai were visible as one drove through Rawat village, but
pindi was a pleasant one on a cloudy April day along a now the unplanned jumble of housing blocks the view.
road bordered by an abundance of dhak (Butea mono- The serai is now visible only after one has left the road
sperma) trees in flaming blossom. In a rapture, Jahangir de- and driven up the narrow street to its front gate. Scaf-
scribes their beauty and concludes that the day being so folding covered the bastions flanking the gateway across
beautiful he felt like setting up camp for a drinking party. the façade of which passed a very maze of electric and
Though he does not explicitly describe the party, he hints telephone cables. Even when the restoration work is over
that it did take place for he concludes: ‘In short, this road and the scaffolding removed, the ugly wires that typify the
was traversed with great enjoyment and pleasure’. ad hoc, unplanned manner of doing things will continue to

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

mar the prospect.
The halting places en route he tells us were Hatya and
Pakka before his procession reached Rawalpindi. Inci- Inside the wide compound sit the grim reminders of the
dentally, William Finch, the peripatetic English trader, also bloody tussle between the Gakkhars led by Sarang Khan
mentions the same places. These establishments mark that and the troops of Sher Shah Suri under Haibat Khan Niazi
branch of the old Utra Rajapatha that Babur called the stationed at Rohtas, the brand new fort of that time. A
127
sub-montane road between Wah and the ferry on Jhelum number of graves under the open sky are said to be the

Over the Cut Throat Pass

River near the town of the same name. In the Middle Ages, last resting place of the several sons of Sarang Khan who
this was an alternate branch of the Grand Trunk Road. were used up by the battles. By the northwest wall towers
From Pakka, Jahangir skirted the fortified caravanserai of a domed building that I had always believed to be a rest-
Rawat on the main axis of the highway and made straight ing place. Azeem said the still empty building was raised
for Rawalpindi. as a mausoleum for Sarang Khan.

Pakka, Jahangir tells us, is so called because of the burnt We have moved a good deal forward from the time when
bricks it is made of as opposed to dressed stone blocks ‘restoration’ meant either demolition and rebuilding a
used in other serais in the area. Like all serais in our part historic edifice any which way authorities pleased or
of the world, this too is strongly fortified. However, its plastering up with modern cement to stop further dete-
broad and spacious enceinte is now a village. Hatya, on rioration even if it created an ugly blemish. Of the former
the other hand, has lost all traces of the old hostelry. we see the classic case of pulling down of the baradari of
Kamran Mirza in Ravi River outside Lahore to be rebuilt
On a fine sunny morning, Azeem and I went in the direc- any which way the rulers desired circa 1990. Examples of
 such thoughtless destruction of our built heritage can be
seen across the country.

The restoration work at Rawat – which derives from rabat,

caravanserai in Arabic – is done under the watchful eye
of trained archaeologists. The material used is the same
lime plaster as would have first joined the masonry five
hundred years ago. Thankfully, this is another rare conser-
vation effort being done right.

On an overcast afternoon, we drove down to Gujar Khan

and took the road northeast to Sui Cheemian, just missing
Serai Pakka and headed for Sangni Fort which stands on
a slight eminence and is visible from some ways off. We
parked the car just as rain began pattering down and as
Octagonal and circular turrets and crenulated walls with musketry
we were walking through the wheat fields, Azeem col-
loopholes tell us that Sangni fort was built in nineteenth century.
lected shards of terra cotta strewn among the crops and
128
along the pathway. He commented on what he had: rim of
Over the Cut Throat Pass

a cooking vessel or jar here, base of a large pot or a small

drinking cup there. The larger pieces bore black geometri-
cal designs.
‘These bits come to us from the second century BCE,’
Azeem said, handing over the pieces to me.

There were other bits that he said were from the early
Middle Ages. He said several years ago, Dr Ashraf Khan,
the soft-spoken and kindly-faced gentleman archaeologist
who I knew from his time as curator of Taxila, had led a
survey in this area. In a paper for the Journal of Asian
Civilizations (Vol 33, No 2 of December 2010) Dr Khan
described his collection from Sangni as a large number
Interior of Sangni fort with the tomb of Abdul Hakim where of rims and bases. The rims were mostly decorated with
newly-weds come to seek the dead saint’s blessing.
black paint or incised lines. Besides these, grinding stones when he died he was buried in a nearby village. But after
and terra cotta figurines had also been unearthed. Dr the Dogras ceded this area to the British, so the fable
Khan had dated the site from second century BCE to eighth goes, the man’s followers dug up his grave to bring his
century CE. body to the fort. They found it empty for the casket had
miraculously flown to the fort. The story conveniently dis-
The city, spread over more than ten acres, would have regards the fact that Muslims are traditionally not interred
been a few decades old when the horse-riding Scythians in caskets. Over the past fifteen years, whenever I hear
made it their home. Under them it would have come of this story, it is embellished with new fabrications.
age and then lived through the upheavals of time. Sit-
uated so far off the main axis through the land, it may On a clear sunny day I returned alone to photograph
have escaped the savagery of the Huns in the early sixth Sangni and found the enceinte of the fort and the veranda

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

century, and it would have thrived during the peace after of the tomb littered with ornate little pitchers and turbans.
the Hindu Shahya kings of Kashmir extended their rule to These latter are the kind bridegrooms wear. A chat with
Afghanistan in the following years. Then, for reasons that three men working in the wheat field outside the fort re-
we cannot know until a proper investigation is carried out, vealed that newly-wed couples come to pray at the tomb.
it was snuffed out of existence in the eighth century. The brides leave behind the pitchers and their husbands
the turbans in the belief that the saint will bless them
129
On that same site, a thousand years later the Dogra rulers with a happy married life. But surely sometimes old Abdul

Over the Cut Throat Pass

of Kashmir raised the octagonal turrets and sharply edged Hakim would be remiss. What of the divorces, the devil in
crenulations of Sangni Fort to protect their route down me asked.
the Poonch River to the Grand Trunk Road. Later, the fort ‘Once blessed by the saint, there can be no divorce,’ said
became the last resting place of Abdul Hakim, a supposed one of the men.
miracle working saint. The whitewashed dome of his re- ‘Is there a protocol here for divorcees to return seeking
cently built tomb rises above the denticulate walls of the back their donation of pitcher or turban?’ I asked even as I
fort. feared treading dangerous ground.

Those who believe the man to be a saint relate that he The trio looked aghast. But they admitted there was noth-
chose this spot as his place of penance and worship. But ing of the sort. I assured them there were divorces even
the Dogras arrived to uproot him and raise their fort. after the blessing and that none of those unhappy ones
Abdul Hakim admonished them for booting him out and returned to remonstrate with dead saint. Leaving them to
is believed to have said that long after they were dead, chew over the new notion, I quickly changed the subject.
he would continue to be there. Hakim left the place and
 One of the men said the water of the stream that passes the Turkish ruler of Ghazni Muizuddin Ghori (otherwise
below the western wall of Sangni is blessed. The turret on known as Shahabuddin Mohammad) was returning from
that side has a square hole and pulley looking down to the yet another depredatory raid on India. Stalking him was
blue water of the stream about twenty-five metres below. a band of Khokhar Rajputs who had taken his success
If drawn up through this hole, and only through here, it is a against their brother Rajputs as personal affront. At the
certified cure for whooping cough, said the man. halting place of Dhamiak the Ghorid king halted for a
night and the Khokhars found the chance they had been
I asked them who collected the money from the collection seeking.2
box by the door of the burial chamber. With one voice
they named Hussain, or his sons. Of a sudden the story of Silently stealing into his camp, the Rajput warriors des-
the miraculous flying casket was clear. Retired and with- patched the king’s guards before mortally stabbing the
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

out any skill, Hussain had little else to do. He built upon sleeping king several times. Even before the camp could
a vague earlier tale of piety and raised the tomb with react to the cries of his dying bodyguards, the Khokhars
his pension and set up the collection box to rake in the had evaporated into the night and Muizuddin was dead.
dividends. All is going well for him, but only as long as the It was already the month of March and the Punjabi heat
tomb has only meagre gleanings. Once the earning grows, was making itself felt. The king’s attendants carried out
there will be other more powerful takers. the usual practice of disembowelling the corpse to keep it
130
for the journey back to Ghazni. The royal entrails and the
Over the Cut Throat Pass

Sangni Fort is a beautiful monument. But what catches three dead bodyguards were interred where the Dhamiak
my imagination are Dr Ashraf Khan’s words regarding the camp stood and the long march west began.
surrounding area: ‘Suitable for archaeological excavations
and investigations.’ What wonders and what secrets the The shortest route to Ghazni lay through the Kurrum
mound of Sangni will reveal is beyond imagination. Until Valley to Sankuran and over Peiwar Kotal. Sankuran, lying
then, the dust of two thousand years keeps the secrets in just outside Parachinar town, is modern Shalozan, that de-
its bosom. lightful sylvan spot whose orchards are watered by crystal
clear rills and shadowed by the towering mountain known
to the Pakhtuns as Spinghar and to Persian speakers as
Safed Koh. Now, in those long ago days, Sankuran together
On Babur’s sub-montane road sits an ancient caravan stop with outlying districts of Ghazni was governed by Tajuddin
known then and now as Dhamiak. In the spring of 1206, Yalduz, the trusted and very loyal servant of Muizuddin.

2) A very common misconception, even among some scholars, is that men like Mahmud and Muizuddin, and much later, Nadir Kuli aka Nadir Shah of Persia
were Pakhtuns. All these men were Turks who had conquered Afghanistan and established themselves over it.
The Tabakat i Nasiri of Minhajuddin Siraj completed in Prithviraj turned homeward to be celebrated. That was
1260, tells us that Yalduz rode out to receive the funer- 1191.
ary procession and when he saw the bier drawing up, he
dismounted from his horse to receive ‘it with the utmost The following year, the Turks returned not just better
veneration, and he wept to such a degree, that others equipped and numerically stronger but with an un-
were quite overcome and wept also’. Yalduz escorted the derstanding of Rajput tactics. On the same battlefield
grim procession to Ghazni and there buried his master of Tarain, Prithviraj was defeated and captured. Some
in the seminary founded by Muizuddin in the name of his sources say the proud Rajput was poorly treated by his
daughter, his only child. foe before being blinded by heated lancet. My source, the
Tabakat i Nasiri, only records that he was captured and
The question arising is why would some Khokhar adven- executed.

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

turers imperil their lives to slay the Ghorid king? Only thir-
teen years before this deed, in 1192, the Ghorid adventur- Emboldened by the victory of 1192, Muizuddin returned
er had defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in the second battle again and again to cause more downfall. For thirteen years
of Tarain. The year before Muizuddin had been routed by the Khokhars smarted under the ignominy of the rout and
the same army led by the same king. This revenge attack slaying of their king Prithviraj Chauhan and kept alive their
may never have taken place if the Rajputs had not fought thirst for revenge. One wonders how many times Khokhar
131
the usual way permitting the Turks to make away with their raiding parties would have stalked the Turkish army as

Over the Cut Throat Pass

lives. it withdrew to the safety of Ghazni without gaining the
chance to strike. Their opportunity arose finally. On the
Ghori may not have known it but since times immemorial Ides of March 1206, a party of Khokhars stole into Ghori’s
battles even to the death were like sport to the Rajputs of camp and despatched Muizuddin in his sleep.
the subcontinent. Before they went into the fray they pre-
pared their families at home to perform jauhar – the act In July 2019, my wife Shabnam and I were at Dhamiak
of self-immolation – in case word of defeat reached them. after a gap of a quarter century. The three tombs that
But on the field, when their enemy faltered, it was below had been with their original limestone topping slabs and
the Rajput to close in and slay wantonly. They held back under the sky a quarter century ago were now all marble
waiting to see if the enemy would rally around for further and under a shed. These would be the burials of Ghori’s
engagement. In the first battle of Tarain, as the Ghorid bodyguards killed by the Khokhars in their attempt to
rout began headlong, the drum and horn for cessation of reach the king.
engagement were sounded. As he watched the fleeing
Ghorids disappear in the dust raised by their own mounts, Across the lawns, on the other side of the marble tomb,
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132
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The supposed tomb of Muizuddin Ghori. History tells us that the body was taken to
Ghazni for burial. Only his intestines would have been interred at this site of Dhamiak.
 133

from Landi Kotal to Wagah Over the Cut Throat Pass

 an old woman and a young man sat with their heads dee Qabr – Grave of the Old Man Mohnda. But it was
together in solemn discourse. Shabnam spoke with the never known who this strangely named person was.
septuagenarian Mukhtaran. She lived nearby and said she Today, someone would have us believe that Muizuddin aka
had escaped the clamour of a joint family home to discuss Shahabuddin Ghori lies buried under the shining white
some private issue with her son. marble tomb. But the Tabakat i Nasiri tells us that the
body of the Sultan was taken to Ghazni.
In the beginning there were just four graves. All in a single
group on raised ground under the blue sky, she said. All
were shaded by a lovely copse of phulai (Acacia modesta)
trees. Under one tree, there rested a large pot of water for Looking at a large scale contour map or Google Earth,
passers-by. That was when she was a child and the road one sees a series of folded rocky hillocks on a north-south
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

was but a dirt track and the traffic was mostly pedestrians alignment. The terrain between Dhamiak and the Grand
passing between the villages. Mukhtaran said since her Trunk Road is seemingly impassable even for pedestri-
childhood some seventy years ago, she frequently walked ans. But there is a veritable web of footpaths and one
by the burial site. Never had she seen it revered or heard blacktop road connecting the villages. The blacktop road
any stories about it. that Azeem, his assistant Ali and I were now following to
reach Rohtas Fort sits on the ancient alignment of the Utra
134
Shabnam asked Mukhtaran if word had always been about Rajapatha for the upkeep of which Chandragupta Maurya
Over the Cut Throat Pass

one of the graves being the burial of Muizuddin Ghori. had assigned an entire department of engineers and tech-
‘No, no! They had another name for the grave, something nicians. Sprinkled like milestones along this line are serais
like Moda,’ she said. ‘I am not certain about it and do not each at the distance of a day’s easy journey for a rider and
wish to mislead you. You will be better off asking someone a somewhat harder journey for one on shank’s mare.
else.’ Clearly, Mukhtaran was a very cautious woman.
Twenty kilometres northwest of Dhamiak sits the serai
A couple of kilometres away, back the way we had come, known since the Middle Ages as Pakka for its burnt bricks.
we met Dr Ansar standing outside his homeopathic clinic Its name now retained by the village that has sprouted up
and paused to ask. He very kindly invited us in. While we in the compound. A little over three kilometres southward
waited for tea, the doctor made a phone call telling us this of Dhamiak, not far from the village of Karonta, is the large
elderly friend of his from a neighbouring village was very tree-shaded pond of Sar Jalal. On its bank stands a single
well informed. And this is what we learned: until the early stone wall that was once part of a large and elaborate
1990s, when the unknown grave was declared to be that structure.
of the Ghorid king, it went by the title Babay Mohnday
Nearby is a small mosque which, on my first visit in 2005, the Suri king hanged the contumacious Gakkhars. It was
had been ‘renovated’ – as they like to say – with modern in 2005, that I first saw the supposed jail house better
cement plaster. This time around it had a newish coat of known as Rajo Pind. Here they tell vague tales of the
paint. Unlike other mosques, it has no dome, but a pitched woman Rajo who ruled over the village. Some say she,
roof. The west wall is reinforced with three tapering being of the Arain caste, was famed for her green thumb;
turrets. Since these look somewhat like the tapering but- others would have her as a sort of a queen lording over
tresses of a fourteenth century tomb in Multan and also her fief.
because of the brickwork in the building, I had wrongly
thought it to be six or seven hundred years old. Azeem As I entered the high, imposing gateway, I knew immedi-
disabused me of my dilettante’s knowledge. The mosque ately that this was no jail house. It was yet another fortified
was of a more recent date, he said, perhaps late seven- serai dating to early Mughal times. Here was yet another

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

teenth century. marker on the Rajapatha of old and the Grand Trunk
Road of our times that only fell into disuse when British
Had we been intrepid walkers, we could have trekked engineers realigned the old highway a little to the north to
twenty-five kilometres cross country, past the baoli of suit wheeled, and later, motor vehicle traffic. And like all
Khukha to the ‘jail house of Sher Shah Suri’. But our lot abandoned serais, it too had been taken over and turned
was to brave the ‘racing’ trucks in the bends of the Grand into a village.
135
Trunk Road between Sohawa and Dina where one turns

Over the Cut Throat Pass

for Rohtas. Loaded well beyond the capacity their engines Inside, only a few travellers’ cubicles remain along the
are designed to haul, the eighteen-wheelers groan and north wall. The rest have been pulled down and their
wheeze at twenty-five kilometres an hour at which speed stones used up for newer construction. It is said there
one attempts to overtake the other going only marginally were two mosques in the compound. The larger one has
slower. On the upward incline they worm on alongside been demolished and replaced by a modern structure
taking up the entire width of the blacktop blocking all complete with tube lights and loudspeakers. The other
other traffic. Yet the one being overtaken will not slow one, flush with the west wall, fortunately remains intact but
down even by a kilometre to let the other go and clear the only because locals seem not to realise it is a mosque. In
road. This is, however, one game in which the Grand Trunk 2005 it served as a byre as indeed it does to this day.
Road holds no monopoly; it is played all over the country
on every intercity highway. Back then I met the lady of the house making cow dung
patties for fuel and plastering them on the wall of the
From my earliest visits to Rohtas in the early 1970s, I had mosque. Her little house was built in such a way that it had
been told of the famous jail house and gallows where incorporated the mosque. Keeping my voice down so that
 the neighbours did not hear and cause her any trouble for a citie with a strong castle on a mountaine, the frontier of
desecrating a mosque, I told her what the structure really the Potan kingdome’. While there is a village within the
was. She looked at me open-mouthed and incredulous. walls of Rohtas Fort, early in the seventeenth century, it
‘All our lives we’ve lived here and no one ever told us what was strictly a military station. The city that Finch mentions
you are now saying,’ she replied a little cautiously. is the caravanserai on the far side of the Kahan River, the
I could see she was worried that if I were a government one where it is right possible that Rajo kept a watchful
man, I could get her evicted. I reassured her of my harm- eye on her guests. Finch’s time overlaps with Rajo’s and
lessness and tactfully guided her away to Rajo who had one wonders why the Englishman made no mention of the
made the village famous. She had no idea who Rajo was woman innkeeper.
but in the finest tradition of hospitality she said since I had
taken the trouble of coming out from Lahore, I could at The brand new Rohtas Fort, then just about sixty years
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

least have a cup of tea. old, would have been a sight imposing and impressive.
Inside the towering gateways the even higher mansion of
As she brought the dying embers back to life with her Raja Man Singh Kashvaha would have risen higher than
steel phoonkni (the tube used to blow on fire), I told her anything else. As Finch squinted up, he would have seen
the place was actually a caravanserai established not Mughal soldiery in armour and helmet patrolling the mas-
by Sher Shah Suri but by Jahangir if not by his father sive crenelated walls. But the English merchant would not
136
Akbar. She turned around, studied my face blankly for a have been allowed to pass into Rohtas garrison. He rode
Over the Cut Throat Pass

bit before reverting to her fire. I told her what I had long his horse across the brown waters of the Kahan stream to
believed: Rajo was the innkeeper here. We know from the caravanserai.
history that inns were traditionally kept by women. Having
seen scores of ruined serais, some turned into villages, I In the 1820s, when Rohtas was in the hands of the Sikhs,
have never heard of any other connected with a woman. veterinary surgeon William Moorcroft with traveller’s
I suspect this Rajo was a rather dynamic and impressive curiosity also sought entry. The commander of the garrison
woman whose fame outlived her by all these centuries. rudely told his party to make themselves scarce. As they
Long after the hostelry fell into disuse, which would be rode along the west side, he noticed ‘several practicable
about a century and a half ago, and the village established breaches in the walls’. Naughtily, he and his party climbed
within its walls, the memory of Rajo was preserved in the up and entered ‘an abandoned outwork’ that he thought
name of the village. was built to protect a baoli. This can be no other than the
Langar Khani Darwaza which does indeed have a stepped
On his journey from Lahore to Kabul in 1608, English well. The doctor was impressed by the massive stonework
trader William Finch wrote of reaching ‘Loure Rotas … and the quality of mortar, noticing that the walls were as
thick as ‘thirty feet’. To assist and protect his project were two of his gener-
als Khwas Khan and Haibat Khan Niazi. Yet the doughty
Apparently the Sikh garrison was napping on duty for Gakkhars remained undeterred. They mounted daily raids
Moorcroft and his men ‘ascended the highest part of the forcing the workers away until the builders were hard put
parapet without attracting observation’. He then goes on to procure labour.
to describe the extent of the fort and its strategic location.
But he errs on the subject of Rajo’s caravanserai which he Meanwhile, in 1543, Sher Shah came to inspect his border
says was ordered by Aurangzeb. garrison and found it not to his liking. It was too cramped
for the number of soldiers he wanted stationed at Rohtas.
In late December 1835, the prima donna among fellow He ordered an enlargement.
travellers, the Austrian Baron Carl von Hügel, was briefly

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

in Rohtas of ‘Shir Shah Lodi Patan’ as he came down from In 1974, fooling around in Rohtas as two crass and unread
the snowy hills of Kashmir en route to Lahore. Like the young men, a friend and I were accosted by a tall, rail-thin,
very rich adventurer of his time, the Baron was travelling in sun-browned man who wanted to know what mischief we
luxury with a large entourage of cooks, bearers and order- were up to. A resident of Rohtas village, he was a retired
lies, and coolies to carry his sedan chair. He was amazed corporal of the army who had fought in Europe in the
by the scale of Rohtas but was concerned that it had fallen First World War. He told us Rohtas stories, three of which
137
into disrepair. Surprisingly, he thought the fort had only remain etched on my mind.

Over the Cut Throat Pass

three instead of the actual twelve gateways. As they have
always done and continue to do to this day, the remains The gateway everyone today knows as Sohail Darwaza
of Raja Man Singh’s palace caught his attention. Von Hügel after a nearby grave of someone called Sohail was in 1974
describes the building unmistakably: called Zohal (Saturn) Darwaza. The old man said when the
gateway was being built Saturn stood right overhead in
The angular pillars yet standing; the one window in the night sky. He walked us to the southwest side and led
each direction, still traced in the solitary fragment us in through the portal that he called Darwaza Under Kot

of the ruined palace, struck me forcibly. It seemed – Gateway of the Inner Fort. This is now known as Chand

unaccountable how, it could have survived the Wali Darwaza after another saint who never was.

ravages which have laid all waste beside it. ‘Sher Shah initially ordered this fort,’ said the old man with
a sweeping gesture taking in everything between the gate-
Back in 1541 when Sher Shah ordered his fort as pro- way and the north and west fortification wall. He was not
tection against the raiding Gakkhars, he placed his most certain why the fort’s enlargement was ordered but knew
trusted financial wizard Raja Todar Mal in charge of works. that the extension began in Sher Shah’s lifetime.
 138
from Landi Kotal to Wagah Chapter Name
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
139

Over the Cut Throat Pass

Looking north along the western ramparts with the
Kahan River flowing in the middle distance. In March
1860, Lady Charlotte Canning spent a couple of days in
Rohtas. Among her paintings is this exact view.
 He led us to the towering domed structure where Akbar’s Gakkhars during that period. When superstition became
trusted general Raja Man Singh once lived. Turning around the way of life in Pakistan, Zohal was easily converted to
he pointed to the broken arch of Darwaza Under Kot. The Sohail and Chand Wali could have been that or any other
man whose name I never asked, was clearly no admirer of name from Persian or Arabic.
the milksop Humayun.
‘The gutless Humayun returned to India ten years after With the Gakkhars having driven away every stone cutter
Sher Shah’s death. He was still a good ways off when he and mason on pain of death, Todar Mal wrote to Sher
fired a single cannon ball at Rohtas. The ball took the top Shah that things were in a bad way and it seemed the fort
off the gateway,’ he said speaking like the artilleryman that would not be completed. Sher Shah responded like a true
he had said he was. administrator. He wrote saying he had appointed Todar
Mal from among many for he considered him a man of
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Reading history many years later, I learned that Humayun perspicacity and had placed at his disposal a large sum of
did indeed let loose a single cannon shot. Though the money to complete the job. If it was to be more expensive
damage done is not recorded, we are told that just that than the estimate, money was of no consequence and he
one shot and the entire Pakhtun garrison deserted the was to go ahead at all cost.
fort. Humayun led his army into Rohtas to find it complete-
ly empty. We also know that the original fort was ordered And so it is said that each stone was laid at a cost of one
140
to be enlarged so that it actually became the Inner Fort. gold ashrafi.3 Sher Shah’s monumental fort with its twelve
Over the Cut Throat Pass

The gateway would logically have been called what the gates and nearly a hundred garrets punctuating its massive
old man told us. As for the assertion of Saturn being walls thus cost more than three and a half million rupees
overhead, I have no way of calculating its position, but I in those far off times. The king whose rise to mastery of
trust my teller of the tale and I can only lament how silly India was swift and phenomenal could not see his mon-
superstition has corrupted history. ument completed, however. He was the administrator
whose bureaucracy gifted us a land management system
The graves of the two supposed saints with their flat that we use to this day and in whose day, we are told, the
topping stones seem to be about four hundred years old. long arm of his law reached everyone and everywhere.
That was a time when Rohtas was a military garrison held
on the order of royalty and no wandering so-called holy Humayun entered a deserted Rohtas, installed a garrison
person would have been permitted to enter it. These in it and advanced to Delhi to reclaim the kingdom his
burials could just be of some important military personnel father had established. That was 1555. Within the year,
killed perhaps in any of the several engagements with the he was dead, having tripped from the stairs of a build-

3) In the sixteenth century, the gold ashrafi was of about ten grams.
ing raised by his erstwhile adversary Sher Shah Suri. A original builders. Taking me walkabout outside the castle,
teenage Akbar took the reins of power, the Gakkhars who he pointed out slabs in the stonework etched with differ-
had pledged loyalty to Babur and to guard against whom ent patterns; some with human forms, others geometrical.
Rohtas was built, were still in the Mughal camp. Rohtas He claimed there were scores of them and he had gone
was no longer important, but far away on the east bank complete around the battlements to photographically
of the Indus River, a fort was of greater imperative. Work document them all. A recent triumph was his discovery of
began on Attock Fort, even as Rohtas was not completely two inscribed slabs high up on the fortification at Langar
abandoned. Khani gateway.

Raja Man Singh Kashvaha, one of the Nine Jewels of Khalid led me up the stairs of Man Singh’s private room
Akbar, was stationed at Rohtas where he built his fabulous as he spoke of the master story-teller Raza Ali Abidi who

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

palace. The main building was topped by a domed tower once worked for BBC Urdu Service and who beat me to
open to breezes from all sides. The tower was accessible this story of the Grand Trunk Road by some three dec-
from the roof of the main house, but when that collapsed, ades. His masterful work in Urdu delights and pulls tears at
access was cut off. In the early years of the twentieth the same time. Abidi sahib, as his countless admirers know
century, British archaeologists built a bannisterless flight of him, too had been in Rohtas and though that was when
stairs which was a right terror for those suffering from ver- Khalid was much younger and still in high school, he knew
141
tigo. The palace was very tastefully adorned with frescoes, something very interesting. This had slipped my mind

Over the Cut Throat Pass

faded traces of which can be seen to this day. despite my reading of Abidi sahib’s Jarnaili Sarak.

A little to the north of this palace, is a large paved floor The excitement of that discovery so evident in Abidi
where once another palatial house stood. On its east sahib’s words had leached into Khalid. Breathless from
side, stands a solitary domed building, the last remnant of the climb and from his talking, he took me to the south
what once was. This room, square in plan and meagre of window to point out faded script in very fine hand in
dimension, is what remains of the residence of Roop Mati, the intrados of its arch. The language was Persian and
the widowed sister of Man Singh who lived and travelled the variation in writing showed the graffiti was the work
with him. of different persons. Abidi sahib lamented that modern
vandals had not just covered some of the older writing
Khalid Mehmood Sarwar, the conservator and curator of with their own but had even attempted to rub it out. He
Rohtas, is a spirited talker and a man of immense energy. nevertheless photographed it and back in London had
From his several years of service in the fort, he knows it deciphered by the well-known researcher Dr Ziauddin
things about Rohtas that were perhaps known only to its Ahmed Shakaib.
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142
Over the Cut Throat Pass

Top/Bottom Left: The ruined interior of the caravanserai of Rajo Pind. Because of Top Right: Lying just outside Rohtas Fort, this impressive though neglected
its strong fortification it is wrongly believed to have been Sher Shah Suri’s jailhouse. mid-sixteenth century building is devoid of any ornamentation. It once contained

Bottom Right: Khwas Khan, Sher Shah Suri’s good and trusted general was adminis- the mortal remains of Khair un Nisa, the young daughter of Qadir Buksh who

trator during the construction of Rohtas. This northern gateway of the twelve-gated served Sher Shah Suri as his food minister. In charge of the commissariat during the

fort bears his name. Upon succeeding to the throne, Islam Shah treated his father’s construction of Rohtas, he evidently lived on site with his family during which time

loyal courtiers most shabbily. Khwas Khan and his family suffered much at the Khair un Nisa died. Sher Shah’s vindictive son Islam Shah humiliated his late fa-

hands of the spiteful man. ther’s courtiers every which way he could. One nasty act was to order Qadir Buksh
to disinter the body of his daughter. Today this handsome building is empty while
Khair un Nisa’s remains rest in Sirsaram where Sher Shah Suri is also buried.
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
143

Over the Cut Throat Pass

Top Left: Haveli of Raja Man Singh in the inner fort of Rohtas. Top Right: Temple, Rohtas Fort

Bottom Left: The large baoli or stepped well in Rohtas. Bottom Right: Detail of the exquisite stonework of the balcony
cantilever at Zohal Gate.
 Phrases like ‘we weep blood and the world too with us’ Time flew and from the Mughals Rohtas passed into Sikh
speak of some profound grief. Then there is ‘human heads hands in the early nineteenth century, forever remaining of
were flung as if stones from a ballista’. Dr Shakaib found secondary importance, a mere camping ground for royalty
reference to a return from Kandahar in the year 1060 of on the passage this way and that. It was here, perhaps in
the Hijra corresponding with 1650. Here Abidi sahib goes the palace of the Kashvaha prince, that in early May 1837
into an astute bit of historical sleuthing to tell us that was Maharaja Ranjit Singh got word from distant Jamrud at
the year Kandahar reverted to the Persian king. the mouth of the Khyber Pass of the death of his favourite
general Hari Singh Nalwa. History tells us that the one-
Shah Abbas II of Persia had begun operations against Kan- eyed Maharaja broke into uncontrolled tears. The country
dahar as early as 1648. As he closed in, a fifty thousand beyond Peshawar that he so coveted and which Nalwa
strong force was despatched by Shah Jahan to prevent had said he would secure, now ebbed out of Punjabi
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

the fall of Kandahar. The Shah Jahan Nama records a long hands. Soon even the Maharaja was gone from this life
drawn out and bloody operation in which a large number and then Rohtas, a monument to wasted labour, faded into
of soldiery from both sides was killed. Heads did indeed uselessness.
fall like stones from a ballista before the fort of Kanda-
har fell to the Persian king in February 1649. The routed In Charlotte Canning’s time (March 1860), the Grand
Mughal army made its weary way back to India via Kabul Trunk Road had abandoned Rohtas and lay on the align-
144
and passed through Rohtas early the next year to leave ment through Dina to Jhelum town. She took a detour and
Over the Cut Throat Pass

behind an unofficial record of history. stood outside the towering ramparts gazing up in awe. She
went wild with paper and brush for her diary tells us she
Khalid pointed out the Persian writing, its spidery flow all found twenty subjects to paint. Of these, F. S. Aijazuddin’s
but lost under the crude graffiti of modern vandals. Since Sketches from a Howdah holds five depictions of such
Abidi sahib’s time it had suffered so much more that I accuracy of portrayal that it is not difficult to see where
could not even photograph it. If those seventeenth centu- her easel was set up. She wrote that Rohtas was an ogre’s
ry ‘vandals’ had crafted poetry to preserve their sense of castle from a fairy tale book which had, in an obvious
loss and the history of an ignominious defeat, the intel- reference to the west side of the Under Kot area, ‘walls
lectual height of our yahoos was to inscribe their names within walls’.
and perhaps add an initial of the person they supposedly
loved, nothing poetic or edifying here. Another few years One of Canning’s water colours shows the pink-tinted east
and the old record, written in the intrados so that it would wall of the lofty domed room in the house of Raja Man
not be damaged by handling or passing feet, would be lost Singh. The lower portion of the building is still intact. This
forever. means the lost part of that sixteenth century edifice col-
lapsed sometime after 1860 when the viceregal proces- The priest was away and we were denied entry. From my
sion passed this way. Surely some of the earliest private earlier excursions I could describe the several plaques
housing raised inside Rohtas contains the rubble from the commemorating the many who died far away from their
lost building. home of dales and glens of mist and rain. I retain an old
image that tells us that St John’s Church was consecrated
With Azeem discussing how, by some peculiar mechanism, on the seventh day of February 1857 by the Bishop of
Gandhara art stopped short of the line of Soan River Madras.
outside Rawalpindi, we exited Rohtas and drove south to
Jhelum town. Indeed, it is strange that we find no evidence We stood on the old Jhelum Bridge to look at a view that
in this part of Punjab of the exquisite statuary created by once was the prettiest in town: Masjid Afghanan – Mosque
Pakhtun craftsmen more than two thousand years ago. To of the Afghans – broken to a million little bits and recon-

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

my mind it seems, those ancient sculptors kept their skill structed again in the ripples of Jhelum’s waters. But that
very closely guarded. I wonder if the master taught only view was now a thing of the past. A brand new flood pro-
his own sons so that the fine art may not be vulgarised by tection embankment kept the river from washing the foun-
overuse at the hands of common artists. dations of the mosque. Its façade once washed a beautiful
deep green shade, with boats moored near its steps, this
We passed into Jhelum town. St John’s Church standing was surely the most picturesque house of worship. But
145
on our left side as we approached the bridge on the river, officialdom in Pakistan works in crude and non-mysterious

Over the Cut Throat Pass

is now all but hidden behind modern housing. Back in ways to destroy every bit of beauty in the country.
the early 1960s, the road journey from Lahore northward
passed over the old road-rail bridge. As we came over the Of all the smaller district towns, Jhelum has always been
river, away to the left we saw the church surrounded by my favourite. It is more cosmopolitan than, say, Faisal-
tall trees and an odd house or two with buffalos grazing abad or Sahiwal; its citizens way more sophisticated and
in the meadow. The sky in those days had so much more cultured. Many years ago a friend suggested the reason
cumulus that the whole was a very John Constable vista. was the pounds sterling sent back home by the city’s
sons settled in Britain. That may be part of the reason. I
With growing traffic, the new bridge was built a little had always believed the more significant reason was that
downstream and as one approached Jhelum, the church Jhelum became a garrison town shortly after the uprising
fell on the right hand. It was still so beautiful to behold. of 1857. This interaction between locals and persons from
But with more and more buildings, the church seems to Britain and all over India brought on a distinct sophistica-
have gone into seclusion. Today one sees only the tall tion seen to this day.
spire rising above the accretion of modern times.
 There is more to the city and its people than just that.
Carl von Hügel found it a city of ‘some importance’ and its
people the most friendly and hospitable who insisted he
spend a night there. The shopkeepers invited him to take
whatever pleased him without a concern for payment. The
streets ‘were clean, though narrow’. He declined the kind
offers, taking instead the ferry comprising ‘twenty large
boats, excellently built and managed’ that conveyed him
across the river to the serai of ‘Narangabad’.4 The crossing
was free of charge for all travellers, wrote von Hügel. This
indicates that even in 1835, the municipality of Jhelum was
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

way ahead of its time providing travellers something like

toll-free bridges in our time.

A quarter century after the Baron’s passage, the estab-

lishment of the British cantonment brought in moneyed
traders from the big cities. Some of these were Hindus,
146
but a considerable number was also educated Parsis. The
Over the Cut Throat Pass

latter dealt in wines and spirits for the officers’ club in the
cantonment. Older natives of Jhelum remember several of
those establishments were still doing business in the early
1970s. But then things changed. The old way of life went
out of fashion, at least in public places, and the Parsis
packed up and left. The Hindus had already gone three
decades earlier, now the Parsis departed taking with them
the pluralistic, colourful ambience of the city. A hangover
of those earlier times persists, however, as a walk around
the main commercial area in the city still shows.

In Khairabad, on the far side of the Indus, a gentleman had

St John’s Church, Jhelum that still keeps its idyllic setting despite
encroaching housing and a jumble of electric pylons and cabling. 4) Apparently Serai Alamgir of today was once called Serai Aurangabad.
introduced a friend of his as, ‘he likes to think of himself as Though the exact spot of the crossing is still moot, I tend
an historian’. The meaning was clear: the friend was grossly to agree with historian Robin Lane Fox that it happened
in error. In Jhelum town people under such illusions are a outside the modern village of Jalalpur, some forty-five
dime a dozen. Every government clerk, every other coolie kilometres downstream of Jhelum town. We also know
at the railway station and a few rickshaw drivers dapple from the sources that the ornate tomb built for the king’s
in ‘history’ and they take it upon themselves to enlighten horse was smack on the banks of the river. That was May
outsiders. 326 BCE. In August, the army having revolted on the banks
of the Beas, Alexander returned to Paurava’s kingdom
And so, Jhelum has several avatars. It is the name of Alex- (with whom peace had been made after the battle) and
ander’s horse. Or it is a compound of the Greek words for was grieved to see that the tomb had been washed away
‘water’ and ‘cool’. Or it is the name of a daughter of Raja by monsoon floods.

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Paurava (the Porus of Greek annals). The men who tell
these yarns have never been near any source material, nor What Lady Canning saw was just a mound that had on
do they have any knowledge of Greek, but if you counter conjecture been designated tomb of Bucephalus by some
them you are likely to be drummed out of town. passing Raj official. It is from there that ignorant local
‘historians’ have woven their own histories giving the horse
The horse, the very one that would permit no other but any name they pleased. One such person even insists
147
Alexander to mount it, was called Bucephalus – Ox Head that the Greeks could have called the horse anything they

Over the Cut Throat Pass

– by its young master. The Greek words for water and cool wished, we Punjabis knew it as Jhelum and so the city
are nowhere near the two syllables of Jhelum and as for came to be known after it.
the offspring of the valiant Raja Paurava, history is silent.
The first time ever we hear the place name Jhelum is from
On the subject of Alexander’s horse, Charlotte Canning that remarkable Central Asian polymath Abu Rehan Al
has something interesting to say: ‘We crossed the Jhelum Beruni who came to India seeking to enrich his intellect.
[River] at Jhelum and saw the raised mound said to be the The year was 1017 and only a couple of years earlier he
tomb of Bucephalus’. Since the viceregal entourage was had been forcibly plucked from his native Uzbekistan by
heading to Rawalpindi, this mound would be on the west the Turk Mahmud of Ghazni. Unhappy in the academic
bank of the river. That is historically correct for the horse sterility of Ghazni, he repeatedly requested permission
died of old age before going into battle, as the Greek for a journey into the culturally superior country of India.
historian Arrian tells us. He also tells us that this occurred Finally being let off, Al Beruni passed this way and record-
at the spot where Alexander eventually crossed the river ed: ‘the river Biyatta, [is] known as Jailam, from the city of
for his epic battle against the Punjabis. this name on its western banks’.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

148
Over the Cut Throat Pass

Lying outside the western Langar Khani gateway of Rohtas, Gurdwara

Choa Sahib celebrates the visit of Guru Nanak Dev to this premises
during his years of tirthayatra in search of self and God. Abandoned for
years, this holy site is now again on the Sikh pilgrimage circuit. Here
the Sikh period building is burnished by the setting sun as picnickers
prepare to leave.
This shows that the city was established well enough to the caravanserai of Rajo across the Kahan River from
a thousand years ago to lend its name to the river that Rohtas Fort: although the present ruinous structure is
flowed by. But what of the name Biyatta? History shows only about four hundred years old, I suspect it was raised
that the name Jhelum for the river was a local name, above a much older ruin that was perhaps even then
confined to the Punjab alone. Since times immemorial it is known as Rajo’s Inn.
known in Kashmir as Vitasta and the legend of its creation
is one of immense beauty and passion. After Kashmir was While the Jhelum ferry was famous in the Middle Ages,
created, the great sage Kashyapa whose name is borne by it seems to have passed out of notice in the early seven-
Kashmir, prayed to Lord Shiva to purify the land. In turn, teenth century. This was the time when European cartog-
the god requested his wife Parvati to take the form of a raphers were busy putting our part of the world on paper.
river and flow through the land to cleanse it. Among the many maps produced from the middle of the

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

seventeenth century until the early nineteenth century,
Deep inside the earth Parvati stirred in her requested we find no notice of Jhelum. It was only when traders
avatar and Shiva struck the ground with his trishul – trident and travellers of the British East India Company began
– to let the waters flow. Now, the width of the trishul was to pound up and down the road that Jhelum once again
one vitasti, an ancient unit of linear measure. And so it was regained its glory.
that Parvati’s river avatar came to be known as Vitasta, a
149
name that also suggests its width. In the early nineteenth We stood on the Jhelum River bridge. Behind us the set-

Over the Cut Throat Pass

century when this land was crawling with European ting sun enhanced the purple silhouette of Tilla Jogian, the
adventurers, we hear of the river ranging here at the ford hilltop monastery established by the great Guru Gorak-
of Jhelum town from three hundred metres in winter to nath in the first century BCE. Beyond, across the languid
just over two kilometres in summer. The Sanskrit Vitasta waters of the Jhelum, lay the country of Raja Paurava, the
was transliterated into the Greek as Hydaspes from which only king who won Alexander’s unremitting admiration for
the Persians would call it Vehat or Behat; a name that the his valour in combat and his lofty character in peace.
Mughals also used.

One would have thought the ford of Jhelum town became

popular only after the building of Rohtas about the middle
of the sixteenth century. In reality, Jhelum is repeatedly
noticed in histories dealing with the period from the clos-
ing years of the tenth century when Mahmud of Ghazni
began his foryas into the subcontinent. This takes me back
It was country such as this where Raja Paurava stood tall at the head of his army to face
Alexander of Macedon. On that fateful morning in May 326 BCE, the field was sodden with
heavy overnight rain. In the month of May when the battle was fought, the land would
have been fallow after the wheat harvest.
 5

In the Land of Raja Paurava

 M y friend Muhammad Majid of Serai Alamgir is a Some who pretend to be Punjabi chauvinists assert that
successful homeopathic doctor. I suspect he would have Alexander was roundly beaten in battle by the towering
done even better as an archaeologist. I met him in 2005 Raja Paurava. They say because history is always written
and the first thing he asked was if experts had discovered by the victor it is subverted. However, what we do hear
the fabled capital city of Raja Paurava. He had heard the from history of these two adversaries-turned-allies, the
lore of it being called Patta Kothi and that it was some- modification, if there was any, is yet complimentary for
where on the left or east bank of the Jhelum River. Sadly, Raja Paurava.
no work had ever been done in this area and the location
of that city was unknown. Basing his history on extant material, Arrian, the Greek
general, wrote two centuries after the event. He tells us
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Majid had done his own sleuthing, however. And one that the Greeks outdid the Punjabis with superior tactics
warm August day we went walking along the left bank and by the dastardly and inhuman act of shooting the war
of the Upper Jhelum Canal near Sarai Alamgir. Between elephants. The animals, maddened by pain, trampled their
neatly parcelled fields of maize and vegetables there were own army until all Punjabi units were in complete disarray.
mounds one after the other in no particular alignment. Arrian, however, waxes all praise for Paurava who, remain-
They were just distributed randomly upon the land. Since ing on the battlefield even when all his units had dis-
152
increasing agriculture to feed a galloping population was persed, continued to let loose arrows into Greek lines. He
In the Land of Raja Paurava

encroaching upon ancient sites, most of them had been himself was shot in the right shoulder, the only part of his
cut and bulldozed leaving behind vertical verges. Majid body unencumbered by armour to permit him to draw the
said such mounds extended several kilometres southward. bow to its fullest. At last he turned his elephant around to
leave the battlefield.
From these verges Majid had been extracting coins and
terracotta pottery. I did not find any coins, but there was Arrian compares the Punjabi king with Darius in glowing
pottery aplenty and I obtained two wide-mouthed drinking terms. Whereas in the battles the Persian fought against
cups with flat narrow bottoms. In Lahore, my mentor the Alexander, he fled the minute engagement began, leaving
eminent archaeologist Dr Saifur Rahman Dar confirmed his army to its own devices. Paurava, on the other hand,
that these were very common utensils about BCE 400- ‘did not lead the scramble to save his own skin, but so long
100. I have since imagined that after the great battle when as a single unit of his men held together, fought bravely
Raja Paurava had won Alexander over with his grace in on’.
defeat and peace was made, the Macedonian would have
supped wine out of such cups. Alexander, ‘anxious to save the life of this great and gallant
soldier’, sent Ambhi, the king of Taxila, to bring Paurava to There an agent provocateur drifted through the camp
him. But the two Punjabis had long opposed each other telling the foreigners of the immense power of the Nanda
and as Ambhi’s chariot drew up, Paurava sent a well-aimed kingdom that they were going to soon face. Thousands
javelin in his direction. Ambhi fled. Alexander then asked of war elephants, tens of thousands of chariots, immense
the philosopher whose name we are told was Meroes to cavalry and two hundred thousand infantry were all there
the task. waiting for them. For the foreigners there would be no
return from the battlefield, warned the man. Many believe
Seeing his old friend and teacher, Paurava got off his ele- this prophet of doom was the dynamic Chandragupta
phant and Meroes delivered Alexander’s invitation. Arrian Maurya who was to rule the country only a few short years
says the wounded king asked for a drink of water before later.

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

mounting his friend’s chariot. In the Greek camp, the
chariot stopped near Alexander and his generals and Raja Alexander’s soldiers refused to go on. Alexander sought
Paurava dismounted. A giant among men, he towered well the word from Paurava who confirmed that the Nanda
over two metres in height, we are told by Arrian. There kingdom was indeed very powerful. And so, the foreigner
then occurred that epic dialogue that everyone seems to returned to the capital on the Jhelum River to sail down
have heard of. to other battles. Had the Macedonian been defeated, he
153
‘What do you wish that I should do with you?’ asked Alex- would never have marched on any farther east. He would

In the Land of Raja Paurava

ander. have fled back the way he came. Rather than portray Pau-
‘Treat me as a king ought,’ came the reply. Arrian tells rava as a fictitious victor, he should be celebrated for his
us Alexander was immensely pleased by this dignified honour and integrity as revealed by Apollonius the Greek
response. ‘For my part, your request shall be granted. But philosopher we met in the year 44 in Taxila. The raja’s kind
is there not something you would wish for yourself? Ask it,’ of character is what we so badly need today to imbibe
Alexander persisted. Now Raja Paurava, who Punjabis do and build upon.
not cherish as their own, a true hero and a man of charac-
ter and integrity, bowled over the invader.
‘Everything is contained in this one request.’
To Serai Alamgir – the Inn of (Aurangzeb) Alamgir – Azeem
The majestic grace of his giant adversary was admirable and I went. I recounted for him my earliest memories of
and Alexander made peace with Paurava, returning his passing through what was then a little village in the early
kingdom to him. Later, the Punjabi king accompanied Alex- 1960s. On the western end of its straggle of houses there
ander on his eastward march all the way to the Beas River. was a large yellow-washed building that in later years
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

154
In the Land of Raja Paurava

Hidden away from view amid a thick growth of trees in the folds of the
Pabbi Hills between Jhelum and Kharian is a little gem forgotten from the
Mughal period. Local tradition attributes the water tank to Babur, the first
Mughal king of India. It was once accessible by the dirt road leading up to
the now demolished Banni Rest House. Now it can be reached by a short
walk from Pabbi Nature Park.
 155

from Landi Kotal to Wagah In the Land of Raja Paurava

 became the serai of my young imagination when I spent Recall that this man, one of Sher Shah Suri’s favoured
five years in nearby Kharian in the 1970s. Later I was told generals, was the administrator when Rohtas was under
by an archaeologist that no signs of the serai ordered by construction. History tells us that upon the death of the Suri
Aurangzeb had been found. It was certain, however, that king, Khwas Khan and his colleague Haibat Khan Niazi who
this place, just short of the ferry on the Jhelum River, was commanded the Rohtas garrison, favoured the crowning
the logical spot for a caravanserai. Surely one would have of Sher Shah’s elder son Adil. Islam Shah, the younger and
existed earlier even before the Mughal king ordered it to cannier son, instead took the mantle of kingship by trickery.
be revamped with the patch of his own name. The men at Rohtas objected to the usurpation which led to
a series of battles.
In 1608, William Finch did not notice the caravanserai that
was later to be named after Aurangzeb. Nor did the veter- The two men rode out to fight their erstwhile master’s son
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

inary surgeon William Moorcroft two hundred years later. in the east. But the small garrison meant to contain the
Neither man made any mention of the ruined mounds that headstrong Gakkhars of Potohar was no match for the
could possibly have pointed in the direction of Paurava’s imperial army. A few routs in quick succession and the army
capital. It seems as if after the rise of the Mauryan dy- was in tatters. Haibat Khan fled to Afghanistan for his life
nasty, with power centred about Pataliputra in the east while Khwas Khan sought refuge in the Kashmiri state of
and Taxila in the west, the principality between the rivers Sambhal. He thought he would be safe in the custody of a
156
Jhelum and Ravi once ruled over by the Paurava family fellow Pakhtun whose life he had once saved. But Taj Khan
In the Land of Raja Paurava

was amalgamated within the kingdom. The old capital was made of baser stuff. As Khwas Khan slept one night, he
lost its importance and then it was only a matter of time stole into his guest’s apartment and stabbed him to death.
for it to be forgotten and the dust of time to move in and
smother its glory. To win favour, Taj Khan sent Khwas Khan’s head to Islam
Shah. But that was not the end of the story. The dead man
Meanwhile, Finch pointed our little caravan in the direc- obviously had a retinue that packed up the corpse and set
tion of Khwaspur. He calls it Howaspore and mentions it out for Sarsaram where Sher Shah lies buried. The route
as the halting place before Rohtas. At Rohtas we today they took from the hills of Kashmir was by way of Bhimber
have a lofty gateway looking north and called Khwas Khani to Gujrat and then eastward. But as they neared the cara-
Darwaza. Inside this gateway there is a tiny dome within vanserai of Khwaspur that the dead man had ordered only
which is a pint-sized grave with the legend Hazrat Syed a few years earlier, the body began to rot. The corpse was
Sakhi Khwas Khan Shah sahib. For a grave that size, that is cleaned out, the innards buried and the sombre caravan
a mighty long title, and myth has converted a red-blooded, prepared to resume journey. What I write next is my own
valorous and principled Pakhtun into an Arab! conjecture.
Ever curious idlers present near the serai wanted to know lopped it off and even as it fell into the dust, the body
which important personage was being carried away for took off and flew away. It landed outside the caravanserai
burial. It was Khwas Khan, they were told. The very man Khwas Khan had ordered and there a surprised lot of
who had during his governorship of Rohtas endowed this people buried the headless person.
little outpost with a fine serai and a stepped well. Why, he
was a good man. And may they see his face for the last That was in the early 1990s. In those days the story was
time, they asked. Sorry, said the men of the cortege. The that both the head and the torso are worshipped in their
head had been cut off. Surely the story of the dastardly respective places for supplication to them answered
murder would have been narrated, condolences accepted prayers. A recently published sham history of Rohtas tells
and prayers for the man’s place in Paradise whispered another story equally silly and devoid of fact but does not
before the journey to Sarsaram resumed. say how the head and the torso got to be buried separate-

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

ly. Surely in a few more years, the myth will have altered
From the little we know of him we can infer that Khwas but believers will never doubt that neither is the head
Khan was a public service minded administrator and a buried inside the gateway of Khwas Khan at Rohtas nor his
man of sense and good judgement. He was a man well-re- body in Khwaspur.
spected. And so with the death of a good man, a legend
was born; a legend of the flying headless corpse. I first Back in 2005, Majid brought me from Sarai Alamgir
157
heard it in the early 1990s. Khwas Khan was a holy per- down the Grand Trunk Road, a little southeast of Choa

In the Land of Raja Paurava

sonage titled Sakhi – Generous – who gave away whatever Kariala village. We made a u-turn and headed back
was his and asked for. towards Jhelum but halted within a couple of hundred
metres. There, right by the side of the road, was a well. No
The tale then extant was that in a battle between Sikhs stepped well this time, just an ordinary shaft with water
and Muslims carried by the former, the vanquished adver- about ten metres below the rim. It was made of burnt
sary was brought to the Sikh commander in chains. The bricks that were used by the Mughals. But there was no
man taunted Khwas Khan. other architectural feature nor tablet giving a date.
‘You call yourself generous. What is it that you can give
your enemy?’ Before we drove on I grimly observed that a rashly driven
‘Ask and you shall have whatever it is,’ replied Generous. sedan or a motorcycle could go straight down the shaft
‘I want your head,’ said the Sikh commander. without even being noticed. Then a year or so later, Majid
called to say that someone had filled up the well leaving
History does not tell us if the good man routinely lost no trace of it. A short way further along, about a hundred
his head on every trivial matter, but this time he did. He metres from the road, Majid had pointed out what ap-
 peared to be a brick structure like a wide staircase. Majid keeper was at the shrine. After uttering sugary nonsense
had seen it up close and said there were other affiliated about the demi-god, I told him I was sent by a family in
structures too that made no sense to him. All that was London who had visited the shrine some months earlier
constructed with the same brick as the well, he added. But for the cure of their son bitten by a rabid dog. Since he
it was August, the height of the monsoon season, and the was allergic to the anti-rabies injection, it was certain that
stretch between the road and the structures was thickly the boy would die. The family flew their son to Pakistan
overgrown. This was the season of the snake and dreading and bringing the boy here laid his head on the threshold
walking in sandals through the vegetation, I did not get to of the great saint. Miraculously, the boy was healed.
see the site.
This or a similarly nonsensical yarn was what the illiterate
Shortly after Majid gave me word of the filling of the well, man wanted to hear and he beamed with the proprietary
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

he also told me that large earth-moving machinery had pleasure that parents have for a prodigal child. For my
dismantled the old structures. Within days, roads were laid edification he added a couple of equally silly anecdotes
out and plots designated to turn an historical monument about someone’s cancer being cured just by being at the
into a residential estate. This crime scene, for it is nothing shrine. He also said Khwas Khan came to our part of the
short of crime, sits at North 32º-51’, East 72º-48’. world with the victorious armies of Mahmud of Ghazni.
I asked him if there was ever a caravanserai here named
158
That was the past. In January 2019, with cold rain pelting after the holy person. There was none, said he. This
In the Land of Raja Paurava

down, Azeem, his assistant Ali Raza and I were driven brought me to the tricky question of the head supposedly
through the jumble of Lala Musa northeast across the buried in Rohtas Fort.
Bhimber River to Khwaspur. In 1998, the so-called tomb
of Khwas Khan was open to the sky. This time around a fat He reeled out the story of the battle between Khwas Khan
green dome covered it. Ali got off and ambled up to the and the Sikhs and the man cutting of his own head and
man at the door of the cubicle of the grave. All he asked letting his body fly to Khwaspur.
was, ‘Is this the tomb of Khwas Khan?’ and the attendant ‘Were there Sikhs in the time of Mahmud of Ghazni?’ I
went livid. asked, ignorance writ large on my face.
‘You take his name with reverence!’ the man warned. ‘This ‘Sikhs have been around for thousands of years. And they
is Hazrat Syed Sakhi Khwas Khan Shah sahib, the giver of have always fought against the Muslims.’ This was like the
health and the worker of miracles.’ man in distant Gandava (Balochistan) who told me that his
ancestor had converted heathen Baloch to Islam in the
A month later, I returned to photograph the shrine. I was year 400 BCE!
forewarned to be hypocritically respectful. The same
My education went more places in that one day than it the drizzle to find the fort that I had seen in 1993. Even
had in all the years before. One thing was certain: there then the historical building had been taken over and was
was no dearth of devotees willing to part with hard earned a residential complex. With his archaeologist’s instinct,
wealth for in the two decades between my two visits, a Azeem led us up some narrow alleys pointing out that a
nice mausoleum had been built for the innards of a public height in a city was always the nucleus of the oldest habi-
service minded man. Other than the irrational yarn of the tation repeatedly built upon. We asked a shopkeeper for
flying torso nothing was known of Khwas Khan. A perfect- the fort. He looked at us somewhat confused.
ly worldly person was turned into a demi-god who years ‘What fort?’
after his death could grant people wishes.

I felt I would be challenging the man if I told him that in

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

April 1607, on his way up the country Jahangir had spent
a night at the caravanserai of Khwaspur. He knew the
place had been established by Khwas Khan, a follower of
Sher Shah Suri. It would have been nothing less than blas-
phemy if I were to tell him that the king did not hear of any
miracles connected with the general who was treacher-
159
ously slain. Instead, I asked him if there were any historical
or cultural sites in the village. He shook his head dumbly.

That there should be no trace of the old serai was very pe- It is bizarre how the story of the heartless murder of Khwas Khan turned
him into a saint. His headless torso arriving from Kashmir and his
culiar. In January 1836, Baron Carl von Hügel remarked on connection with Rohtas were, over time, confused together to produce
the high walls surrounding the inn and that the whole was the miraculous story whereby he bequeaths health especially to young
children who bathe from the two hand pumps installed near the shrine.
built rather like a fort. What struck him was that every wall
and roof was covered with cow dung patties drying in the Why, the fort of Gujrat built on Emperor Akbar’s orders, I
sun and a huge quantity of dried and ready to burn patties said. There was no fort, replied the man flatly. Completely
heaped in the central open square. Strangely enough, the taken over by those to whom it serves as a residence, it
Austrian used the Hindi word upla for the fuel cakes. seems to have been altered to the point where it cannot
be recognised. One would be hard put to see so much
as a scrap of wall dating to the time of Akbar. The famed
royal bath adjacent to the fort and from the same period
Back in January, Azeem, Ali Raza and I walked through has gone the same way.
 160
from Landi Kotal to Wagah Chapter Name
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
161

In the Land of Raja Paurava

Ram Peyari Mehal, one of the few remaining iconic buildings of Gujrat.
Owned by an affluent Hindu family, it became refugee property after the
great migration of 1947. It has served as a school, a girls college, girls hos-
tel and now finally is in the use of the University of Gujrat. Several other
such signature buildings of the rich families who inhabited the city have
been pulled down and replaced. It seems a matter of time before Ram
Peyari Mehal too goes under the demolishing sledge hammer.
 With little official oversight on our cultural heritage, I have
seen several historical sites taken over by the public and
altered according to their needs. Having done their ugly
deed, people yet have a sense of guilt and go into denial
about the existence of the heritage piece. Outside Lahore,
near the village of Lakho Dehar, there was once an octag-
onal – and therefore rare – baoli dating to Jahangir’s time.
The water in the well was clear and pure and the local
landlord had installed a pump on it to irrigate his fields.

I photographed it on film in 2003. Two years later, having

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

gone digital, I returned for another session. Only the pa-

vilion of the baoli remained. The pipes of the pump went
into cement concrete: the old well had been completely
covered up by a cement concrete lintel. The attendant,
a servant of the landlord, said I was mistaken. There had
never been a well at the place! The fort of Gujrat has sadly
162
gone the same way.
In the Land of Raja Paurava

In his Tuzk, Jahangir tells us that having built this fort,

Akbar brought ‘a body of Gujars who had passed their
time in the neighbourhood in thieving and highway rob-
bery’, and established them here. It was after them that
the fort got its name. The Ancient Geography of India
(written circa 1865) of Alexander Cunningham, gener-
al-turned-archaeologist, says that nothing really is known
of the early history of the district except that a Rajput
prince Bachan Pal founded it at an indeterminate time in
the past. Traditions recorded by Raj civil servants tell us
that the city here may have been called Udainagri.

Detail of one of the doors of Ram Peyari Mehal.

Now, the Gujars whose name stems from the Sanskrit
gau char – Cow Grazer – were the lords of the land long The Jats thinking it an impossibility, slept over the matter.
before farming moved from subsistence to money making But the Gujars, lords of moveable properties in the shape
business. They ranged across the riverine forests with of livestock, raised the required sum overnight and in the
their herds from the Indus delta country in the deep south morning laid out the gold at the emperor’s feet. And so it
through Punjab all the way up into the Himalayas. The Ra- was that the city became Gujrat – the suffix raat signifying
jatarangni of Pundit Kalhana, on the history of the several night.
dynasties of Kashmiri kings, tells us that the all-conquer- ‘Had the Jats mustered the required sum, the city would
ing king Shankar Varma (reigned CE 883-902) defeated have been Jatrat,’ said the simple-minded teller of this
Alakhana the king of Gurjara. rather cute tale.

What happened thereafter is obscured by the fog of The one story the old gent knew was that of Sohni, the

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

centuries. At some point a Gujar leader called Ali Khan is stunningly beautiful daughter of the potter Tula. As the
said to have rebuilt Gujrat. This name is an echo of the old master craftsman of town, his wares were famous across
pre-Islamic Alakhana and, therefore, clearly a fiction. What the land, more so because of the designs Sohni painted on
we do gather from the Tuzk e Jahangiri is that there was them. Izzat Baig, a merchant from distant Bokhara across
nothing significant at the site of Gujrat until Akbar ordered the mountains, arrived in Gujrat to procure the famous
the fort. pottery. Inside the store, the merchant caught sight of
163
Sohni in deep concentration on a pot with brush and paint

In the Land of Raja Paurava

There was, however, once a story which now seems to in her hands. Izzat Baig was stricken. Why, such beauty he
have gone out of fashion. It was told me by an elderly had never seen in his native country of the Uzbeks.
gentleman in 1993.
He asked to purchase the one being painted. Since it had
The Jats, land-owning rich families and the Gujars, whose to be baked, Tula told him to return the next day. The
livestock made them wealthy, had an argument about purchase done, Izzat Baig now made daily visits to the
who owned this nameless city. After much altercation workshop on one pretext or the other, only to see the
that came to nothing, a delegation comprising the elders woman he had fallen madly in love with. When it came
of both sides presented itself at the court of Akbar. time for his party to return to Bokhara, Izzat Baig remained
Having heard them out, the king decreed that any party behind for by now he was getting positive signals from
who could within one night produce eight hundred gold the dazzling Sohni. Soon, the man ran out of money and
ashrafis would be granted the right to name the city after destitute for the sake of his love, he offered to mind Tula’s
themselves. buffalos. And so Izzat Baig, the rich merchant of Bokhara
became Mahiwal – Buffalo Man.
 Meanwhile, Sohni too was soon besotted and the lovers Many years ago, the late Punjabi writer and poet, Sharif
began to meet secretly. But the world would sooner hurt Kunjahi of Gujrat, told me what he thought of the story:
lovers than see them happily together and Sohni was Punjab has traditionally been attacked and plundered
wedded off to another potter. Since the husband travelled throughout history. All these brigands, now erroneously
to sell his wares, Sohni managed to continue with the thought of as Pakhtuns were Turks, who came down from
secret trysts. Now, Mahiwal minded the livestock on the Central Asia. The Punjabi mind wishing to prevail just one
far bank of the Chenab, and Sohni used a baked earth- time, crafted an Uzbek, no mean beggar but a rich mer-
en water pot turned upside down to serve as a float to chant, who lost everything to a beauty of Gujrat. In a way,
paddle across. One evening, her sister in law suspecting he said, it was a Punjabi victory.
some funny business, surreptitiously followed Sohni to the
river and saw her retrieve her pot from its hiding place Of the five rivers of Punjab, the Chenab is said to be the
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

and ride it to the other bank of the river where she knew river of love and romance. The ancient Sanskrit speakers
Mahiwal kept the buffalos. called it Asikni – The Dark One. But at a very remote time
it was also known as Chandra Bhaga or Moon River. It is
For two or three days, the sister-in-law watched the pro- from this name that we get our modern Chenab. When
ceedings. Then one day she quietly replaced the ringing Alexander’s legions arrived here, the name Chandra Bhaga
terra cotta pot with an unbaked piece. The unsuspecting became an ominous Sandrophagos in their language. Now,
164
Sohni did not notice the difference in the dark and in Sandros or Sandro is a diminutive version of Alexander
In the Land of Raja Paurava

the fast flowing waters, the pot began to erode bit by bit. and phagos in Greek is ‘to eat’.
In midstream, Sohni was on her own, the clay having all
melted away into the water. Seeing her foundering, Mahi- Already chastened by the hard fought contest with the
wal leaped into the river to save her. But the current was Punjabis under Raja Paurava, the word Sandrophagos
too fast for untrained swimmers and the two were carried unnerved the foreigners. Was this a sign from the gods
away, never to be seen again. above that this would be the end of Alexander? Would
the Chandra Bhaga be the killer of their king and general?
Far away in Shahdadpur town of Sanghar district in Sindh So far from home and without a leader, they would all be
there is a tomb of the two lovers. Some say the bodies lost. The army resolved not to use the colloquial name but
were found in an embrace from the Indus River. Others the classical Sanskrit one turning it into Acesines.
would like to believe the love tale is of Sindhi origin and
because of its attractive tragedy and melodrama it was We did not pause at the Chenab bridge because of the
adopted by the Punjabis. rain. Two weeks later I returned to the railway bridge to
check out something I had first become acquainted with
three decades ago. Raj engineers who spanned the river in
the 1870s to take the railway into the Khyber Pass, named
the bridge Alexandra after a princess at home. A century
later, when British royalty was nothing more than a few
pictures in local newspapers, a very senior railwayman,
someone called A A Qureshi, had a sign installed at the
bridge to give out its history.

It said the bridge was named after ‘Alexandra the Great,

the then Chief Engineer of North Western Railway’! Even
thirty years ago the paint was badly peeling and could be

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

read with some difficulty. Also, the sign was large and the
lettering so small that a readable photograph was impossi-
ble. Now there was nothing. The remarkable brainchild of
Mr Qureshi has forever been lost.

Across the bridge, the Grand Trunk Road crossed into

165
Gujranwala district, the hometown of Ranjit Singh, the only

In the Land of Raja Paurava

other monarch, after Raja Paurava, that Punjabis can truly
be proud of. Time now was the first week of January 1836
and we were travelling in the company of Baron Carl von
Hügel.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

166
Chapter Name

Gateway of gurdwara Rori Sahib, Eminabad (Gujranwala) is a rhapsody of plastic forms

and shapes in cut and moulded bricks baked to perfection. Built in the second decade of
the twentieth century, it follows the architectural style of the Spanish architect Antoni
Gaudi. The nearer white and yellow dome houses the main gurdwara with the Granth Sa-
hib. Notice the empty ablution tank on the right and the free standing arches at its corners.
 167

from Landi Kotal to Wagah Chapter Name

Maharaja Ranjit Singh
Ruled Here
6
 C arl von Hügel from Austria whose name in English of the stable remains. On recent visits, I found a pair of
would be Charles from the Hills, passed through Gujrat junkies doped to their eyeballs and drowsing against the
which was ‘inclosed by mud walls’. Such weak defences wall that offered some shade. From the clutter surround-
would be strange for a fort ordered by Akbar. But I pre- ing them, it was clear they had taken up permanent abode
sume, hastening as he was to reach Wazirabad, von Hügel inside the building.
did not pay much attention to Gujrat. And why would
he? He was in a hurry to be in Wazirabad and there be Our guide, the Austrian nobleman, crossed the Chenab
entertained in a fortified palace he tells us was built by River and when Wazirabad was yet an hour’s march away
Maharaja Ranjit Singh. found a four-horse carriage waiting for him. The transport
had been sent on the order of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, and
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

In the early Middle Ages, coming up from the east, the seated in its luxury felt ‘like a dream’ to von Hügel. He
Rajapatha made for a city they say is more than a thou- proceeded to the ‘palace in the midst of a garden’ where
sand years old: Sodhra that lies about eight kilometres he was to spend a couple of nights. He does not say that
northeast of Wazirabad. It was a large, fortified settlement the building was called Musamman or Saman Burj, mean-
and a great trading emporium whose name signifies its ing eight towers or octagonal tower. But he describes the
vastness: Sodhra, they relate, is actually sau-darra, or Hun- place well as it stood in 1836:
168
dred Gated from the number of portals that punctuated
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

its massive encircling walls. Where once passing caravans [It] is a singular edifice, both in its exterior form
tarried is now an insignificant little agricultural town off the and its internal decorations. It has two storeys, and
main road. In the sixteenth century, it may already have in the centre is a sort of tower which divides the
been slipping into oblivion for when Sher Shah Suri was wings, while the outside walls, as well as the apart-
building his monumental Rohtas Fort, he shifted the axis of ments within, are adorned with fresco paintings
the ancient road a little south of Sodhra.
illustrative of the religion of the Sikhs. Among them
are the portraits of the ten Gurus from Nanak the
Here on the left bank of the meandering Palkhu rivulet,
first to Govind the last, the size of life; the chief
once a lovely freshet and today nothing more than a sewer
painter of Ranjit’s court is certainly not a Raphael.
tainted with domestic and industrial waste, Sher Shah
ordered a post station and, very likely, a serai. On my wan- In 1991, I ended up in that palace in the midst of a garden.
derings in the 1980s I was told by elders that there were The property was, and still is, held by the Raja family. I met
foundations of a stable near the ruinous, roofless building Ejazullah who very kindly took me in and up the stairs of
that archaeologists say is the post station. Today not a sign the very tower that von Hügel mentions. I was amazed to
see the freshness of colour in paintings that were then possession of a younger member of the family who keeps
nearly two hundred years old and even if the artist was it locked while he himself resides in Lahore. I am told,
no Raphael, the work was first-class. however, that the paintings are still preserved. One can
only hope that the good sense of keeping the two centu-
The Raja family of Wazirabad were chiefs of Rajaori in ry-old frescos will persevere. It would be even better that
Kashmir whence they migrated about the middle of the the Raja family remain as open and welcoming as Ejazullah
nineteenth century to Wazirabad. Ejazullah said his family was in the 1990s and permit visitors to appreciate what
purchased Musamman Burj in 1855 and since that time they have.
has been resident in it. Over time, the family grew and the
property was parcelled out between the various broth-
ers and cousins. In the bargain several new apartments
and outhouses cropped up in the garden of Ranjit Singh,
but the outer fortification wall and the lofty gateway is
preserved to this day, though a substantial slice of the
property has been sold off by one of the owners.

169
Ejazullah remembered that in his childhood he had seen
most of the rooms resplendent with paintings. However,
in the early 1970s, someone in the family, overcome with
religious fervour, had the rooms whitewashed. All would
have been lost had Ejazullah and a few others of his gen-
eration not stood up against this modern day iconoclasm.
However, they were not able to save the paintings in any
room other than the tower. For this act of prudence, one Sher Shah Suri may not have built the Grand Trunk Road, but he certainly
was the one to order this post station. Standing across the road from
can never be sufficiently thankful to Ejazullah and his
Wazirabad railway station, it has long been neglected and was once used
partners in resistance. as billboard by local advertisers.

Through the 1990s I returned several times to Musam- Wazirabad takes the name of Hakim Ilmuddin Ansari, titled
man Burj always to be warmly welcomed by Ejazullah. Wazir Khan, one of the noblemen in the court of Shah
Several times I took friends as well. But time passes and Jahan. The man, a native of Chiniot town, for many years
families grow. Today the tower with its paintings is in the held one of the most important positions in the Mughal
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

170
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

Seven hundred and fifty metres, in a straight line, southeast of Sher Shah’s
post station, outside village Bhattike, the Church of Scotland graveyard
once had beautiful tombstones. Today they have all been vandalised,
save those that are flush with the ground.
 171

from Landi Kotal to Wagah Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

 court, that is, Superintendent of the Imperial Kitchen. restrained, Avitabile acted in his very own manner. He
This entailed the emperor’s fullest trust because in those immediately ordered them to be strung up and left their
dangerous times, regicide by poison was a favourite corpses dangling from the gibbets. When the Maharaja
pastime of enemies and aspiring princes and since Akbar’s asked why he had executed them, Avitabile is said to have
reign, it was one of the highest positions a courtier could replied that that was the only way he could keep them
aspire for. Thereafter Wazir Khan served as the governor from escaping.
of Lahore. In June 1640, the last year of his life, he was or-
dered for a short while to the important fortress of Attock. Long before it became a town called Wazirabad, this
village, whose name is now lost in the mist of time, had a
It is said Wazirabad owes itself to its supposed epony- number of families working in steel and iron for we hear
mous founder. However, the Shah Jahan Nama makes no of much-admired ‘many-bladed knives, paper cutters etc.’.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

such disclosure. It may be that shifting of the route from From early British reports we hear that the nearby town of
Sodhra to this side and the establishment of the way sta- Nizamabad (now within the municipal limits of Wazirabad)
tion by Sher Shah Suri may have caused the town to grow was noted for ‘the excellence and finish of its firearms and
organically. It may have had another name at that time other warlike implements’.
until Wazir Khan passing through on one of his journeys
endowed it with his own name. But today the town looks Local manufacturers claim that they have been in the
172
well-ordered. business of making the finest swords, armour and knives
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

for a very long time. In Nizamabad, the family that leads

The cold-blooded Paolo di Avitabile, who we met in Pe- the manufacture of the most bizarre-looking swords – and
shawar gibbeting Pakhtuns suspected of wrong-doing, had some truly exquisite ones with Damascene blades – that
earlier honed his hand at brutal governorship at Wazira- form the staple of Hollywood fantasy films, are Chadda
bad. Having sized him up, the wily Ranjit Singh established Rajputs. Interestingly, their Bowie knives carry the mark
him as the governor at the provincial little town of Wazira- of a famous German producer and are exported to that
bad. Avitabile at once set to reordering his seat of govern- country to be re-exported elsewhere.
ance. He tore down the old organic township and set out
the new city in an oblong with two main streets cutting Many years ago, the Chadda patriarch told me that
each other at right angles and a set of subsidiary alleyways Alexander himself tarried a couple of weeks to have his
all at right angles to each other. armoury replenished by his ancestors. Somehow he was
convinced that Greek histories note the iron working ex-
Legend has it that when Ranjit Singh sent a set of pris- pertise of the Chaddas and no amount of argument could
oners with the instruction that they were to be kept persuade him otherwise.
Even though he passed right by this place, Alexander’s that early period. Until two decades ago, it was impossible
visit is fiction. What we do know from history is that King to miss as it sat just off the road to the right as one headed
Louis Philippe I of France (reigned 1830–48) sent Mahara- southward and was beautifully shaded by a clump of
ja Ranjit Singh a gift of a few sets of cuirasses. The Maha- spreading shisham or Indian Rosewood (Dalbergia sissoo)
raja sent one set to Wazirabad for local steel workers to trees. It was a lovely little edifice, the thick-walled and
replicate. What came out, it is said, was rather to the liking domed interior had an aura of serenity. The west facing
of the Maharaja. Some would have us believe that the mihrab was decorated with fading but delicate frescos.
replica was celebrated for being finer than the original. In 1991, an elderly couple lived in one of the ground floor
rooms and stored chaff and hay in the other. The man
said the muezzin’s call had not sounded under those stout
domes for as far back as he could remember.
Before finally setting off for ‘Guseraoli’ where Hari Singh
Nalwa had a ‘palace and garden’, Carl von Hügel strolled
through the Saman Burj grounds in one last ecstasy: ‘I
cannot express the delight I felt at seeing this Indian
garden, with its regular little flower-beds and fountains.
There is something very tranquilizing in these scenes,
173
where the desire of embellishing life is displayed so taste-

Chapter Name
fully.’

Other than telling us that the intervening country was

‘poorly cultivated’, von Hügel says no more of the nearly
thirty-kilometre journey. He would have travelled past
the little township of Nizamabad and by the side of the
road would have seen the three-domed mosque on a high South of Wazirabad, outside village Nizamabad, this early Mughal period
mosque, once shaded by lovely trees, was visible from the road leading to
plinth. The lower portion forming two chambers might Dhaunkal. It was disused and served as residence to an elderly couple. To-
have been the resident priest’s home, or it would simply day, the trees are cut but it is hidden behind housing and mostly remains
locked. Local tradition attributes it to Sher Shah Suri.
have been a way of protecting the raised prayer chamber
from the periodic flooding of the Palkhu stream. The walls of the prayer chamber was covered with graf-
fiti. Though it could not have been the work of a single
Locals says it was built on the orders of Sher Shah Suri. person for the dates varied either by a few days or even
And it might just as well have been for it clearly dates to by some years, yet it was all a fine, spidery hand in black
 ink. Passage after passage in Persian prose, some one
or two-liners, others longer. Some blocks of writing were
clearly verse for they came in couplets. Totally illiterate
in Persian, I could make out nothing save some dates of
the Hijri calendar and a couple of names. The earliest I
could decipher was from 1007 (1598–99) and the last
1104 (1692–93). Two discernible names were Mirza Sultan
Mohammad Khan and Qadir Buksh Khan of whom nothing
is known.

There were yet more, not in ink with the same beautiful
hand, but scratched deep into the sixteenth century plas-
ter. One dated to early June 1921 when it was Eid day and
the other named Ghalib Shah who did his bit of vandalism
sometime in 1940. The junior revenue clerk who had ac-
companied me said the man was a local landlord whom he
personally knew and who had died in the 1980s.
174
Finding the Persian writing was so like Raza Ali Abidi
discovering history in the arch of Raja Man Singh’s palace
in Rohtas. But in my younger days when I thought things
were immutable, I did not take pictures of the writing for
decipherment.

Several years later, I returned again and thinking the

mosque would still be visible by the roadside, managed
to miss it. Again while working on this book, I returned
to Nizamabad asking for the mosque of Sher Shah Suri. I
drew blanks in the beginning, but eventually met a man
who pointed me into a narrow alleyway. Wrong mosque, I
said to him. The mosque stood in open fields just off the
road from where it was visible.
The Samadhi of Maha Singh, the father of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. ‘Babeyo, how many years ago was it that you saw it from
the road? This is 2019. Get with it!’ Addressed as ‘Old I knocked the door of abutting house and from behind
Man’ was sobering enough to bring me quick into the the tattered sheets serving as screen from wandering
present. eyes, a woman shooed me away saying there was no man
at home to attend to me. I asked for the key to go into
A short discussion ensued: three squat domes and a the mosque. That was a negative. I asked when I could
high plinth on which the edifice stood. The man nodded return to go into the mosque and woman answered with
each time. Then I mentioned the little grove of shisham her own question about the government department I
trees that covered its façade. The man said there were no belonged to. My young guide on the road had not been
trees and then went thoughtful. He said when he was a wrong about some vile activity underfoot.
child he did see the trees. And that could not have been ‘I am not from the government. I only want to photograph
many years ago for he was in his early twenties. The man old buildings,’ I replied.

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

whose name I did not ask narrated a convoluted tale of ‘The government has never come here to see or repair
two brothers or friends quarrelling over possession of the the mosque, so what business do you have wanting to
mosque which had led to it being permanently locked photograph it?’ she said acidly.
up. I could not make much sense of what the dispute ‘I want to photograph it so that when it eventually is no
was all about, but it seemed an attempt at land grab. He more, there should be some record of what once existed.’
knew nothing of the elderly couple who once lived in the ‘What good will that do? Here we have people dying like
175
mosque. flies and no one cares and you worry for an old building!’

Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

The woman shut me up with an unassailable argument. I
I went into the alley, turned left as he had said and there, came away wondering if the graffiti were still there or not.
like a captive between ugly jailors, was the sixteenth More likely the latter case for it was certain the mis-
century worship house caught between ungainly modern placed piety had caused the interior to be whitewashed.
structures. Where open fields had stretched on all sides
three decades ago, was now shoddy housing. Abutting on A couple of kilometres southward was yet another
the left side of the mosque was one that smacked of the signpost on the old Grand Trunk Road: a baoli with a fine
first attempt to take over a building that no one cared to little pavilion. The building which in my younger years I
own. The entrance under the portico and the two open- had mistakenly believed to be from the mid-sixteenth
ings of the rooms that the elderly couple used three dec- century is clearly later Mughal. Its base is eroding from
ades ago were now closed with steel doors, all padlocked. the effects of water-logging and before long it will be a
I could see that the three openings of the bays under the heap of old bricks. Three decades ago I was told that
domes too were blocked by similar doors. The beautiful signs of an old caravanserai could once be seen here. But
shisham trees were now stumps flush with the dry earth. even then, and now evermore so, I believe that is fiction.
 We know well enough that a caravanserai was no unguard- deviants by Hindus and Muslims alike. Now they became
ed place but a fortified premises. What was described to fellow Punjabis for those who were liberated. In 1747,
me all those years ago seemed to be a largish house that began the raids of Ahmed Shah Abdali, a Saddozai Pakh-
just happened to be near the old well. tun ruler of Afghanistan. In all of the nine raids by Abdali,
his retreating army was harried by the Sikhs who did little
Carl von Hügel mentioned neither the old mosque where damage other than relieving the outsiders of considera-
some Muslim in his retinue may have paused to put his ble plunder and freeing the captives being carried off to
forehead to the ground, nor the well where he surely slavery. From freebooting desperados, the Sikhs began to
would have halted if not for a drink himself then to water be seen as Punjabi heroes. In the bargain, Sikh leaders like
the horses of the carriage sent to convey him from Wazira- Charrat Singh enriched themselves. From this wealth, the
bad to ‘Guseraoli’, that little fortified town that only eight man fortified a collection of Gujar villages.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

decades earlier was just a collection of Gujar villages.

It seems the original name Charrat Singh gave his fortress
The year was 1739. Emboldened by the decay of the once was Gujranwali, the diminutive or feminine form, the same
powerful Mughal Empire, Nadir Shah the Afshar Turk who as was used by von Hügel. This changed soon enough as
ruled Persia, led his first depredatory raid into India. It is the town grew in size. Originally from Sukerchak village not
said that in Delhi alone his soldiery ruthlessly murdered far from his fortified town, Charrat Singh became head of
176
one hundred thousand humans regardless of age, gender the Sukerchakia misl or confederacy. Each time Ahmed
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

or creed. From Mohammad Shah, the spineless Emperor Shah Abdali led his forces down from the Suleman Moun-
of India, he stole the peacock throne and the Kohinoor tains into the Punjabi plains, Charrat Singh’s Sikhs spirited
diamond together with tens of thousands of captives to be away into the forests. And when the Afghans departed,
sold into slavery. As his army made its way back across the they set upon them looting their baggage and killing.
riverine islands or doabs of Punjab, they were set upon by
bands of hirsute horse-riders who plundered the baggage They say when you live by the sword, you die by the
train of the departing looters, set many of their compatri- sword. Charrat Singh lived by it all right, but as much as
ots free and massacred any straggling foreigner they could any man in the Abdali army would have wanted, the Sikh
lay their swords on. In Rachna Doab, the belt between the did not die by their sword. He was killed when a faulty
Ravi and the Chenab rivers, the man leading this merry matchlock burst in his face. The irony of his death is that
band was Charrat Singh. it did not occur in battle against his sworn enemies from
across the Suleman Mountains, but fighting against his
Followers of the Guru Nanak who had proclaimed a brother Sikhs of the Bhangi misl.
syncretic religion in 1499, the Sikhs were until then seen as
His son Maha Singh, just fourteen years old and armed Having earlier made inquiries about his intended host, von
with the daring and ambition of his father, took the chief- Hügel surprised the man by mentioning how the Sikh had
tainship of the misl. Within the wide walls of his father’s earned the surname he carried: while still in his youthful
Gujranwali, he built a fortress calling it Garhi Maha Singh years, the man had with a single blow of his sword split
after himself. That was where Carl von Hügel was headed asunder the skull of a tiger (nalwa) that had him in its grip.
on that cold January day in 1836 for here Ranjit Singhs’s That won the Austrian brownie points and the pamper-
favourite general Hari Singh Nalwa had a ‘palace and ing of the guest began in earnest. Servants shuttled in
garden’. Azeem, his assistant Ali and I followed up one ‘twenty-five plates of sweetmeats, and a dozen baskets of
hundred and eighty-three years and a few days behind fruit’. Hari Singh then showed his guest around the house
him. If the Austrian suffered from the intense cold, we where ‘every room was hung and covered with the richest
were bedevilled by rain. carpets of Kashmir and Kabul’. And when the traveller

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

mentioned the cold he had braved over the past several
The European visitor was completely taken by Hari Singh’s days, portable braziers were ordered for the apartment
mannerism and the splendid garden he maintained: where he was to sleep.

Von Hügel found Hari Singh a frank and affable person

The splendour of the rooms in the palace did not
who was well conversant with the world:
excite my admiration nearly so much as the garden,
177
which was the most beautiful and best kept I had
[The] conversation was very different from the

Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

seen in India. The trees were loaded with orang-
majority of such interviews in India, and really
es, of the same kind known in China as Mandarin
consisted of a due exchange of ideas, and of ref-
oranges, but here much larger and finer, here
erences to events which had actually taken place:
called Santreh orange; Hari Singh has also trans-
he is well informed on the statistics of many of the
ported the plane-tree from Kashmir, which seems
European States, and on the policy of the East
to flourish exceedingly well in its new locality. An
India Company.
odour almost overwhelming ascended from the
jonquils, which were in immense abundance, and
Hari Singh Nalwa, the man whose name rang in homes
of an incredibly large size. Nothing, in fact, could in Peshawar and Kohat to bring unruly children to heel a
be more carefully adorned with flowers and plants hundred and fifty years after he died, was not just a great
of various kinds, than this garden, which evidently general who fell in the fort of Jamrud valiantly fighting
formed one of the chief delights, and sometimes his Pakhtun foes; he possessed a green thumb, class and
the occupation of its owner. was a an intellectual to boot. With a degree of admiration
 von Hügel commented that the man could read and write in Urdu. This plaque was not the work of the local gov-
Persian, a very rare thing among the Sikhs! ernment or the deputy commissioner’s office, it had been
installed above the ground floor doorway during Raj times.
It was to this ‘palace’ I was headed in November 1991, my It was removed when Maulvi Yasin did some repair work
mind filled with great images of carpeted rooms and a and placed in the room. On two later visits, the plaque
garden. The streets were still uncrowded, and I had heard was either missing or had miraculously reappeared until I
the old residence of the Nalwa was now called Anyaan di requested Mubashir to please have it plastered into a wall
Maseet – Mosque of the Blind. In the place of Hari Singh before it was lost forever.
Nalwa, the man presiding over more spiritual matters was
the pleasant Maulvi Yasin. In the upheaval of 1947, the From the slim, shaven twentyish man I knew three dec-
Sikhs left Gujranwala, and Muslims from East Punjab took ades ago, Mubashir is now a portly, full-bearded maulvi
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

over the properties they left. That was when Maulvi Yasin with a hefty paunch. Having proclaimed his late father a
acquired the building and started his religious school. saint of sorts, he affects an air of spirituality, Thankfully, he
He called his son Mubashir to conduct me around the still regards me a friend and remains always welcoming.
house. We ascended to the top floor from where, in my
imagination, I would look down upon the garden Nalwa About twenty years ago, on another visit to Nalwa’s home
had once hoed and weeded. Instead a very warren of I had been caught in a traffic jam of humanity. So thick
178
narrow streets bordered by blockhouses two or three sto- was the press of humans that it was impossible for several
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

reys high stared up at us. Not a blade of grass or a flower minutes for anyone to move. Now in January 2019, I had
was in sight. Downstairs Mubashir walked me from room warned Azeem about it and we resolved to attack the
to room where I imagined the Austrian’s spirit would be place before the town woke. With rain pattering down
seated sipping the brandy sent him by Ventura, the at 6:30 in the morning we walked the deserted streets
Maharaja’s general in Lahore. But most of them stuffed to the house and found Mubashir still groggy with sleep.
with old and broken furniture. Just when I began to doubt But he was kind enough to entertain us and point out the
if this really was Nalwa’s house, we found in a room a marble plaque, now securely fixed in a wall.
marble plaque that read:
The façade of the house, that could only be seen standing
Residence of right below it because of the narrowness of the street,
Sardar Hari Singh Nalwa has completely changed. The mock pillars and arches are
A.D. 1791–1837 gone; the beautifully ornate timber bay window replaced
by ugly steel fittings and the exterior plastered with
Below the English inscription was the same information modern cement, concealing the old brickwork. Happily the
woodwork of the room where Maulvi Yasin held court, is bers were hard at work to try and demolish the historical
still intact. building and raise a monstrosity in its place. For a couple
of years the struggle continued between those lusting for
If this book aims to draw folks to our heritage, the Mosque monetary gain and government officials trying weakly to
of the Blind is the last place an ordinary tourist would resist the destruction. Then all went quiet.The foul deed
muster the boldness to venture to through the workday was done, so I thought. And so short is human memory
press of humanity that leads to the old house. Only a that within the space of a decade, what once was slipped
direct descendent of the great general or a devout Sikh from human minds. In fact, a portion of the building was
yearning for the lost glory of the time of Maharaja Ranjit damaged changing its outward look, the major part and
Singh would enter those heaving rivers of humanity that the plaque inside remained intact and the district admin-
those streets become during the day. istration took custody of the building. At the time of this

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

writing, it had been saved from further vandalism.
And then there was that yellow washed house in the vege-
table market which had a plaque outside a first floor room After the death of his father, Maha Singh, only fourteen
proclaiming: years old, swiftly consolidated his power, increasing his
Maharaja Ranjit Singh armed followers to six thousand and acquiring additional
Born 2nd November 1780 1
territory around Gujranwala. Defeating the Kanhaya Sikhs
179
and killing the chief’s son, Maha Singh forced the old man

Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

As on the slab in Nalwa’s house, this one too had an Urdu to betroth his granddaughter Mehtab Kaur to his young
translation. Again, this too was installed by some thought- son Budh Singh.
ful Raj officer over a hundred years ago. With rain patter-
ing down, Azeem, his assistant Ali and I squished through It was this Budh (Wise) Singh who was soon to be re-
thick slush to the vegetable market. All was changed. The named Ranjit (Combat Victor) when his father returned
old house, once clearly visible, could not be seen. I asked from another victorious encounter against the Muslim
one shopkeeper after another and all said there was noth- Chatthas. In 1792, Maha Singh invested the nearby town
ing of the sort here. Not ever, one or two asserted. of Sodhra, that old staging post on the Grand Trunk Road
before Sher Shah realigned the thoroughfare to pass
I had photographed the house and the commemorative through where Wazirabad was later established. The
plaque in 1991. In 1996 or the year after, I heard land grab- Bhangi Sikhs holding the walled town resisted and the

1) The date is moot. Quoting earlier historians, Khushwant Singh tells us that it was more likely 13 November of the same year. It is also postulated that Ranjit
Singh was not born in Gujranwala, but in the fortified village of Budrukhan in Jind for his mother, Raj Kaur, was the daughter of Raja Gajpat Singh of Jind and
may have been in her parents’ home for her first child.
 siege dragged on for months. Maha Singh came down with fifteen. That done, he had the support of a dynamic and
a serious bout of dysentery and perhaps sensing that his astute woman. If the young Ranjit Singh had directionless
end was near, proclaimed his twelve year old son Ranjit ambition, his mother-in-law Sada Kaur became his rudder
the chief of the Sukerchakia misl. to glory.

The siege was lifted and the ailing Maha and his young It was under her direction in 1799 that Ranjit Singh took
chieftain son returned to Gujranwala. Meanwhile, hearing Lahore in the debilitating summer heat of July. As he rode
of the illness of Maha Singh and that the misl was now led into the city from Lohari Gate in the south, Sada Kaur
by a twelve year-old stripling, the Bhangi leaders of Lahore brought her troopers charging in from Delhi Gate. Lahore
hastened to the aid of Sodhra. They had underestimated fell to the Sikh lad and with that fall there rose a Punjabi
the mettle of young Ranjit. Ambushing them in the vicinity leader whose empire in thirty years would stretch from
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

of Gujranwala, he routed the Bhangis. The last word the Multan to Kashmir and from Amritsar to the Khyber Pass.
ailing and dehydrated Maha Singh heard before giving up
his ghost was that his boy truly was the Victor of Battles. A year later, having made peace with his erstwhile foe
Shah Zaman of Afghanistan, Ranjit was caught in a web of
Here was a mere lad, his face pitted by a childhood attack intrigue: wary of his rising power and wishing to replace
of smallpox that had left him blind in the left eye; if any- him as Punjabi leader, the other Sikh Sardars were intrigu-
180
thing he was hardly impressive. The fatherless boy took ing to side with the Afghan should he venture another
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

no interest in the estate left behind by his father; instead attack. Meanwhile, British agents were trying to keep
he spent his time hunting in the riverine forests. On one Ranjit away from the Afghans. In October 1800, a meeting
such hunting expedition all by himself, he was attacked by was held in Lahore to unravel the intrigue. Besides Ranjit
a man who had suffered much at the hands of Maha Singh. Singh, his two close aides and the British agent, the only
The boy, then just thirteen, cut off the head of his adver- other person present was Sada Kaur.
sary and carried it back to his camp impaled on his spear.
History is silent on what part the astute and skilful widow
It seemed Ranjit Singh was on the way to making a small played or how she prevailed upon the course of the
time gangster, at best a freebooter confined to Gujranwa- decision made that day, but she would surely have been
la, his immense genius and physical courage going waste. of great consequence. Ranjit Singh resolved that day to
Without a mentor, he could well have been swept away distance himself from the Afghans.
by men more powerful than himself. Perhaps to give his
life some direction, his widowed mother pressed him into But things change and Sada Kaur who clearly propelled
marriage with his fiancée Mehtab Kaur when he was just a young chief to become Maharaja of Punjab was soon
estranged from her son-in-law. It was because while her had been erected after razing an ancient temple of Lord
own daughter Mehtab Kaur had failed to produce an heir, Rama. The dust of the fallen mosque had barely settled
Ranjit’s second wife Raj Kaur whom he married in 1798, when crazed mobs went for every Hindu, Jain or Sikh
had presented the Punjabi kingdom with prince Kharrak building regardless of the use it had been in. Among the
Singh in 1802. If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, by hundreds of buildings destroyed in Pakistan, the beautiful
1808 there was no love lost between Sada Kaur and her baradari of Ranjit Singh too became a heap of masonry. It
son-in-law. The crafty woman conveyed to the British that remained that way for a very long time.
should they attack Punjab, they would find her on their
side. But it was too late. Maharaja Ranjit Singh was here to But when Azeem, Ali and I went there in January 2019,
stay until death would tear him away in June 1839. a brand new baradari stood on the plinth where for two
decades only a heap of masonry had been. Inside, an

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

The house in Gujranwala where he was purportedly born, attempt to recreate the old frescoes has been made. The
was saved from destruction by a hair’s breadth. But the result is gaudy compared to the original, but I have no way
baradari with its rich frescos that Ranjit had ordered in his of comparing what once was and what we have now. As
Sheranwala Bagh – Lion Garden – so named because, it we stood there, I lamented that all the transparencies from
is related, there he kept a pair of lions in a cage met with my 1991 work in Gujranwala were destroyed by fungus in
doom earlier in December 1992. the humid summers of Lahore.
181

Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

The building on a square plan with three doorways on I returned to Sheranwala Bagh a couple of years after the
each side had a smaller pavilion on the first floor above mindless destruction of its baradari. It was winter and a
which stood yet another single room. The ground floor had few middle-aged men were sunning themselves on the
a busy, ornate interior with few plain spaces. The frescos edge of the rubble heap that was once the baradari. After
of platters of fruit with bulbuls and parakeets pecking our preliminary pleasantries I asked if anyone of them had
at them amid irises, roses and intertwining vines were taken part in the demolition of the building.
a lovely riot of colour. The building was entirely secular ‘We, the four of us, grew up in Gujranwala. As children
without a trace of Sikh or any other religious symbolism. we played in these grounds and when we were tired, we
Whenever I went there, I found students lounging in the rested in the cool shade of the building. It was always cool
cool shade cramming their lessons or men just loafing inside, even when it was hot out,’ said one.
around. A junkie or two would complete the scene.
Then they all broke out speaking at once: it was mad-
Early in December 1992, zealots in India tore down the ness to tear down the building. It was just like 1947 when
early sixteenth century Babri Mosque for they believed it lunatics ran wild across the country looting, burning and
 destroying whatever belonged to the other side. The cantonment. We drove back in the direction of Wazirabad.
destruction of this beautiful baradari was madness, they Just short of Gakkhar Mandi, between the wall of the
raved all together. electricity grid station and the narrow distribution canal
‘Did anyone of you try to stop the hooligans?’ I asked. we took the road west to village Baddoke Gosaian.
‘Not just us. Many other older men joined us. We
screamed ourselves hoarse to stop the madness but the In 1991, it was a lovely little religious monument standing in
mullahs leading the maddened mob screamed louder and the middle of a square pond filled with blue-green water
rabidly. There were so many mullahs leading the attack, we teeming with fish. The temple’s porched door faced east
did not stand a chance,’ said the one who had spoken first. and a walkway bridged over eight lovely arches connected
it to the edge of the pond. The arches were strengthened
They said the word was that a treasure was possibly con- by buttresses topped with stylised domelets. Surrounded
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

cealed within the building. But the demolition was without by green fields where lowing cattle and the call of the bul-
any order and when the foundation was undermined, the buls and mynas was the only sound, this was a very idyll.
whole came down rather swiftly. There were some vague
tales of a move to turn the garden into a shopping mall but The building was surprisingly free of expressions of love
they could not say why that did not happen. They were between various letters of the alphabet. Though a country
just happy that they still had a tree-shaded open space road passed right in front of it, the temple seemed to have
182
to stretch their legs. As for the purported treasure, none been forgotten by vandals. The sleepy watchman said he
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

was found when the rubble was removed to build the new was there to keep people from stealing the fish, protecting
structure. the monument was not part of his responsibility, however.
For someone with little interest in the house of worship,
Nearby, the lofty dome of Maha Singh’s Samadhi sits he nonetheless knew its story.
above its tall octagonal drum. I was told that the mob did
go for this building too, their goal was the two-tier metal Though the temple is of more recent provenance, it is
finial above the dome. The word was that it was pure gold. connected with an early sixteenth century saint. The old
Fortunately, however, by the time they were done with watchman was the keeper of the tale of Rama Nand: as
the baradari, a large police force had arrived to save the a seven year-old he took his father’s cattle grazing and
Samadhi. routinely let them browse in the cornfields. When his
father came to check the fields on the complaints of the
There was another building that came under attack that farmers, he found the crops untouched. Daily farmers saw
December. The temple of Baddoke Gosaian, just off and the cattle feeding in their fields and when Rama Nand
to the west of the Grand Trunk Road near Gujranwala took them away, the fields miraculously reverted to their
original form. It did not take long for people to mark the Interestingly, there is a zizyphus tree standing on the
child as no ordinary human. southwest corner of the temple, just by the side of the
pond. It is huge in size with a thick trunk and clearly of
Soon it came time for the saintly young man to be a great age. In 1991, the watchman told me this was the
wedded. He refused saying he wished to follow the way of very tree that had sprouted from Rama Nand’s desiccated
the brahmacharya, eschewing all pleasure and spending walking stick. Under it sits another small temple of a very
his time in the worship of his Lord. But the family would recent date.
have nothing of that and a day for his betrothal was fixed.
Rama Nand went that day to the village pond to bathe,
so the tale goes. There he stuck his walking stick in the
wet mud and disappeared into the water. All attempts to
recover his body failed.

Time passed and Rama Nand did not return. Except that
the staff he had stuck in the mud turned into a full-blown
zizyphus tree. In the shade of this miraculous tree, the
saintly youngster’s mother daily came to grieve. One day
Rama Nand appeared to her and told her not to weep
for he would meet her every day. The condition was that
she would keep these meetings secret. After a few days,
The temple at Baddoke Gosaian dedicated to the saint Rama Nand. The
the mother could no longer contain herself and broke her pond into which he miraculously disappeared is now dry, its water supply
pledge. That was the last time the saint was ever seen. having been cut off years ago. In the 1990s, the pond was stocked with
fish which was auctioned annually.

The pond became sacred and sometime about the later Shortly after the destruction of the Sheranwala Bagh
years of the seventeenth century, the temple was raised baradari, I had returned to check out the temple. The old
in its centre and in time it became the site of a major watchman was at hand to tell me how single-handed and
religious gathering in the middle of the Punjabi month heroically he had prevented the maddened mob from
of Bisakhi (end April). In the 1860s, the affluent Diwan destroying the building. They made a deal with him: the
families of Eminabad executed the project of brick lining temple would be spared if he permitted them to remove
the pond. They also constructed a water channel to keep the ‘gold’ finial on the top of the spire. And so one man
the pond full. climbed up the roof of the portico and with the help of a
noose brought down the three-tiered ornament. It turned
 out to be copper and in a fit of frenzy the mob beat it followed the great Guru’s way, the spot became hallowed
completely out of shape with clubs and bricks. The man and they began congregating here periodically. Sometime
was happy that the trade-off was good or there would late in the seventeenth century, a baoli was built here
have been no temple left. to facilitate pilgrims. In the early 1990s, its water was
polluted and it had not been in use for many years but it
On site with Azeem and Ali in 2019, I noted that the spire still had a beautiful multi-cusped arch where the stairway
is now much desecrated with names and expressions of entered the well shaft. Since we have scant regard for his-
love gouged into the plaster. One wonders what manner torical buildings, at some point it was filled in and covered
of love it is that leads people to such vandalism. The beau- over.
tiful painting of Surya the sun god in his chariot adorning
the niche of the west façade has been rubbed out and In those days, the temple was deserted. The Muslim
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

there is considerable damage to the plaster all around. keeper said few pilgrims visited. And fewer still came to
The saddest part is that the pond that was filled by an appreciate the fantasy of architecture that Rori Sahib rep-
irrigation channel and once had fish enough to be annually resents. Work on the building began in the first decade of
contracted out, is now dry. And there is no watchman to the twentieth century when the Spanish architect Antoni
tell stories. Gaudi had gained fame in Europe for his creative use of
plastic forms of ornamentation. Had Gaudi passed along
184
the Grand Trunk Road, the magnificent gateway would
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

have astounded him for its beauty and flowing lines that
We gave up the modern Grand Trunk Road that passes seem to have been created from clay. But the material is
through Kamoke to Muridke and on to Lahore. This was all cut or moulded brick, finely baked to redness.
laid out in the 1880s when British civil servants turned
somnolent little Kamoke into a grain market complete with We do not know who the architect was. If he was trained
a railway station and road connection. We took the old at the Mayo School of Arts (now National College of Arts),
road heading for Eminabad. Just short of what was once Lahore, he would surely have been inspired by Gaudi. It is,
a town rich with fabulous mansions and walled gardens, however, more likely than not that the man was a mason
rises a chunky red building amid the fields. This is imposing – the traditional mistri – who had learnt his craft in the
gateway of Gurdwara Rori Sahib. tutelage of local masters. In which case, he possessed a re-
markably inventive and original mind for he created a very
Sikh lore has Guru Nanak Dev passing through here on wonderland of curvilinear forms and Gurmukhi writing. All
one of his many journeys. Wearied by a long slog, he sat this in baked brick.
down by a heap of refuse (rori in Punjabi). For those who
In the early years of the twentieth century, there was a
class of British architects who dismissed the local mistri
for being useless in the British scheme of architecture. But
there were others who believed much was to be learned
from local traditionalists. The nameless creator of this great
fantasy outside Eminabad would surely have pleased the
latter proponents.

The noted architect and architectural historian Kamil Khan

Mumtaz is all praise for the unknown mistri of Rori Sahib. He
says there is an ‘amazing dexterity with which brickwork has

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

been used to produce a plastic and almost sensuous qual-
ity’. In his view, the bold forms created thus are based on
traditional practice but take the use of baked brick beyond
known limits. Indeed, the building is a sight to be beheld,
not merely to be read about or seen as an image.

185
Behind the lofty gateway stands the little gurdwara where

Chapter Name
the copy of the holy Granth Sahib rests. This building dates
to the early nineteenth century. Nearby is the sacred pond
for ablution and around it the architectural fantasy contin-
ues with more domes and free standing arches.

After years of neglect, the gurdwara is again a centre of

regular worship and part of the pilgrimage circuit for local
and visiting Sikhs. Besides the Muslim minders, it has a
complement of resident Sikh keepers together with a Gran-
thi (priest). If many years ago I had just wandered in, there
is now an iron fence girding the grounds and the Muslim Once without doubt the most beautifully ornate haveli of Eminabad,

minders permit non-Sikh visitors in only after a bit of grilling. this early nineteenth century building was home to the rich diwans who
served the Dogra raja of Kashmir. With the family having left Eminabad
in 1947, the building fell into the hands of refugees who cared little for it
Guru Nanak Dev went on to Eminabad. And so did we. letting it crumble to pieces.
 186
from Landi Kotal to Wagah Chapter Name
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
187

Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

Gurdwara Rori Sahib, Eminabad in Gujranwala district is remarkable for
its plastic forms created by cut and moulded bricks.
 But unlike the Guru we did not pause in town but drove
straight around on to the old Grand Trunk Road leading
to Wahndo and ever onward to the east. A few kilometres
outside town stood the large tank fed by a natural water-
way, its brick-lined sides and the stairs leading down to the
water gradually crumbling. We were still a couple of hun-
dred metres away when the squat dome of the mosque
became visible.
‘Pre-Mughal!’ Azeem declared excitedly.
That meant the mosque was fifteenth century.

Tamerlane died in 1405. In the ensuing peace with no out-

side intervention, a family claiming to be Syeds (descend-
ants of the fourth caliph) rose to power. Their weakness
and ineptitude was soon noticed and taken full advantage
The last of the four corner turrets on the boundary wall of Begum
of by the turbulent Khokhars of Punjab and for fully three
da Maqbara (Tomb of the Begum).
decades the country lay in a state of turmoil. There now
rose to prominence a man called Bahlol Lodhi, adept in
Chapter Name

the art of war and sufficiently canny to outwit and oust the
Syeds and mount the throne of Delhi. He ruled from 1450,
bringing peace to a country long brutalised by mindless
bloodshed and established a dynasty to last six decades.
Tamerlane had been dead a long time, Babur was still wait-
ing to be born. In that period of peace the Grand Trunk
Road going through Eminabad was a busy thoroughfare
and the city earned a good deal of cess on passing trade.
This made for affluence in the eighteenth century when
several prosperous Hindu families of Eminabad served the
Dogra rulers of Kashmir as ministers and advisors.

After Bahlol died in 1489, it took only a few more years for
The late Mughal period Begum da Maqbara - Tomb of the Begum - Babur to start breathing down the Indian neck. Therefore,
with the Lodhi mosque seen in the background.
if any major construction work was carried out, it was pound. The elderly man living in the nearby house told me
in this period of peace in Bahlol’s time. In the collective they called it Begum da Maqbara – Tomb of the Begum.
memory of the people of Eminabad, this mosque casting Who the begum was drew a blank. Now the grave is no
a narcissistic reflection in the placid waters of the pond is longer there.
‘Lodhi Mosque’. Azeem could not have agreed more with
the Eminabadis.

Five and a half centuries on from the time the muezzin first
called the faithful to prayer under its dome, the brickwork
is still sturdy. When it was first built, the mosque had a
pillared veranda in front for one can still see the remains
of the arch where the cantilever of the portico sprang out-
ward from the main building. The plaster is all gone except
where it was protected by the overhang of the veranda.
This is decorated with a repetitive leaf motif all around the
building.

In 1991, the dome of the mosque had a wide cleft and I The Lodhi mosque once had a large overhang on the façade which

had gone away with fear that the building would not last may have extended to form a pillared veranda. Now only a trace of the
overhang remains and if there were pillars their foundations have been
many more monsoon rains. This time round we found the removed for cultivation.
dome repaired. Though the work did not entirely meet
Azeem’s approval because of the use of modern cement, Archaeologist friends in Lahore told me a certain Mir
we were nonetheless happy that at least further damage Ahmed Khan, a courtier in the latter years of Mughal rule,
from rainwater seepage had been prevented. buried his wife here when she died on a journey between
Lahore and Kashmir. The architecture is clearly late
Facing the mosque is a ruined walled compound meas- Mughal and the building seems to have not been of a high
uring some twenty metres square, its interior completely standard to have decayed so completely. Perhaps Ahmed
overgrown and its brickwork lying in heaps all around. Khan was not a man of means or of much significance.
When it was complete, the four corners of the compound
were crowned by pillared chambers open on all sides and
topped with domes. Of these only one remains now. In Rain cut short our fieldwork yet again and I returned to
1991, I had seen a simple grave in the centre of the com- Eminabad a few weeks later, this time with Emily Macinnes
 from Scotland. She had come out to make a short film When they had in-house wells, the cellar, with its temper-
on the monuments of the Grand Trunk Road in Pakistan. ature modulated by its nearness to water, was called a
We went through the Eminabad bazaar to the east end sard khana – cold room. The raised platform with access
of town with its last remaining haveli from the early years from the back would once have been suitably furnished
of the nineteenth century. Local tradition attributes this for relaxation on hot summer afternoons. Servants coming
beautifully painted, but dilapidated, building to the Diwans down to fetch water would not have disturbed the repose
who served the Kashmir Dogras. Thirty years ago there of the master and his family for they would have used the
were a generation who recalled those families and their same stairs as us. Above us, the ceiling had squinches on
departure in 1947. the four corners indicating where the dome sprang. But
now there was none, only an iron grate cemented on to
Today Eminabad seems to be losing sight of its rich the opening left by the collapsed dome.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

cultural and built heritage with most of its old houses

demolished. But on this outing with Emily I had a pleasant Romila is a most remarkable woman. Living in provincial
experience. With her camera on the tripod, Emily was little Eminabad she had somehow developed interest in
filming the painted façade of the ramshackle four storey history. ‘I read, but I cannot commit to memory,’ she com-
house when a woman called out to me from a newish plained. When she wedded her husband Naqib Khan in
house on my left. 2002 and came to this house, there were still multi-storey
190
‘You have to come see our house. It’s very old and we houses in this neighbourhood. Why, her own sister-in-law
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

have a cellar with a raised podium and a lovely arch.’ who lived across the lane had a five-storey house which
she tore down. The timber alone, teak and pine, was sold
Telling Emily to carry on, I ducked into the house and for three million rupees, said Romila. This was perhaps the
Romila led me down a darkened flight of stairs composed first time someone had come to talk to her for she was in a
of the old Nanak Shahi bricks. The cellar was square in hurry to tell all.
plan and littered with old items of household use. In the ‘There is just no awareness, no sense of history or the
dim light of my torch I could see the raised platform with value of what they have. And why would they? Those who
two arches. The main arch was crudely repaired at some were but servants and sharecroppers until August 1947
point while the smaller one to its right was in its original overnight became owners of great wealth they did not
form. The platform, accessible from a doorway in the back have to work for. They do not care for what they have.
which was blocked, was more like a small gallery to look Anyone still living in an old house is waiting for money
down to where we stood. The walls all around had niches to tear it down and build anew in its place.’ Romila was
for lamps. Pointing to an opening on one side, Romila said breathless with lamentation.
that led to a well which too was sealed years ago.
Naqib mentioned the discovery of some old coins when people waking to begin their daily routine. One morning,
they tore down a wall. Excitedly I asked if I could see well before sunrise, a woman who kept a herd of camels
them. But he had given them to his sister, the one who roused from sleep early and thinking it was time, set to
had demolished her own house and moved away, and the work her milk churn.
coins were no longer traceable.
Curious about Emily’s film making Romila asked what we Panicked that they were caught working late, the djinns
were doing and I told the couple about the book on the fled. But they soon realised their error and cursed the
Grand Trunk Road. woman, ‘May your milk never yield butter.’ The story went
‘Oh, the King’s Highway,’ said Naqib. I was rather surprised that it was since that day camel’s milk has ceased yielding
by his use of the English title for the road and asked him butter. This is not an original Gujranwala tale, however. It
where he had heard it. He smiled and said nothing. Romi- is a recurrent theme across several areas of Punjab and

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

la’s enthusiasm for history seemed to have rubbed off. Sindh. Nevertheless, Deo Minara, clearly a late Mughal
period monument, retains its aura of mystery.
The couple recalled the time in the early years of the
century when art and architecture students from Lahore’s Well off the main axis of the modern Grand Trunk Road,
various colleges routinely visited Eminabad. The students the tomb sits on the direct line between Eminabad and
were very interested in the old architecture. By Naqib’s Amritsar and thence on to Delhi. It would be folly to say
191
account they ran amok across town making sketches, that such an alignment did not exist for we know that the

Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

measuring and taking notes. Rajapatha even in ancient times followed at least three
‘They raced down the stairs into our basement. And they parallel lines in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab. As well
went to every old haveli,’ added Romila. ‘Alas, nothing is as that, there were a number of subsidiary byways.
now left. And we haven’t seen students for years.’ In 1991, when my wanderings first betook me to Deo
Minara, all my queries about the three burials in the sub-
terranean vault turned up blanks. ‘This building has stood
here since the time of our grandfathers and no one knows
The road east from Eminabad leads to Wahndo. Ask whose remains it contains,’ was the refrain of anyone I
anyone for Kotli Maqbara and directions will be forthcom- asked. To invoke the grandfathers was to indicate an age
ing. But ask for Deo Minara (Minaret of the Giant or Djinn) of ‘thousands of years’.
and you draw blanks. Thirty years ago, the story was that
djinns were assigned to build a mausoleum. Being djinns, Then one man told me of the woman who came dancing
they worked secretly during the night and went into hiding one day. She unshod herself a hundred metres from the
before daybreak. Their alarm clock being the noises of tomb and with a great show of reverence came up to
 put her forehead on the entrance to the underground space under the dome were no longer permitted to des-
burial chamber. Curious locals were told that it had been ecrate the newly hallowed ground. There were no names
revealed to her in a dream that three holy personages for the three holy persons, however. I returned again after
reposed under the imposing dome and she had been a gap of nine years. The new century had dawned and on
ordered to be the keeper of the shrine. the entrance to the subterranean chamber stood a sign
in Urdu: Hazrat Pir Makki Shah and Hazrat Pir Atray Shah.
Thereafter she returned every Thursday in a van with a It was only logical for a holy person to be Makki – from
cauldron of food to distribute to the locals. Amused by my Mecca, but Atray was inexplicable. The woman who visit-
narration, friends in the district administration and police, ed weekly was still around and she had planted the sign
Kamran Rasool, the commissioner and Iqbal Malik, the some years previously. For some curious reason she had
senior superintendent of police, set the state machinery failed to conjure up a name for the third grave. All three
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

working to unravel the secret of the dancing woman: she graves were covered with cheap shiny satin with Quranic
turned out to be a courtesan from Chhicherwali, a village verses and images of the Ka’ba. The apotheosis of three
just outside Gujranwala. very worldly men was complete.

Having reached her fifties, an age where such persons I returned to Kotli Maqbara in March 2019 and parked the
retire, she had claimed the tomb as her source of perpet- car near two men about my age. Atray Shah? Makki Shah?
192
ual income. With no other ‘descendants’ since the ‘time They looked at me as if I were stupid.
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

of the grandfathers’ to dispute her stake, it worked. In a so- ‘This is just a Mughal tomb,’ said one. ‘A man once came
ciety as superstitious and quasi-religious as ours, nothing here many years ago telling us the name. But we forget
could have been easier. The weekly investment in food now. It doesn’t matter as long as we know it’s Mughal.’
for locals paid off and when I returned exactly a year after
my first visit, I was told that the village was blessed by For Mughal, he used the word Chagatta with the accent
the presence of three holy burials. But only last year they hard on the final syllable. This term used for Mughals
were unidentified, I protested. derives from Chagata Khan, the second son of Chengez
‘What are you talking about? These holy men have been Khan.2 I have always felt Chagatta has a derogatory under-
worshipped since the time of our grandfathers!’ came the tone and goes back to the time when the Punjabi peasant-
rebuke. ry chaffed under the strict Mughal taxation system.

People now took off their shoes below the plinth and the I insisted it was a holy burial and the grey-bearded one
boys who once played cricket in the open ground floor smiled wryly, clearly not believing me. Surprisingly, nei-

2) Chengez being closest to the actual pronunciation of the Mongolian name, I prefer it over the accepted Ghengiz Khan.
ther man recalled the dancing woman or the van with the the other two lie with him.
cauldron of rice and chicken she brought on Thursdays.
Both men insisted the building had always been secular
and that boys played cricket under its dome. Indeed, even
as I went in and out without taking off my shoes no one Southeast of Eminabad, seventeen kilometres by Google
objected. Earth, but a little more through Sadhoke and Gunahor, the
old Rajapatha crosses the Degh, properly Devka, rivulet.
It is surprising how short-lived human memories are. I im- Washing the foothills of Jammu, the Degh had long been
agine the dancing woman died sometime after my visit in infamous for its monsoon floods that still flow the colour
2001. The weekly parties ceased, over time the sign with of the milk tea so popular in Pakistan. Then it is known to
the names rotted and the tomb went back to being what it claim lives. When not in spate, it is languid with blue water,

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

had always been. Within years everything was forgotten. fish, turtles and boys splashing around in it. Nearer the
modern Grand Trunk Road, it turns into poison from the
In 1991, having never read of this building or seen its several factories that dump their untreated waste into it.
images, I ran off with the notion that I had discovered a
hitherto unknown monument. Gloating, I went with images In Gunahor people have a vague inkling of the old road
to my mentor Dr Saifur Rahman Dar. Just a short phrase passing by and crossing the Degh by what they call the
193
from him killed my euphoria, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it so happens Shah Daula Bridge. They attribute it to the generosity of

Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

that the building has been discovered by others before the saint of that name buried in Gujrat. From the Tuzk e
you.’ Jahangiri and the Shah Jahan Nama we know that both
father and son, on their respective journeys, suffered
Diwan Abdul Nabi Khan, who served Shah Jahan and his from Degh floods. In October 1620, Jahangir was greatly
son Aurangzeb in ministerial positions died on his passage vexed on his journey from Sheikhupura to Lahore when
through the area. According to Dr Dar, it is not known if he the downpour would not cease and the intervening Degh
was travelling through or hunting in this area. But we do would not permit crossing. Not even on elephant back.
know that before the canals transformed primal forest into For four days the king, his wives and the court hunkered in
farmland in the closing years of the nineteenth century, sodden tents until the stream abated. That year Jahangir
this country was rich with forest and wild animals, espe- ordered the construction of the bridge outside the village
cially ungulates the favourite prey of Mughal hunters. In of Kot Pindi Das, many meandering kilometres down-
fact, hog deer and blue bull were quite common until fifty stream of this point.
years ago. My mentor believed there was every chance
that Abdul Nabi was hunting here. But it is not known who Of the Shah Daula Bridge we have no definitive date, but
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194
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

Tomb of Diwan Abdul Nabi Khan who served Shah Jahan and his son
Aurangzeb. An attempt begun in the early 1990s to deify the tomb continued
for a couple of years into the present century but failed to make the desired
impact and was abandoned. Now everyone regards it as a Mughal tomb.
 195

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 196
from Landi Kotal to Wagah Chapter Name
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197

Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

Four hundred years on and Shah Daula bridge spanning the Degh River
shows no signs of sagging. Not even under the weight of heavily laden
lorries or a bus as seen here.
 going by its architecture, one can say it is of the same age the river and undo the sluices. When it seemed something
as the other one. Here, just downstream of the bridge, drastic was just about to occur, one elderly man went in
there lies in the stream-bed the debris of an earlier struc- and no sooner had he undone the gates that the surge of
ture whose story I heard from a young man more than a water swept away the entire structure. In that outpouring
the brave old man was also lost. The teller of my tale said
his grandfather claimed that even his grandfather who, I
presume, was also a few hundred years old, had not seen
the original bridge.

My archaeologist friend, the soft-spoken late Tariq Masood

was the keeper of the true story of Shah Daula Bridge.
Quoting from a legend as recorded by A. C. Elliot and
published in Indian Antiquity (February 1909) Masood
tells how, Shah Jahan, as he journeyed to Kashmir, once
lost several laden pack animals to a flood in the Degh.
The administrator of the district, a certain Mirza Badi uz
Zaman, was ordered to immediately build a bridge and
198
have it ready before the emperor’s return journey.

The parapet of the Shah Daula bridge was once adorned with four mock That very likely being monsoon season when kilns tra-
turrets. Of them, this is the only one remaining.
ditionally shut down in Punjab, the Mirza was hard put
decade ago. He said his grandfather who died at age one to procure fired bricks. All he could come by were mud
hundred and thirty (in Pakistan many seventy year-old bricks useless for bridge building. In a fit of rage he im-
persons claim that longevity), told him the story of the prisoned all brick-makers and when the emperor returned
old bridge as he had heard it from his elders. The spans, was nowhere near beginning construction. Upon being
said the youngster, were closed by gates carved out of rebuked, the Mirza is said to have told the emperor that it
solid blocks of rock. Their small openings let only a limited was only Shah Daula, the doer of public works, who could
quantity of water through. build the bridge. And so the saint was called for from
Gujrat and the bridge constructed under his supervision.
One summer a great flood bore down the river and there
was every danger of the village being washed away. Yet The origin of this legend lies in the reputation of Shah
with the water building up upstream no man dared enter Daula as a great patron of public works in Sialkot, where
he first lived, and in Gujrat subsequently where he was after Shah Jahan’s prime minister and trusted general.
buried. The chronology placing him contemporary with But history does not mention the undertaking of a bridge
Shah Jahan is not incorrect: having been born in 1581 building project in this area by Saadullah under Shah
during the reign of Akbar, Shah Daula lived through the Jahan’s orders. I would say that the bridge, already in
reigns of Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb until his place for a couple of decades, was named after the prime
death in 1676. minister for a short while. But Saadullah meant nothing to
the peasantry who used the facility. To them it was Shah
The king’s summons for him to come build the bridge could Daula first and last. Also, the names sounding alike, the
just be legend that plays on a reputation for public service new name would have only seemed a mispronunciation of
that Kabiruddin, a Lodhi Pakhtun, better known to us as the original.
Shah Daula, had made for himself even before Shah Jahan’s

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

time. He is reputed to have built scores of inns, bridges, The most interesting bit from my late friend Tariq Masood
roadways, mosques, water tanks and wells for public use, concerned the events of the spring of 1707. It was noised
acts for which he was much admired. Surely this tireless that the aged Aurangzeb had finally given up the ghost.
public service earned him the status of a saint. History tells In their unholy haste to have themselves crowned king,
us of devotees bringing him valuable gifts all of which the his sons tripped over themselves and over each other.
selfless and generous Kabiruddin Lodhi a.k.a Shah Daula While Azam Shah quickly donned the crown in Ahmad-
199
spent on public works. On the other hand, it could be that nagar in the Deccan and hastened for the capital, Shah

Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

the king trusted the experienced man to be able to do Alam turned to Agra from his posting at Jamrud outside
his bidding and ordered him to it. However, going by the Peshawar. As he arrived at the staging post of Shah Daula
architecture, the king would have been Jahangir and not Bridge, word arrived from the east that his brother had
Shah Jahan. already been crowned.

The Khulasa tut Twarikh (Compendium of Histories) of In order that he may enter the city of Lahore as a crowned
Subhan Rai is one source that definitely assigns this bridge king, Shah Alam went through a coronation ceremony at
to Shah Daula. It mentions a bridge built by him at a dis- the bridge. Since the bridge is at most two days’ journey
tance of five kos (about sixteen kilometres) from Eminabad from Lahore, the coronation would have taken place on
on the highroad to Lahore. However, we get no date from the last day of April for history tells us that Shah Alam
this work. entered Lahore as another king of the sagging Mughal
empire on the third day of May 1707.
It is said, Masood told had me, that the original name of
the bridge was Pull (Bridge) Saadullah or Saadullahpur But that was the past. Nothing spectacular or earth
 shaking happens at Shah Daula Bridge anymore, except on its brink to sun themselves in winters or take the air on
that fully laden Bedford trucks with axle weight of over summer evenings.
fifteen tons still routinely pass over the four hundred year
old bridge. However, in 2015, something mindlessly drastic For me there is an element of tragic irony. The good
came within a hair’s breadth of occurring. With a brand Kabiruddin Lodhi is celebrated not for the public service
new concrete bridge completed a couple of hundred he did in his long life (1581–1676), by some quirk of fate
metres upstream, the Punjab Department of Irrigation was he is remembered as Shah Daula and his shrine in Gujrat
in the process of beginning demolition of the historic span. is the centre for parents to abandon their microcephalic
It was a fortunate fluke of chance that I went to the bridge children. These unfortunate children, the result of genera-
to photograph it digitally and heard from local men of the tions of inbreeding, are known as the ‘rats’ of Shah Daula,
folly about to occur. believed to have been begotten by the blessing of the
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

long dead man.

In a fluster I went to see the secretary of the department
to plead for the preservation of the bridge. I was stunned The irony is only offset by his lingering association with the
by the man’s contention: ‘The old bridge constricts the bridge. Those who use it, or live nearby, invoke his name
passage of floodwaters. Since the new one is now in place, even today. Through them his spirit of public service lives
it is only logical that we tear down the old one.’ on.
200
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

For four hundred years, I appealed, the bridge has weath-

ered as many monsoon floods and there has never been
any threat to life or property because of it. Why, even The Rajapatha of the classical age and our Grand Trunk
today laden trucks pass over it as testimony to its robust- Road on the bridge of Shah Daula would have placed
ness. It still has decades of useful life. And when that life Shah Alam within twenty-seven kilometres of Lahore Fort.
comes to an end, we yet need to preserve it as a model We too headed the same way, but ours was no unholy
of seventeenth century civil engineering for students to haste, nor did we lust for a crown. And so we paused at
learn from. It has never worked in my life, but this time my Shahdara – Royal Gateway – on the right bank of the Ravi.
frantic and passionate pleading did. Shahdara is now identified by the spreading quadrangle
where Akbar ordered a caravanserai and which later
Credit goes to Saif Anjum for my raving to have affected became famous as the last rest place of his son Jahangir.
him. He called for the file and added a note to it to let the
bridge be. He has moved on to other assignments and The exquisitely beautiful single-storey edifice, with four
happily the bridge is still there and locals still congregate towering corner minarets is resplendent with white marble
pietra dura on red granite. The red and white is offset by much admiration from her husband and the event passed
the yellow, brown and white chevron patterns that march into the Tuzk. Had it not been for Jahangir’s granddaughter
up the four minarets. It is clear that a great deal of thought Jahan Ara, I would have no quarrel with Annemarie Schim-
lay behind the architectural scheme. And it came from mel who terms Nur Jahan ‘undoubtedly the most dynamic
none other than the remarkable Nur Jahan. woman in the history of the Mughals’.

Born in Kandahar to Mirza Ghias Baig, a Persian nobleman,

and Asmat Begum as the couple journeyed to India, she
was named Mehrun Nisa – Sun among Women. When still
in her teens, she was wedded to Sher Afgan who was later
in the service of Jahangir. In 1607, Sher Afgan was killed

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

while on a mission to Bengal on behalf of his king. Some
say the king had much to do with the dubious manner
of the man’s death for he was already besotted with the
round-faced, full-lipped, almond-eyed beauty Mehrun
Nisa. Four years later, in 1611, Mehrun Nisa became the
last, and favourite wife, among seventeen others, of the
201
emperor. As the queen she was first called Nur Mahal –
Light of the Palace – and elevated a few years later to Nur Jahangir’s tomb
Jahan – Light of the World. Her father became a trusted
courtier titled Itamadud Daula and her brother Asif Khan When Schimmel writes, ‘Ineffectual aesthetes were no
also got high office. match for this cunning and energetic woman, who exploit-
ed their weakness for drugs and alcohol’, she refers to Ja-
Jahangir’s fondness for Nur Jahan is demonstrated by hangir’s dependence on an overuse of opium and alcohol.
the authority vested in her to sign royal firmans (decrees) While the king, who on his travels became a naturalist but
and the coins he minted in her name. Indeed, Nur Jahan in his capital remained doped, it was only normal for the
was no ordinary woman. Extremely athletic, she was a fine talented and vigorous queen to come to the fore. In this
rider and a good polo player; in matters of administration she was ably assisted by her brother Asif Khan. She was
and dealing with the court and visitors she was admira- a rare queen who besides actively engaged in running the
bly competent. Nur Jahan was a first-rate marksman as empire, managed an orphanage for girls and also traded in
well. On a hunt with the king on elephant back, she killed indigo grown on her own farms near Agra. The export of
a tiger with a single shot from her musket. This won her this commodity was overseen by her brother.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

202
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

A general view of the Jahangir quadrangle from above the

imposing inner gateway. The tomb itself is in the background.
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
203

Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

Top Left: Looking east through the gateway leading into the garden quad- Top Right: Detail of decoration in the passageway leading to the ceno-
rangle of Jahangir’s tomb. Nur Jahan’s fine taste is evident in the pietra taph. Though the actual burial is in the basement below, the chamber in
dura and the overall architectural detail of this building. the background contains the ornate sepulchre.

Bottom Left: Jahangir’s mausoleum in the middle of the traditional gar- Bottom Right: The form and symmetrical grace of Jahangir’s mausoleum
den of four quadrants. marks the zenith of architectural development during the latter years of
the Mughal era.
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204
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

In 2019, the tomb of Nur Jahan was under restoration work. Years earlier it
had been a rather sombre brick structure devoid of its original decoration.
 205

from Landi Kotal to Wagah Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

Interior of the tomb of Nur Jahan.
 As a connoisseur of the arts, Nur Jahan displayed edu-
cated interest in textiles, both native and British imports.
Schimmel believes that her appreciation of British needle-
work introduced new designs to Indian carpet manufac-
ture. Unsurprisingly, when her husband died in October
1627, the grand mausoleum sitting in the centre of a spa-
cious walled garden on the banks of the Ravi just outside
Lahore was raised under Nur Jahan’s instructions.

She survived her husband by eighteen years and her

brother by four. And when she died, Nur Jahan, the
builder of the magnificent Nurafshan (Light Scatterer)
Garden on the Yamuna River near Agra, was buried in a
simple single storey tomb, a hundred metres west of her
king’s burial place. The brick edifice was faced with marble
which was plundered during the reign of Maharaja Ranjit
Singh. The stone has since adorned Harmandir Sahib at
206
Amritsar.
Chapter Name

Images of the queen’s tomb from my childhood have a

dismal and lonely brick building exuding sadness. In life
Queen Nur Jahan towered above Jahangir, who was
scarcely worthy of her, in death she reposes almost under
the shadow of the lofty minarets of the emperor’s mau-
soleum. As if to accentuate the intellectual difference
between the woman and her man – which was immense
– the British separated the two by a railway line they put
through what was once a magnificent Mughal garden.

Nowadays the garden around Jahangir’s tomb is a picnic

Tomb of Asif Khan. Originally heavily ornamented with marble
place. Every morning and evening men and young women
and coloured stone, it was vandalised heavily during the reign of
Maharaja Ranjit Singh. walkers do their frantic circuits on the paved walkway
around the tomb. For some reason, the younger lot and Younger girls, some in their teens, also came up to chat.
most men prefer circumabulating Jahangir’s tomb while They wanted to know which media house I represented. A
waddling matrons like going up and down the path leading writer was a bit of a disappointment, though. They asked if
to Asif Khan’s separated from Jahangir’s by the wide quad- I was writing a television play, apparently the only redemp-
rangle of Akbar’s caravanserai. A person with a camera on tion for me. I must have broken their young hearts with a
a tripod becomes a foreigner and a centre of curiosity for negative.
the bored ‘aunties’. ‘What do you write?’ asked one.
‘I write about history. And culture.’ I never use the Urdu
Since a foreigner illiterate in the local language is un- word for travel writer because that leads folks to equate
derstood to comprehend only if shouted to, the fat old me with one I label a scam for his misleading and totally
women throw their first volley, in Punjabi, at the top of faux work. The girls gave up on me and with polite good-

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

their voices. Addressing me with the traditional Punjabi byes walked away.
‘Vay’, one of them said ‘No movie, no movie!’ A response in
Punjabi that I was not filming drew loud guffaws and jabs In sharp contrast to the liveliness of Jahangir’s side, across
at each other with a surprised ‘Nee, he’s a Punjabi!’ The the railway line Nur Jahan’s tomb remains forlorn. Strange-
questions were mostly what and wherefore and ended ly so when it has recently been redone with red granite
with the emoluments to be gleaned for ‘this work’. and white marble inlay and even a surrounding well-tend-
207
ed garden. It may be that the queen foresaw the abandon-

Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ruled Here

I asked if they knew whose tomb they had at their back. ment that was to be her lot in death: for her tombstone
‘Must be some Mughal prince. They say he was called Asif she composed a verse dripping with melancholy. Anne-
Khan,’ said the eldest among the four. Her attitude was marie Schimmel translates it:
clearly don’t-give-a-damn-if-he-was-someone-else.
‘He wasn’t a Mughal, but he was related to Jahangir’s wife On mine, the outsider’s grave,
Nur Jahan,’ I hinted. No candle and no light,
‘Must have been her boyfriend!’ chirped the youngest of No burnt moth wings,
the lot, herself in her fifties. The dames exploded with Nor nightingale song …..
laughter, their midriffs jiggling, even as they mock admon-
ished the younger one. The sun was setting when we left this sad premises.
Azeem was in full flow with his tale of the outwitting of
Oh, the freedoms an eastern woman enjoys once past Shah Shuja by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. But that happened
child-bearing age! on the far side of the Ravi. That happened in the city that
Raja Loh is supposed to have built.
A drone’s eye view of the eastern part of Lahore walled city. Taken from just inside Delhi
Darwaza, the view looks westward with Wazir Khan’s mosque dominating the view.
Though some few remain, most of the older architecture of the narrow alleys in the back-
ground has been replaced with modern structures, taking away much from the city.
 7

The City that Loh Built

 T he monk Xuanzang whose innocent piety never fails to by robbers who took everything, including the clothes
move me, set out of the monastery of Chang’an (modern of the travellers. The day after the robbery, the caravan
Xian) in early 630 CE. He braved a hazardous journey reached a ‘great city’ with ‘several thousand dwellings’.
across deserts, river valleys and high mountains, his heart The people of this nameless place, mostly Buddhist with
set on India, the home of his Lord and Master the great some ‘heretics’ (Hindus or Jains) were a remarkably kind
Buddha. As a teacher and Master of the Law, Xuanzang and hospitable lot. Upon hearing of the travellers’ plight,
was painfully aware of the deficiencies in the copies of a public request was made by the chief to recompense
scripture his school used. His quest was for the true word them. ‘All hostile religious feeling was laid aside’ and three
of Buddha. And so, for sixteen years the pious monk hundred ‘people of distinction’ came forward with liberal
travelled around India collecting books, flower seeds and donations of bolts of cotton, food and drink.1
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

other relics connected with his Lord.

Unsurprisingly, the master remained in this city a whole
Back in Chang’an, Xuanzang wrote up a detailed account month, spending his time in religious study. From here he
of his journey that we today know as Buddhist Records made his way to Che-lan-t’o-lo as the Chinese rendered
of the Western World. Since he would also narrate travel Jalandhar in their phonetics. Beal believes the city of hos-
stories to his acolytes, one devoted student, the shaman pitable people was Lahore.
210
Hwui Li, took careful note of every word the master
The City that Loh Built

uttered. After the master passed away, this man produced Born in 100 CE, Ptolemy, the Greek geographer and math-
a book that comes to us as The Life of Xuanzang. Both ematician, wrote his Geographia about the middle of the
works were translated from the original Chinese by the following century. In it he mentioned Labaka, a city that
Orientalist Samuel Beal in the nineteenth century and some scholars believe would be Lohkot or Lavakota – the
reading them in conjunction, one learns a fascinating lot Fort of Loh or Lava. Now, Loh was the son of Lord Rama
about life in our part of the world a century after the sav- who is credited with founding Lahore that still carries his
agery unleashed by the Huns. name. That alone does not indicate the city’s great age,
for any king or chieftain establishing their seat could name
Hwui Li tells a very interesting story of his master’s journey it after any religious figure regardless of how much they
from Sialkot to a nameless city en route to Jalandhar. A were separated by time. The question then is: how ancient
day’s journey short of this nameless city, as the pilgrim’s is the city of Lahore?
caravan was passing through a dense forest, it was beset

1) The existence of ‘hostile religious feeling’ in that far off time marks social decline since the time of Alexander’s sojourn in Punjab a thousand years earlier.
The Macedonian’s historians tell us that three communities, namely, Buddhist, Hindu and Zoroastrian lived in complete amity in Taxila.
Hard core Lahoris love to proclaim their city as the only omitted the whole episode of the robbery and had Hwui
one in Pakistan in constant habitation for the last five thou- Li not been attentive to the master’s stories, we might not
sand years. In 1989 or the year after, the government of have even heard of it. Xuanzang’s omission seems to signi-
Punjab planned to celebrate Lahore’s five thousand-year fy that a village, home to kind and helpful people, became
festival. Accordingly, a prominent archaeologist-historian a city of several thousand houses in the imagination of
was asked to write up the history. Unaware of the desired Hwui Li. And that only because of the kindness shown by
view, the scholar wrote the truth: that Lahore was at most its people to his revered master.
two thousand years old.
The insignificant Greek settlement of the second century
He was requested to re-write his history to ‘set the record BCE, that still slumbers under Lahore Fort may well have

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

straight’. Another paper was produced declaring Lahore been named Lohkot or Lavakot or Labaka by local people,
five thousand years old! It was only our great good fortune but the truth is that Lahore came of age in the Middle
that the festival was never held. Ages. We first hear of its name from Abu Rehan Al Beruni
who came across the Khyber Pass in 1017. Over the next
That was the beginning of the myth of Lahore’s longevity. several years, he travelled extensively across India and
wrote a most informed masterpiece Kitab al Hind – Book
211
Standing outside the east wall of Lahore Fort, Azeem of India – covering a truly amazing range of subjects. At a

The City that Loh Built

told me of the exploratory trench made in the fort back few points in the book, Lauhawur ‘east of the Irawa[ti]’ is
in the 1960s. The deepest cultural layer dated to the In- mentioned, but always in passing. It seems to be a city that
do-Greeks who had annexed this part of the subcontinent did not much impress our savant. It was clearly not a place
around 180 BCE. Megasthenes, playing ambassador from of learning where this brilliant and ever inquisitive man
Seleucus Nikator to the court of Chandragupta Maurya, would have wanted to tarry a while.
was in India BCE 300-285. In his tenure, he travelled
extensively around the country. Though he made repeated By the beginning of Ghaznavid control over Lahore in the
reference to the Rajapatha and the cities it traversed, he early eleventh century, the Indo-Greek city on the left
made no mention of the name Ptolemy mentioned four bank of the river they called Hydraotes would have long
hundred years later. since decayed and reduced to a mound. This eminence
right by the river that was once again known as Iravati on
Also, Xuanzang despite having been done a good turn by the very spot where a ferry had plied since times imme-
the city and the fact that he tarried here a whole month morial was the place to raise a citadel. The populace,
did not even bother to name it. In fact, in his own work he wearied by two decades of periodic pillaging, seeing the
 walls going up would have been lulled into believing the the thousand year-old fortress of Sialkot, then crumbling,
city was coming in for better, more secure times. was restored that same year and a governor left there.

Mahmud Ghaznavi’s sons ruled over Lahore in compar- The next year, 1186, the Ghorids were again at the ferry of
ative peace only because there was no other contender. Lahore when Khusrau Malik sued for peace. Muizuddin
His grandson Behram struck the first Ghaznavid coin in summoned him to his presence on the pretext of negoti-
Lahore in 1123. It was stamped ‘Dar us Saltanat e Lahore’ ations and there, outside the walls of the fort of Lahore,
– capital of the kingdom of Lahore – and things seemed Khusrau was treacherously seized and imprisoned. When
on the right trajectory. However, some cautious believers the Ghorid leader returned to Ghazni, he took the hapless
would have found the inscription on the reverse to be man back to the place where Khusrau’s ancestor Mahmud
flying in the face of God: ‘A Proclamation issued from the had first got it into his head to possess India. Khusrau and
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Seven Heavens, that Behram Shah is King of the Universe’! his son Behram, already held there as hostage, were kept
imprisoned and eventually cruelly executed.
How could he, a mere mortal, arrogate for himself the
claim of being King of the Universe? Why, that was for Under the Ghorids, toward the end of the twelfth century,
God alone. Surely tongues would have wagged and wise Lohawar became ‘the place where the throne of Sultans
men would have met in the streets of Lahore to put their had been established’. After the Khokars despatched
212
heads together and solemnly whisper that the time of Muizuddin at Dhamiak in March 1206, the late king’s
The City that Loh Built

the Ghaznavids was over. It did not take long for that to brother established the slave Kutbuddin Aibak as Sultan
happen. at the kasr – castle – of Lahore. The people of Lahore
had known only seven decades of relative peace under
In 1181, Muizuddin Ghori appeared before the walls of the Ghaznavids before the turmoil began anew with the
Lahore at the head of a sizeable army. Our source, the Ghorid influx. With Aibak on the throne, they would have
Tabakat-i-Nasiri, is silent on his treatment of the city. We imagined another peaceful interlude.
only know that the Ghaznavid ruler Khusrau Malik was
treated shabbily and besides the tribute of an elephant, Taken from Turkestan as a child and brought up as a slave,
his son Behram Shah was taken to Ghazni as hostage. Aibak rose through the ranks and as king is said to have
Ghori returned four years later. From the now tall ram- been just and generous to a fault. But he did not get long
parts of the fort of Lahore, Khusrau spotted the dust of to rule over northern India. Barely five years into his reign,
the advancing horde and fled, abandoning the city. Lahore while playing polo in Lahore his horse tripped and rolled
was pillaged and sacked. Ghori seems not to have seen over. Aibak was caught under his mount with the raised
any strategic use for Lahore which he disregarded. Instead and hardened front part of the saddle crushing his ster-
num. He did not stand a chance. of the Mongols that had waited on the western horizon,
broke over Lahore three days before Christmas 1241.
Any child growing up in Lahore in the 1960s would have Lahore was unprepared. Its wall was in disrepair; Behram
known the dilapidated brick structure near the north end Shah’s governor for the city, the Turk Ikhtiyaruddin Kar-
of Anarkali bazaar as Aibak’s tomb. Some might have won- akash, commanded an ill-equipped force and there were
dered why a Sultan, supposedly great, had such shabby not enough provisions should a siege ensue. Kinsmen
treatment in death. Somewhere this thought appears to though they were, there was a simmering friction between
have resounded: in the 1980s the drab brick veneer was descendants of the Ghaznavids and those of the Ghorids
made over with marble, stucco and sandstone to look its who still held positions of power and city administration.2
part as a bygone ruler’s resting place.
Minhajuddin Siraj, the writer of Tabakat-i-Nasiri, complains

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Aibak was survived by three daughters and an adopted that the population was not of one mind and ‘did not
son, Aram Baksh, who rose to the throne as Aram Shah. harmonise together’. Worst of all, they were opposed to
And here began a long period of misfortune for the city of their governor Karakash and were unwilling to stand with
the divine Raja Loh, the son of Lord Rama. Aram Shah was him. Influential persons, probably the very ones whose
inept and, contrary to the dreams of its people, Lahore ancestors were among the three hundred who came
became a ping pong ball in a bloody three-way tussle forward with assistance for Xuanzang and his party just
213
between Tajuddin Yalduz, the very man who had tearfully six hundred years before, all being merchants, were away

The City that Loh Built

buried Muizuddin Ghori in Ghazni, Nasiruddin Kabacha travelling in Khorasan and further north. Ironically enough,
ruling over Multan and Sindh, and Shamsuddin Iyaltimish the traders were under protection of the Mongols poised
who was Sultan at Delhi. Interestingly, the last two were to sack their city.
both sons-in-law to the late Aibak. As each man took
his turn wresting the city from the other, innocent blood The horde crossed the Ravi and the walled city was girded
spilled freely in the streets of Lahore. by Mongol trebuchets in ‘a great number’ as they began to
pound the defences. In this crisis, there appears to have
That was not the end of it, however. Over the next three been a change of Lahori heart, because we now hear of
decades, even as the able Razia Sultana, daughter of a spirited resistance led by Karakash himself. Even as he
Shamsuddin Iyaltimish, rose to her brief stint in power, guided operations from the battlements, the man knew
peace did not return to Lahore. In 1240, she and her the approaching end was going to be disastrous for he
husband were killed in battle against her own brother Mui- was aware that preserving the city was beyond his power
zuddin Behram Shah and, the following year, the scourge and capacity.

2) Spelling of all personal names (Kutubuddin, Iyaltimish etc.) in this chapter follow Henry Raverty’s translation of Tabakat i Nasiri.
 The Tabakat-i-Nasiri tells us that Karakash came out staring into each other’s eyes. Since all the ‘infidels were
‘under the pretext of a night attack’, made a dash into the hell-bound’, it was only natural that the Muslims went the
sleeping Mongol camp killing many and losing some of his other way: ‘One company to heaven; one to the flaming
own troopers as well as his harem before fleeing east to fire’, Siraj quotes from the Quran.
Delhi. Minhajuddin Siraj was a loyal servant of the Turks, as
had been his father before him, and he habitually glossed As for Karakash, he had fled only as far as the near shore
over every action of his masters. Therefore it seems prob- of the Beas River when he received word of Mongol
able that Karakash made no attack but simply stole away withdrawal. He hurried back. And he was in a right haste
in the dark of night. Lahoris woke the following morning to retrace his steps for in their terrified flight, his ward-
to find their city bereft of its ragtag army. And so did the robe-keepers dumped a good deal of ‘pure gold, and
besiegers. As the Mongols poured into the city, something other valuables’ just outside Lahore. They had fortuitously
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

stirred in the collective Lahori heart and the streets ‘in marked the spot for later recovery. In the melee with com-
every quarter’ rang with the din of hand to hand combat. moners fleeing for their lives, no one had noticed the fresh
grave, incorrectly aligned, housing the treasure which was
Siraj celebrates two groups of ‘Musalmans’ for having duly restored to Karakash.
‘firmly grasped the sword’ and gallantly fighting to the
end. The leader of one of these groups was the heroic Ak The Mongols left Lahore a smouldering ruin. Siraj tells us
214
Sankar – White Falcon – the Turkish seneschal of Lahore, that it was after their withdrawal that the Khokhars – many
The City that Loh Built

equivalent to our deputy commissioner today. The other of whom still kept the old religion – and Gabrs (Fire-Wor-
group was led by Dindar Mohammad and his sons. The shippers) from outlying towns flocked into Lahore and set
man was no soldier, but a supplier of fodder for military to plundering and destroying what little was left of the
animals. All these men died in the fighting. city. As always the good Karakash got back just in time and
despatched the lot to hell. Then, perhaps fearing a Mongol
Siraj says thirty or forty thousand Mongol cavalry men with reflux, he immediately fled back to Delhi.
twice as many horses ‘went to hell’. It is surprising that
3

when it came to actual fighting, a population of disaf- Lahore may have suffered and remained in a ruinous state
fected Punjabi civilians and their Turkish overlords gave for nearly three decades after the Mongol strike, but
a heroic account of themselves for we are told that not Minhajuddin Siraj finds one silver lining in the sacking of
a single Mongol trooper was without an arrow, sword or Lahore. He records a ‘tradition of the ancients’ that when
other wound. Ak Sankar matched lances with his Mongol the ‘narrow-eyed should seize upon the universe’, their
counterpart, both mortally wounding the other, they died dominance will go on the decline after they reach Lahore.

3) We know that each Mongol cavalryman had a spare horse.

He claims that as a child of seven, he heard the imam of its fort was rebuilt. This was in 1266, a quarter century
Bukhara under whose tutelage he sudied, pray that may after the Mongols had departed.
God speedily send a Mongol army to Lahore.
In 1296, yet another Mongol inroad occurred under
It is not known if the imam had ever travelled to Lahore, Katlagh Khwaja. The Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi tells us that Delhi
but surely some Lahori trickster seems to have compre- being the objective of this campaign none of the territo-
hensively duped him, perhaps even in his native Bukhara, ries bordering the line of march were attacked. Lahore
for the man to hold such a cavil against Lahore. certainly lay on the route and was spared because it
had little to offer. The Khokhars continued to hold sway
Whatever the case, the fulfilment of the prophecy, accord- and from time to time rise up to vex imperial power then
ing to Siraj, was that Chengez Khan’s son Ogodai Bahadur seated in distant Delhi. The talented but cruel Mohammad

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

died within days of the sacking of the city. Sadly for the Tughlak was on the throne and about this time Alaul Mulk,
imam, however, Lahore’s misfortune did not bring Mongol his police superintendent, advised him to reduce contu-
power to an end. macious provinces to ‘such obedience that the name of
rebels should never be heard’. Lahore was included in the
Incidentally, Ogodai’s death was ignominious. Given to list of other Rajput controlled areas to be severely chas-
drinking in gross excess, his brother Chaghata Khan ap- tised.
215
pointed an intendant over him to see that alcohol stayed

The City that Loh Built

within a stipulated limit. But Chaghata was apparently not The great traveller Ibn Battuta was in our part of the world
a great judge of men for the overseer was soon party- in the 1330s, and he missed Lahore. He seemed to care
ing with the prince and may in fact have hastened royal little or nothing for the city and expressed no desire to
demise. see it. His only mention of Lahore was in connection with
a native of the city: Malik Qabula, the much-favoured Fly-
Meanwhile, back in Lahore, those who had managed to Whisk Bearer to Sultan Mohammad Tughlak. In those dec-
flee the massacre began to trickle in to rebuild their shat- ades, Multan, Depalpur, Uch and even the now provincial
tered city and lives. This was without support for Sultan little town of Tulamba were more prosperous and, there-
Abu’l Muzaffar Mahmud Shah, grandson of Iyaltimish, who fore, in the sights of Delhi monarchs and plunderers alike.
now sat on the throne at Delhi, had temporarily shifted his
focus to Rajasthan, Multan and Uch. For the next century The Barlas Turk Tamerlane who boasted that he had
and a half Lahore limped along in poverty and obscurity. two reasons for coming to India; one, to win merit in the
Sitting on an important ford of the Ravi, the only royal afterlife for waging jihad against infidels and, secondly, to
favour Lahore received in this period of adversity was that gain plunder which was ‘as lawful as their mothers’ milk
 to Musalmans who fight for their faith’, missed Lahore.4 ative peace and better administration of Bahlol Lodhi did
And thankfully so for we know well the rape and massacre Lahore come into eminence again. But now Babur, ousted
that Delhi suffered under his sword. However, in February from the land of his forefathers in the Fergana Valley was
1400, while in Kashmir, Tamerlane sent an expedition to partying in Kabul and Bamian even as he made explorato-
Lahore to arrest Malik Shaikha Khokhar. This man’s brother ry forays into Peshawar. Then, as he set his eyes on Delhi,
Nusrat was governor of Lahore who had shortly before he famously uttered words that have entered the common
been defeated and killed in battle against Tamerlane’s lexicon of our part of the subcontinent in the original Per-
forces. sian: Delhi is yet distant.

Shaikha was perhaps a tad more perspicacious than his Between Babur in Peshawar and Delhi in the east lay the
brother for he immediately submitted to the Turk and doabs of the five rivers of Punjab. And snuggling in the
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

waited upon him on his way to Delhi. But how long could a Bari, the doab between the Beas and Ravi, sat Lahore,
proud Rajput feign allegiance to an alien he considered an now fast becoming a jewel polished by six decades of
upstart savage. Soon wearying of the endless obeisance peace under the Lodhis.
and salaams demanded by the Barlas, Khokhar asked for
permission to return to Lahore.

216
The Tuzk e Timuri tells us that a party of Turks leaving Growing up in the city, I experienced a unique Lahori
The City that Loh Built

Tamerlane’s perambulatory court on their way back to persona exemplified by lively humour and jocularity. A
Samarkand was shown ‘no attention’ when they passed memory that refuses to leave me goes back to September
through Lahore. ‘The defection of Shaikha Khokhar had 1968. A friend and I, teenagers still, stood in the veranda
become clear’, wrote the Barlas. For this breach of deco- of Tollinton Market in downtown Lahore talking of the
rum by their governor, a sizeable ransom was levied on the mellowing post-monsoon weather. I remarked how the
struggling populace of Lahore. Shaikha was put in chains strength of the heat was ‘broken’. A man passing by over-
to be returned to the court and for sport to compensate heard, stopped and turned to us.
for the time spent on the expedition, on their way back ‘Yes. Broken it certainly is. It’s in two halves.’ He held up
the raiders plundered the country around Lahore. two fingers for emphasis, eyes wide with mock awe. ‘It’s
lying there on the far bank of the Ravi. I was just there to
Not until the middle of the fifteenth century and the rel- see the broken bits!’ Deadpan the man delivered his line,

4) It is another thing that infidel and Muslim were equal fodder for Tamerlane’s war machine. His humiliating treatment of fellow Muslim, the Ottoman Sultan
Beyazid I, who, after his defeat and capture, was borne around in a cage casts the perfect image of the brutal savage that Muslims now hail as a Champion
of the Faith. Among other infringements, one can also not forgive the wanton massacre of twenty thousand Muslims in Tulamba near Multan.
turned on his heel and walked off leaving the two of us in with so few repairers left in this age of disposables, I was
stitches. guided, after much asking around, to Chowk Old Anarkali.
With the footwear hooked in my fingers I stood on the
Even earlier, when I had first learned to cycle at age eight, pavement looking around.
I would pedal from our Durand Road home to the old city. ‘Bao ji!’ I heard someone call out. It was the man in the
The oldies sitting around chatting on the tharas – those milk shop. ‘You need to go there,’ he said pointing across
cement concrete ledges extending outward from the the busy street. There, in what was no bigger than a crack
buildings in the narrow streets – would spot me as an in the wall, sat a man surrounded by racks of old shoes.
outsider. They asked where I was from and what business
brought me to their part of town. Then, without fail, they For the first formative centuries of its life Lahore was
ordered lassi – buttermilk which came in a tall bronze repeatedly ravaged by outsiders. That should have left

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

tumbler – and kulchas – the delectably fluffy and scrump- its people brutalised. That did not happen. The spirit of
tious round bread sprinkled with sesame seeds served Lahore was extremely resilient. Lahore is accused by
on a piece of yesterday’s newspaper – steaming hot from natives of other cities of always having succumbed without
the clay oven. Their order to the tandoorchi was always to a fight. Though they did fight when the chips were down,
bake it red. Now, six decades later that is my instruction at their way of resistance was to keep the spirit alive. Surely,
the tandoor. even during the shortest peaceful interlude, Lahoris would
217
have reverted to their fun-loving ways. The humour, the

The City that Loh Built

Nowadays the oldies still hang around street corners the compassion and the fellow-feeling never left the soul of
same way and as I go past greeting them I half expect Lahore and are still a tangible part of the Lahori character.
to be stopped and offered the same fare. But I suppose This spirit has now been badly dented by the ingress of
another man their age no longer interests them. outsiders to whom the city is not the mother but a cour-
tesan to be used for their own advancement. Rubes from
Then there was the Lahori empathy. Long before life outlying villages, lacking the sophistication to understand
became all speeded up, anyone anywhere in Lahore the city’s ethos have taken over. In a word, Lahore has
looking lost, confused or worried would be approached become ruralised.
by a total stranger to be asked if everything was all right
and if they could be helped. Within seconds there would
be a dozen or more people crowding around. The person
would be given a drink and helped in every possible way. The foundation laid by Bahlol Lodhi had eroded by the
time of his grandson Ibrahim. In 1520, the sultan’s own
Several years ago, with a pair of shoes needing repair and governor of Lahore Daulat Khan Lodhi, a kinsmen to boot,
 treacherously invited Babur to take the city. Lahore fell side of Ravi dates from his time. As too does the Divan e
again, but thankfully not as violently as three centuries ear- Aam in Lahore Fort. The red granite and the Vedic iconog-
lier to the Mongols. It rose soon enough under a Mughal raphy on the balconies is noteworthy.
feudatory. In the decades of Lodhi reign, Lahore had
become a rich mercantile city and in 1525, while Babur I had my camera bag when I went looking. Just past the
was still in Balkh, his administrator in Lahore sent him trib- ticket booth where the man wanted to charge me the
ute in gold and silver coin equivalent to twenty thousand higher foreigner’s fee until I spoke in Punjabi, I was accost-
shahrukhis.5 ed by one of the several ‘guides’ hanging around. I took the
man aside and asked him about the tunnels that connect-
Although historically dubious, a desire attributed to Sher ed this fort with the one in Sheikhupura and with Red Fort
Shah Suri was to depopulate Punjab between the Indus in Delhi.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

and Lahore and replace indigenous peoples with Pakhtuns ‘The tunnels are there all right, but they go only a short
who would stand against the exiled Humayun should he ways before being blocked,’ he said, a picture of solemnity.
attempt a comeback. At the same time, Sher Shah is said
to have considered razing Lahore because a city as large The tunnels are ubiquitous. They are under every fort in
and prosperous sitting on a main artery into India would Pakistan and everyone knows of them. No matter how
always be lure and help to invaders. Doubtful as this bit hard one tries to convince believers that the Mughals
218
of history is, it must have been the gossip of Lahore in the simply had not mastered the art of tunnel building, they
The City that Loh Built

mid-sixteenth century because when Humayun did return continue to believe. Contemporary sources do not men-
in February 1554, he was accorded a resounding welcome tion any tunnels. On the other hand, they do tell us of the
by the ‘illustrious city of Lahore …. which is in fact a great troubles Mughal kings faced during journeys above ground
city of India’, so Akbar’s chronicler Abu’l Fazal tells us.6 in inclement weather. But this has zero effect on the
so-called guides and for them the tunnels remain firmly
Humayun might have considered repaying Lahore, but he hidden under the ramparts of our forts or any other his-
got no time for within the year he was dead. His son Akbar torical building. Having said that, I had always wondered
made the city a strong cantonment and a regular stopover where the inane stories originated. The truth dawned in
for the journey from the Afghan highlands to Agra which the course of research for the present work.
he preferred as a capital. The huge caravanserai that is
now part of Jahangir’s Quadrangle in Shahdara on the far The well-known Urdu magazine Naqoosh published in

5) In Babur’s time the shahrukhi, a silver coin, weighed 4.69 grams.

6) Clearly the fear of the city being razed was common in the Lahori mind for Abu’l Fazal tells us that the thought occurred not to Sher Shah but his
son Salim when he was in power.
1962 a Lahore Number, a detailed compendium of the city mosque of the time.7 Sitting under the shadow of the east
containing articles by various writers on its history, monu- gate of Lahore Fort, it was constructed during 1611-14 and
ments and persons connected with it. These articles had known as the Begum Shahi Mosque. Nowadays it is simply
all been published earlier in other journals and reportedly Mariam Zamani Masjid. For two decades after being built
edited by the learned historian S. M. Latif who died in it was the most ornate Muslim prayer house in Lahore
1902. In an article on Dara Shukoh we are told that after until it was outdone by the magnificent splendour of the
his defeat at Samugarh (near Agra) at the hands of his mosque of Wazir Khan who served under her grandson
younger brother Aurangzeb, the beaten prince repaired to Shah Jahan.
Lahore, his fief since long by a decree of Shah Jahan.

Here Dara Shukoh found refuge in Shalimar Gardens from

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

where, the Naqoosh story informs us, he ‘took the under-
ground tunnel to Lahore Fort to recover his treasures’
before fleeing to Sindh. There never was any subterranean
passage. The writer merely used his licence to add drama
to a story that needed no additional spice.

219
The trouble with these so-called guides is that they have
no idea of history and they take no pains to learn, nor too
are they regulated by any authority. With nothing else to
do, unemployed men, their only facility being glibness, take
on the role to fool unsuspecting tourists both local and Situated in the west side of the old city facing the fort, the Mariam Zam-
ani mosque vies with Wazir Khan’s mosque on the other side for beauty
foreign. Sadly, it is the local variety that falls for the stories
of its frescoes.
they are fed and the myths magnify basements to become
hundreds of kilometres long tunnels. In 1991, having read Lahore by S. M. Latif (published 1892),
some friends and I went looking for Mariam Zamani’s
For Akbar Lahore was just a way station, but his son mosque. The mosque, fronted by an open piazza, was
Jahangir made it his capital. While residing here Jahangir’s visible from the road passing under the east gate of the
mother Mariam Zamani (Mary of the Age) nee Manma- fort. In the open space, old men were sunning themselves
ti endowed to the city the most exquisitely decorated while some youngsters played cricket. The exterior was

7) Manmati, Akbar’s first wife (five more followed) who bore him Jahangir, was a daughter of Raja Bhagwandas of Amber in Rajasthan. Some
sources refer to her as Jodh Bai. I follow Dr Annemarie Schimmel (The Empire of the Great Mughals) and prefer Manmati.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

220
The City that Loh Built

Detail of the vault and spandrel of the main entrance to

the prayer chamber.
 221

from Landi Kotal to Wagah The City that Loh Built

Main prayer chamber of Mariam Zamani mosque.
 drab bricks, and the frescos inside were frayed and fading restorers has done a job to be celebrated: they have rec-
with very few bits left intact. The mosque seemed to be reated the entire original from only a few surviving scraps.
in disuse; the three bays of its prayer chamber littered Clearly, when there is the will, there are experts in the
with wind-blown debris and pigeon droppings. If memory field who can bring back a building from near demise.
serves, there was a plaque on one of the walls saying, in
English, that the building had been used as an orphanage Manmati or Mariam Zamani who, according to Schimmel,
in the 1880s. was one of ‘the most influential women’, did not convert
to Islam. That she ordered a mosque as beautiful as this
Fast forward to 2019 and the mosque is no longer visible shows that Akbar’s attempt at religious integration was
from the road where they sell used tyres and rims in make- working to some extent. But that was the past and as
shift kiosks. The open square was now choc-a-bloc with they say the past is another country. As we were leaving I
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

cubicles selling cheap footwear, leaving a narrow lane to stopped at one of the shoe stores pretending to check out
reach the mosque. One wonders where the old men now the wares. The salesman did not know what the mosque
sun themselves. Inside, the mosque façade was scribbled was called. I told him not only the name of the mosque
with electric cables and metal fixtures hammered into but that the builder was a Hindu. That Akbar had married
the frescoed mortar as anchors for canvas shamianas to her when she was Manmati or, as some say, Jodh Bai, and
shelter worshippers from the sun. However, the frescos titled her Mariam Zamani.
222
in the arch of the main entrance were clearly redone. A ‘How can that be?’
The City that Loh Built

thoughtless scrawl of a couple of wires right across them ‘That was. And that too was once this country,’ I said and
marred their beauty. left hoping he would reflect.

The interior was a rhapsody of colour and form, resplend- On the far side of the old city, the gate facing east is Delhi
ent and radiant, that defies description. Having seen Darwaza. Inside it is the jewel of Lahore that outshone
dozens of attempts at ‘restoration’ that have only ruined Mariam Zamani’s mosque. Shah Jahan’s most reliable
what once was, I was in a state of ecstasy. For a moment I Hakim Ilmuddin became associated with him during his
thought these were the original that had dimmed only in early youth when he was yet Prince Khurram. Quickly
my three decade-old memory and that they had always Ilmuddin rose in trust and rank to be titled Wazir Khan.
been like this. As Shah Jahan’s physician and governor of Lahore, he
endowed the city with the mosque inside Delhi Gate that
Azeem corrected me. The mosque had never been out bears his name to this day.
of use. It was very likely undergoing restoration when
my friends and I visited. It is remarkable that the team of A walk through narrow alleyways, once lined by houses
three hundred years old and ornate with carved bay In my estimation Wazir Khan’s mosque is matched in
windows and doors to die for, is now a good deal more beauty by only one other mosque and that in distant
modern – and uglier – with steel fixtures instead of the old Thatta. As Prince Khurram, Shah Jahan had revolted
timber. Façades with colourful bathroom tiles are fre- against his father Jahangir and found refuge for a short
quently seen. Despite all the mindless vandalism, it is yet a while in this Sindhi town where he was generously treated
delightful walk ending at Delhi Darwaza of the old ram- by the local ruler. The beholden emperor’s offering to his
parts. The attraction on the way is Lahori street food. erstwhile hosts is now one of the most magnificent monu-
ments of Sindh.
Here men with weak flesh but a bucking spirit can still buy
‘snake oil’ – actually oil extracted from the sanda (Saara
hardwickii) or Hardwicke’s spiny-tailed lizard, a native of

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

the subcontinent’s arid regions. To underline authenticity
the so-called medicine man has a number of lizards on
display, alive but cruelly immobilised with broken spines.
There is also a choice of luridly coloured capsules whose
efficacy the seller exhibits by lifting them with a magnet.
‘Pure iron’, he assures men of the weak flesh. And in these
223
lanes traditional medicine men practice formulas ‘per-
fected five hundred years ago by a grandsire who was a
master hakim’. That medical science has moved ahead
with new discoveries made in these intervening centuries
makes no difference to the hakims or to their customers. Gateway leading into the courtyard of Wazir Khan’s mosque

Mostly sexagenarians, the users generally end up in urol- Built between 1634 and 1641, Wazir Khan’s mosque, an ar-
ogy wards, their kidneys demolished by mercury, arsenic chetypal example of later Mughal architecture, sits above
and lead that constitute the base of these magic potions. the fourteenth century burial of Mohammad Ishaq, pop-
ularly known as Miran Badshah. The subterranean burial
Somewhere in these lanes there was a medicine man accessible by a flight of stairs lies on the south side of the
that Shoaib Hashmi, teacher of economics, but an invet- ablution tank. Three decades ago, a somewhat aggressive
erate Lahori wit and story-teller, had discovered about sort of attendant would exhort visitors to the mosque to
three decades ago. The sign outside the establishment first go into the burial chamber and do obeisance, calling
announced: Haemorrhoids and other Diseases of the Eye down divine wrath on those who refused. Heaven help the
cured here! I failed to find him, however. person accompanied by white friends. The harangue was
 224
from Landi Kotal to Wagah Chapter Name
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
225

The City that Loh Built

As governor of Lahore, Wazir Khan could scarcely have done better
than gifting the city this exquisitely beautiful mosque.
 then to convert them to the one and only true faith and
win a place in paradise. Today the attendants are friendly.

Wazir Khan was a man who can only be termed decent; a

meticulous man who would not leave anything to chance
and possible wrangling after his death. The land for the
mosque, its construction and exquisite adornment were all
paid for by his ‘best earned’ wealth. His will explicitly laid
down how the mosque and its officials, including the imam,
two theological teachers and the muezzin, were to be
maintained from the income of the shops lined along the
outside wall. As one climbs up the stairs of the high plinth
one sees small cubicles on either side in the veranda along
the east wall. These, Wazir Khan’s will records, were meant
for book-binders and booksellers of religious works.

The fine Persian calligraphy bordering the main entrance

reads, as translated by S. M. Latif:

In the cornfield of this world, O well-conducted

man, whatever is sown by man, is reaped by him
in the world to come,
In your dealings, then, have a good foundation in
the world,
For all have to pave their way to heaven through
this gateway at last.

Like so many other monuments, this priceless building was

falling into ruin. In the first decade of the current century,
with funding from the Aga Khan Development Network,
Detail of frescoes and honeycomb in Wazir Khan’s mosque. the mosque has been made over with such meticu-
lous care that the ghost of Wazir Khan would surely be the marble pavilion of Huzuri Bagh.
pleased. Indeed, the entire area known as Chowk Wazir
Khan has a new look. A nearby street once lined with tall, Before the pavilion was raised, this quadrangle housed
crumbling buildings is now a pleasant walkway. a caravanserai which from available descriptions seems
more of a military barracks than an inn for common travel-
In the late 1980s, architect and historian Kamil Khan lers. Exiting from the Alamgiri Gateway of the fort, it was
Mumtaz wrote an erudite piece on interpreting the archi- through this garden that Aurangzeb passed into his grand
tecture and frescoes of Wazir Khan’s mosque. The cube- mosque at prayer times in right regal pomp. The hundreds
shaped entrance chamber symbolises the temporal while of soldiers who lined the route seemed ‘great and royal’
the dome above represents the celestial. In the transition to Françios Bernier, the French physician to Aurangzeb.
from the worldly to the everlasting, ‘fruits of every kind on The Frenchman does not comment on the incongruity of

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

silver platters, the pitchers of wine and trees in pairs’ are according such pageantry to worship – the supreme act of
clear references to the Quranic paradise. Among other humble submission to the Maker.
symbols, Mumtaz sees in the stately cypress the perfect
man. Its top bent to one side as if in a breeze, we are told The marble pavilion is now a single-storey building on a
is sign of submission to God. plinth with five doorways on each façade. Ornate and
aesthetically pleasing it occupies the centre of a garden
227
In March 1860, vicerene Charlotte Canning entered laid out on Aurangzeb’s order. Photographs from the early

The City that Loh Built

Lahore through Delhi Gate. She thought the streets ‘so part of the twentieth century show an equally lavish but
narrow that the elephants almost swept the sides full of smaller pavilion on the flat roof. The topping fell off in a
people’ was a sight ‘really beautiful’. The houses were severe storm in the summer of 1932; some say because of
illuminated with oil lamps and every window faces ‘all so the force of the wind, others make it a victim of a lightning
merry & good humoured’. The vicerene conceded that strike.
she had ‘never seen such a crowd in India or heard such a
noise’. Azeem had a story to tell. It was here that Shah Shuja, the
Saddozai prince of Afghanistan, then in exile in Lahore,
Back at the west gate of the fort, Azeem spoke of Aurang- was tricked by Ranjit Singh into giving over the Kohinoor
zeb Alamgir’s grandiose Badshahi Mosque fronting the diamond embezzled less than a century earlier from the
gate and once the largest mosque in Pakistan. In 1986, the moribund Moghuls by Nadir Shah, the ruler of Persia.
brand new Faisal Mosque of Islamabad stole this glory. In Knowing that the Afghan kept the diamond concealed in
the grassy quadrangle between the mosque and the lofty his turban, the wily Sikh suggested the two exchange their
gateway of the fort known as the Alamgiri Darwaza, sits headgear to cement their brotherly ties. Shuja demurred
 and Ranjit feigned offence. Why, Shuja enjoyed asylum it around in front of his single eye. Then he gave it to a
in Lahore, and yet was showing lack of faith. Finding no courtier of his who had seen the diamond earlier. Satisfied
way out, Shah Shuja made over his turban and the biggest that it was the real thing, the Kohinoor was re-wrapped.
diamond the world had ever seen to the Punjabi. The Maharaja got up ‘and without a word of thanks or fare-
well, hurried out of the room’, writes Khushwant Singh.
Historian and writer Khushwant Singh has a slightly differ-
ent version in Ranjit Singh: Maharaja of the Punjab. Wafa The marble pavilion of Huzuri Bagh was ordered by Ranjit
Begum, Shah Shuja’s senior wife, petitioned Ranjit Singh Singh that same year as a triumphal symbol of regaining
to secure her husband’s release from Kashmir and subse- the jewel for India. It was completed in three years, the
quent safety from the inimical Barakzais. As recompense stone, it is said, appropriated from earlier Mughal build-
for this favour, she offered the famed diamond. The need- ings. If that actually is the case, Ranjit Singh’s architects
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

ful was done, Shuja was delivered to his wife in Lahore would have first checked out existing buildings, measured
and the couple accorded housing in the lavish Mubarak their worked stone slabs and then to that exact size,
Haveli. No sooner had that been done that Ranjit Singh’s designed their own baradari of fifteen doorways. Unlikely
messenger demanded the diamond. that might be, but it would not have been a difficult job.

Wafa Begum denied the couple held the diamond saying it The lovely garden around Ranjit Singh’s baradari was a
228
had earlier been pawned in Kandahar. Sensing subterfuge, place of great artistic and intellectual foment until 2003
The City that Loh Built

Ranjit offered a token payment of three hundred thousand or the year after. I first experienced the thrill of live Pun-
rupees together with an annual stipend of fifty thousand. jabi poetry recitals here in 1987 entirely by chance. One
When this did not work, the couple who had been royal wintry Friday morning I went to the old city for a round
guests until then were placed under house arrest. To fur- of photography and at about nine ended up at Huzuri
ther pressure the hapless Shuja, Ranjit ordered the family’s Bagh. It was crowded with people, mostly men, who sat
daily ration supply to be cut drastically. Shuja eventually in groups. Here was one group listening to a rendering of
capitulated. Waris Shah’s epic love poem Heer, there another rapt in
the words of Mirza Saheban and yet another swaying to
On the first day of June 1813, the Maharaja, followed by the rhythm of the poetry of Shah Hussain of Lahore all
six hundred cavalrymen, rode out to Mubarak Haveli to performed.
receive the diamond. After the usual round of greeting
and asking after each other’s welfare, the diamond was Here, for the first time in my life, I also became acquainted
brought out on Shah Shuja’s order. Ranjit Singh undid the with the nineteenth century Jangnama of Shah Moham-
bundle of expensive cloth and took out the stone turning mad. This epic ballad celebrates the cross-religious cohe-
sion that once existed in Punjab and which was effectively suffered three strokes. The last in June 1838 rendered him
dismantled by British rulers. incapable of speech. Only his trusted hakim, Fakir Syed
Azizuddin could understand what the waning monarch
Huzuri Bagh was a place where Punjabi literature and cul- said – and that with considerable difficulty. By June the
ture were celebrated. The congregations, I later found out, following year, it was clear that the Lion of Punjab was on
were entirely spontaneous and that they had never been his way out. Meanwhile, the pundits continued to milk him
formally organised. In the beginning it was only a few men by suggesting a ‘continuance of liberal grants’ for the best
who came on the weekly holiday to recite and celebrate. effect on the dying man’s health.
Over time, the audiences began to grow until it became
the very festival I saw in 1987. Around the third week of June 1839, Maharaja Ranjit Singh
complained of aching knees and pain behind his single

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

I was not an avid or regular goer to this event, but was eye. There was sudden onset of high fever together with
deeply saddened when in the early part of this century, violent epistaxis, typical signs of dengue fever. It was the
the city administration banned the weekly (now on Sun- man’s iron will and constitution that kept him going until 26
days) gathering. The pretext was security. The only regular, June when he went into coma. The following day he had
and spontaneous, event in the entire province that intro- passed away into his long night. As with Alexander, so too
duced young and old alike to their language and literature with Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the empire died as his last rites
229
was prohibited. were being performed.

The City that Loh Built

Maharaja Ranjit Singh was cremated in Lahore and his
ashes went to the Ganges River, but the gleaming white
and gold vault separated by the old Roshnai Darwaza from Ranjit Singh stands accused of having pilfered marble
the Huzuri Bagh baradari celebrates him in death. In the from earlier Mughal buildings to raise his pavilion in Huzuri
cool and silent interior a Garanthi (Reciter of the Sikh holy Bagh and other buildings. In Lahore, S. M. Latif tells us the
book, Granth Sahib) fans the book. Second only to the marble came from the tomb of Zebun Nisa, Aurangzeb
holy buildings connected with Guru Nanak Dev, the Ma- Alamgir’s eldest daughter who, by one source, was original-
haraja’s Samadhi is the finest Sikh edifice in Pakistan. The ly named Zebinda Begum. Born in 1639, she grew up into
foliated arches, the bay windows, the miniature replica of a very attractive tall and slim woman. Educated, very er-
the fort’s Naulakha Pavilion, and the parade of domelets udite and a gifted poet, she had delightful wit that shines
along the parapet with the corner cupolas repeated on through her verse even for one only marginally acquainted
every façade create a delicate and pleasing effect. with the Persian she wrote in. There are examples, too, of
Between 1835 and his end four years later, the Maharaja her facility with the clever repartee – sometimes in verse.
 From her half a million rupees annual stipend, she raised grills and frescoes fading and marred by graffiti was a den
an elaborate garden with tanks, fountains and walkways for junkies.
which she gifted to her favourite attendant Mian Bai. The
garden is today a warren of narrow streets discordant with The ruin was reclaimed by the Department of Archaeol-
the din of traffic and housing that is offensive because of ogy in 2014. The marble could not be brought back from
its tastelessness. Only Chauburji, the imposing gateway Huzuri Bagh but whatever else occurred came straight
leading into the lost garden, remains as a famous landmark from some good heart. Red stone grills were crafted and
of Lahore. This too now hidden from view because of the affixed in the gaping openings. The few floor tiles that still
raised metro train track passing right in front of it. remained in place were replicated and the floor rendered
complete. Best of all was the restoration of the frescoes.
South of this garden, Zebun Nisa ordered a chunky build- The place has been cleaned out, the cenotaph now cov-
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

ing tastefully decorated with worked white marble and ered with the green velvet sheet reserved for the burial of
precious stones. It was surrounded by a garden, fountains, Muslim saints.
water tanks and pavilions. This was to be her mausoleum
and when she passed away in 1669, from a very young life Feigning ignorance and using masculine terminology, I
(she was just thirty), she was interred under the ornate asked whose burial it was.
dome. Munshi Mohammadudin writing at about the same ‘Princess Zebun Nisa, sir. She was a daughter of Aurang-
230
time as S. M. Latif, tells us that a certain Mohkamuddin zeb Alamgir,’ said Zahid, the young attendant from the
The City that Loh Built

Arain in the service of Sobha Singh of Lahore (and an as- Department of Archaeology.
sociate of Ranjit Singh’s) destroyed the waterworks around ‘Have we turned her into a saint where people pray for
the tomb and removed the marble fittings to be sold. sons and wealth?’
Since sources say it was the marble of this building used, ‘Not yet. Some people do come to offer up prayers. I think
in part, on the Huzuri Bagh pavilion, one wonders if the they only do the Fateha,’ he replied with a smile.8
shrewd Mohkamuddin made some money from the pillage.
Zahid had been with the department only two years and
In the 1990s, Zebun Nisa was a forgotten princess. In life, he simply shrugged when I commented on the encroach-
her nom de plume was Makhfi – the Hidden or Unknow- ing housing. We were joined by a man in his sixties. Imtiaz
able. In death, she became just that: few locals knew who Hussain Shirazi had been a teacher in Quetta where he
lay buried under the brick sarcophagus, even fewer visited was injured in a terrorist attack several years ago. He lifted
the tomb close to the bus stop of Chhapar – stagnant his shirt and showed me the vertical scar on his abdomen.
pond. The building with its peeling plaster, broken stone He lives in a recently built house that takes up a corner

8) Fateha – The Opening – is the first chapter of the Quran. It is recited at burials.
of what was once the garden of Zebun Nisa. I asked him tasked with restoring several crumbling heritage buildings,
about the sort of people who visited the tomb. tells us of Mohalla (precinct) Dai Anga where Mughal
‘Dervishes like you and I. No one else. Zebun Nisa is not nobility lived in the seventeenth century. As Mughal power
known to many.’ If he was aware that his house occupies a waned, the area was walled and gated to keep marauders
part of the princess’s garden, he feigned complete igno- at bay. But precious little that did; the onslaught continued
rance. and over time residents moved away. In the early nine-
teenth century, European travellers passing en route to
Shalimar Gardens noted the desolation of this area, then a
suburb of the city, and wrote that Lahore was clearly a rich
I had digressed in geographical terms. Back in Chowk and splendid metropolis in the not so distant past.
Wazir Khan, Azeem and I set off east along the Grand
Trunk Road. We rolled past the majestic crenelated and About two decades before it came to be known as Mohal-
fortified railway station, less that more of a well-defended la Dai Anga, the area was famous for Gulabi Bagh – Rose
castle. When Raj engineers designed this building the Garden. Laid out by Mirza Sultan Baig, a Persian nobleman
thought foremost in their minds was to overawe natives of the ruling Safvi family, who immigrated to India on the
with the power of the Crown. Surely, in the first few years invitation of his cousin Ghiyasud Din holding office in the
it must have served the purpose rather well and one won- court of Shah Jahan. More importantly, Ghiyasud Din was
ders if in the early years of the railway ordinary Punjabis also married to the king’s daughter Sultan Begum. The
would even have ventured anywhere near the station,
much less on to its platforms.

Just before the University of Engineering and Technology,

left of the road, stands the domed building that until the
early 1990s was in the middle of large unkempt grounds.
Now it had a steel gate guarded by a man from the De-
partment of Archaeology. A narrow paved lane leads to
the old mausoleum of Dai Anga set in the back. Here too
the protected status came a tad too late: housing has en-
croached upon the surrounding garden (government land)
and all but swamped a heritage site.
The civil engineer Kanhaya Lal, who wrote his Tarikh e
Lahore (History of Lahore) in the 1870s and who was also A decorative panel from the entrance of Dai Anga’s tomb.
 Tomb of Dai Anga.
232
from Landi Kotal to Wagah The City that Loh Built
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
233

The City that Loh Built

Detail of frescos on the façade of the gateway.
 garden was no longer extant in the late nineteenth century the rifle burst killing the hunter on the spot. The poor man
when Kanhaya Lal and Latif wrote; all that remained was got to enjoy his Gulabi Bagh for just two years for he died
its ornate gateway which exists to this day. In Latif’s words: his horrible death in 1657.

This picturesque gateway is remarkable for the Dai Anga’s real name was Zeb un Nisa and she was the
profusion and excellence of its coloured pottery daughter of a Mughal official in the court of Jahangir who
and enamelled frescoes, which are as vivid, and earned the dai (midwife or nurse) prefix for being the wet

the decorations as perfect, as when they were nurse of the infant prince Khurram (later Shah Jahan). As

made. she aged, Dai Anga became a woman of substantial wealth

who gained considerable clout with the king. On her
The description rings true to this day. The vertical and request, Shah Jahan arranged for her to travel to Arabia
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

horizontal brick margins that separate the mosaic panels for the Haj.
are the only element in the façade of the gateway that has
been restored. Inside, the frescos of the domed ceiling Set a little way behind the Gulabi Bagh gateway sits
have been faithfully redone. All else on the exterior, the the domed tomb of Dai Anga where she shares her last
flowing calligraphy, the sensuous curvi-linear forms and repose with her foster daughter Sultan Begum. If there
the blossoming plants, whether potted in fancy urns or were ever sarcophagi to mark the subterranean burials,
234
sprouting from the earth, are as when the artist, having laid they have long since been lost and replaced by rectan-
The City that Loh Built

the last brush stroke, stood back to regard his masterpiece gular markers of modern tiles. Interestingly, the tomb is
three and a half centuries ago. referred to as Dai Anga’s and not as that of princess Sultan
Begum’s.
Latif adds that the name Gulabi Bagh was also the chron-
ogram for the laying out of the garden which gives us the Raised in 1671, the domed building is still an eye-catch-
Hijri year 1066 or 1655 of the Common Era. The writer ing sight. The dome ripples with blue chevron patterns
appends an interesting little episode to his description of representing flowing water, a much favoured adornment in
Gulabi Bagh gateway. Ghiyasud Din prevailed upon the the later Mughal period. On the corners of the rectangu-
king for the appointment of Sultan Baig as Admiral of the lar building stand miniature domed and pillared pavilions
Fleet. Now, the admiral was an avid hunter to whom the whose once bright frescoes have faded almost to oblivion.
emperor presented an English rifle. Eager to test it out, Much of the decoration of the dome is gone, but around
Sultan Baig betook himself and the firearm to the hunt- the parapet, especially on the eastern façade, there runs
ing ground of Hiran Minar outside Sheikhupura. It is not a lovely frieze of orange and white merlons stylised into
known what fortunate animal he had in his gunsight when floral shape. The orange being right side up, the white the
other way. and looking at the scarred and pitted face of the building
it seems to have been a case of wanton vandalism.
As Azeem and I admired the excellent restoration work
in the interior of Gulabi Bagh gateway, we lamented the Gulab Singh Bhawandia, Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s artillery
extent of surrounding encroachment. Since 1990, hous- commander, used the main building as arsenal. The still
ing around the heritage site has mushroomed so greatly beautifully ornate entrance, now barred and looking into
that the dome of Dai Anga’s tomb is no longer visible as the railway workshop, served as residence for a colonel
one approaches it along the Grand Trunk Road. All that of the Sikh army. The glazed tilework here is comparable
remains of the once grand garden laid out by Sultan Baig to that on the Gulabi Bagh gateway and despite centuries
is something over an acre of a manicured lawn. of neglect, the blues, greens, oranges and reds are still
brilliant.

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Common folks’ cue to occupy heritage sites very likely
came from what Raj officers themselves did. Fly six hun- S. M. Latif waxes all praise for Ali Mardan Khan: ‘… the
dred metres due south of Dai Anga’s tomb and you find great Canal Engineer, who constructed the canal whereby
the imprisoned tomb of Ali Mardan Khan who we first met the waters of the Ravi were conducted to Lahore..’. He
in Peshawar for the lovely villa he built there. I say ‘impris- also refers to him as ‘the designer of the Versailles of the
oned’ because the tomb is now surrounded by the high Panjab, as the Shalimar gardens are called’. Latif had a se-
235
walls topped with barbed wire protecting the country’s rious lapse of learning in the case of Ali Mardan Khan. For

The City that Loh Built

most elaborate railway workshop at Mughalpura. The only starters, he had nothing to do with the designing of the
access to the heritage building is by a long and narrow Shalimar, as anyone reading the sign outside the garden
alleyway walled in from both sides and roofed with iron will know it.
bars to prevent ingress to the workshops. The alley can be
entered from a barely noticeable door on the nameless As for Ali Mardan being Latif’s ‘great Canal Engineer’, a
road leaving the Grand Trunk Road opposite Singhpura critical reading of the Shah Jahan Nama clearly shows
bus stop to head south for Mughalpura. that the man was every bit a trickster. Since Babur’s es-
tablishment of the Mughal dynasty in India, Kandahar had
Kanhaya Lal says this was the tallest mausoleum in the city been in Mughal hands. In 1609, when Jahangir was on the
of Lahore and that he had the responsibility of restoring throne, after a short spell of disturbance and subterfuge,
it structurally. He laments the rape of this once beautiful Shah Abbas, the Safavi monarch of Persia, annexed the
monument by Sikh soldiery who ‘heartlessly’ removed the southern part of what is now called Afghanistan.
coloured sandstone facing of the octagonal façade. He This rankled greatly with Jahangir and after him his son
does not tell us where the stone was used subsequently Shah Jahan who considered ownership of Kandahar as a
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

236
The City that Loh Built

The forgotten tomb of the princess who called herself

Makhfi – the Hidden. Aurangzeb’s daughter Zeb un Nisa
was a cultivated poet given to the Sufi way.
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
237

The City that Loh Built

Tomb of Malik Hussain titled Khan e Jahan Bahadar Zafar Jang and
popularly known as Bahadar Khan was once faithful to Shah Jahan.
He switched sides when Aurangzeb’s star rose and became the man to
arrest Dara Shukoh from far away Dhadar in Balochistan. Upon Bahadar
Khan’s death, Aurangzeb ordered this grand mausoleum for his loyal
courtier. But the emperor passed away before its completion and the
tomb remains as it was in 1707.
 familial right. But neither was able to recover the distant in vogue. As the original was in the process of being writ-
Afghan town. In 1629, the aged Shah Abbas Safavi died ten by Lahori, it was read out to the emperor by the trust-
after a rule of forty-two years, a crazed man who in his last ed prime minister Saadullah Khan. We are told that from
days had blinded and murdered his own sons out of sheer time to time, the emperor ordered alterations. The book
envy. On his deathbed, he bequeathed his kingdom to his thus had royal approval and can safely be relied upon.
grandson Safi Mirza who took the throne as Shah Safi. He
turned out to be no less paranoid than the late king and The chronicle tells us that Ali Mardan ‘became apprehen-
embarked upon a murderous spree that lasted the thir- sive on his own account, and perceived that his only safety
teen years of his reign during which he killed his siblings lay in allying himself to His Majesty’s threshold’. To cut a
and cousins, both male and female, by the dozen. An equal long story short, even before Shah Safi could mobilise
number of his late grandfather’s ministers and generals too forces, armies from Multan, Bhakkar and Sibi under the
tasted the executioner’s blade on Safi’s orders. command of able and trusted Mughal generals were has-
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

tened to the imperilled city’s relief. The Persians capitulat-

At this time, Ali Mardan Khan, a man of Turkish descent ed and so, in early 1638, after a hiatus of twenty-nine years
from the tribe Zik, had been governor at Kandahar for Kandahar and all of eastern and southern Afghanistan
a number of years. Done with the nearer ones who he once again became a Mughal holding. The winner of this
perceived as threat to his crown, Safi sent summons for triumph was Saeed Khan whose gumption and diplomatic
238 Ali Mardan to present himself at Isfahan to kiss the royal acumen took full advantage of Ali Mardan’s insecurities.
threshold. This only meant that his blood too would colour
The City that Loh Built

the execution block. The wily man knew well enough how In November 1638, Ali Mardan Khan arrived in Lahore for
Shah Jahan coveted Kandahar and quickly shot off a letter the ‘honour of saluting the imperial threshold’. His offering
to Saeed Khan, the governor of Peshawar that, in the to His Majesty was a thousand gold mohurs. In return a
words of the Shah Jahan Nama ‘expressed his devoted greatly beholden Shah Jahan lavishly presented him with
loyalty to the crown and his anxious desire to surrender a robe of honour, a gold-embroidered vest, a bejewelled
the fortress of Qandahar (sic) to His Majesty’s servants’. turban ornament, similarly ornate sword and dagger, two
horses with expensive jewelled saddles and four ele-
Before we go on, a word on the chronicle and its writer phants. He also made over for Ali Mardan’s residence the
would be in order. Inayat Khan was Shah Jahan’s chief late prime minister Itimadud Daula’s mansion. The man was
librarian whose father Zafar Khan, a general in the Mughal given command of six thousand infantry and cavalry while
army, served as governor of Kashmir and Thatta. Inayat his retainers received honours and gratuities commensu-
Khan abridged the original three-volume Padshahnama of rate with their status. Shah Jahan was falling over himself
Abdul Hamid Lahori retaining the florid style then so much pampering the man whose loyalty, doubtful as the king
perceived it, he was yet keen to purchase and retain. him to pass both summer and winter in perfect ease and
comfort by changing his residence from one province to
There were clearly undercurrents that the writers of flat- another’.
tering hyperbole did not find fit to be aired for two weeks
later Ali Mardan received more honours: ten bales of fine
Bengal muslin and half a million rupees in cash. Again, a
month later, Ali Mardan received a jewelled pandan (betel
leaf box) and an enamelled salver with nine cups. Two
weeks later, another gift of eighteen Arab horses, thirty
Baloch camels, twenty piebald ponies of Bengal and an
unspecified number of gold and jewelled articles filled Ali
Mardan’s already bursting coffers.

Having never been in Punjab before, Ali Mardan yet knew

of the furnace summer heat of Lahore. In November 1638,
as Shah Jahan was lavishing gifts on him, the man invei-
gled a posting as governor of Kashmir with permission to The ornate gateway to Ali Mardan’s tomb and the garden that once was.
remain in Lahore until the end of the winter. Interestingly, During Sikh rule, a military officer used this building as a residence. Now
it stands between the tomb and Railway Workshop, Mughalpura.
the chronicler Inayat Khan’s father Zafar was the governor
at Srinagar at this time. In March 1639, Ali Mardan ‘after
I see just a hint of resentment in Inayat Khan’s words
being loaded with favours’ was sent off to Kashmir while
when his own father was transferred to distant and rather
Zafar Khan was recalled to Lahore.
insalubrious Thatta in the Indus Delta. But the grasping Ali
Mardan was not satisfied with what he had. Inayat Khan
As the year drew to a close, Ali Mardan was summoned
writes:
to the court at Lahore. Here he presented his usual one
thousand gold mohurs, in return receiving several fold
In these days [November 1639], Ali Mardan Khan
more in gifts. Also his rank was increased with the addi-
tion of another thousand foot and cavalry, making him a represented to His Majesty that there was an

haft-hazari or seven-thousander. Inayat Khan does not tell engineer in his service who possesses eminent skill

us how it came to pass, but only that the crafty Ali Mardan in the art of constructing canals, and that he had
was given the governorship of the Punjab even as he was proposed to undertake the excavation of one that
persuaded to retain his Kashmir office. ‘[T]hus allowing would supply water to the suburbs of the capital.
 240
from Landi Kotal to Wagah The City that Loh Built
 from Landi Kotal to Wagah
241

The City that Loh Built

The brutally vandalised tomb of Ali Mardan Khan was once covered with
marble and colourful frescoes. While the former was plundered by the
Sikhs for use elsewhere, of the latter only remaining bits can be seen in
the vaults above the entrances. The subterranean burial is visited by folks
in the belief that Ali Mardan was a saint. The gateway to the tomb garden
is seen in the left background.
 Accordingly, one lakh of rupees, which was the On the last day of October 1642, Shalimar Gardens with
sum estimated for the project, was delivered over all its different levels, tanks and fountains was complete.
to the said Khan; whereupon the engineer com- Shah Jahan visited and was delighted to see the work.

menced excavations for the canal at a point where But, writes Inayat Khan:

the river flowing to Lahore breaks through the

hills into the level country, and which is about 50 As a sufficient stream of water did not flow from

imperial kos distant from the city.9 the canal which had been completed under the
direction of Ali Mardan Khan’s servants at a cost
With the hundred thousand rupees in his pocket, Ali
of one lakh of rupees, another lakh of rupees was
Mardan, master of the artifice, managed to get himself
made over at different times to the engineers, in
posted to Kabul. It goes without saying that he was seen
order that the water might be made to flow with
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

off from royal presence loaded down with more precious

the required volume. It chanced that through bad
gifts.
judgement, the engineers wasted fifty thousand
rupees of this sum to no purpose in trying to
Meanwhile, in June 1641 Inayat Khan relays to us that
improve the old canal. Ultimately, at the suggestion
the canal that Ali Mardan’s servant had been digging was
of several learned specialists who possessed great
nearing Lahore. In his almost childish excitement, Shah
242 engineering skill, use was made of only five kos of
Jahan ordered, just outside Lahore, the laying out of a
The City that Loh Built

lavish garden that the canal would water. Royal architects the canal line laid out by Ali Mardan Khan’s men;

and engineers were directed to choose the site not far and a new channel of 32 kos long was excavated,
from the fort and on the banks of the canal that was by which a plentiful supply of water reached the
promising to bring water to Lahore. The site having been garden without any impediment.
selected, work began ‘in a lucky moment’ on the twelfth
day of June 1641. Apparently an old disused canal bed existed which Ali
Mardan’s so-called engineers wanted to utilise to save
One wonders where our historian of Lahore, S. M. Latif money. That did not work, however, and when skilled en-
got news of Ali Mardan being the ‘designer’ of the Lahore gineers came into play only five kos of the original excava-
Versailles for at this time, even as his proposed canal tion was useful and a whole new dig of about one hundred
threatened to reach Lahore, the man was miles away and twenty kilometres had to be made. Ali Mardan’s men
lording it over Kabul in summer and Peshawar in winter. had not a clue about canal digging; they were clearly only
fooling around.

9) The given distance would equal about 200 kilometres.

As Ali Mardan was now alternating between Kabul and to be named after a man who comes across clearly as
Peshawar and rendering useful service against insurgents a fraudster. Other than a voracious appetite for lucre, a
and trouble-makers in the Afghan highlands, Shah Jahan goodly store of guile and notable martial skills, Ali Mardan
pampered him some more: he asked no questions about Khan has nothing to show for himself as a civil engineer.
misappropriation of canal funds, but apprehensive of He found a king gullible and keen to retain his loyalty
losing his doubtful loyalty, titled the grasping trickster Amir and Ali Mardan milked the opportunity to the end. Still it
ul Umara – Lord of Lords. hurts to behold the pocked façade of his mausoleum from
where the coloured sandstone was so brutally wrenched
Late in 1649, Ali Mardan was back in Lahore where Shah away two hundred years ago.
Jahan made him the feofee of Kashmir. The following
spring, the man was weighed down with more gifts and

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

packed off to his fief. Thereafter, Ali Mardan alternated
between Srinagar and Lahore and was always at hand to Surely the most tragic episode of Mughal history is the
help in quelling trouble in Kabul. end of the Sufi prince Dara Shukoh and his wife Nadira
Bano Begum. In 1657, the aged and ailing Shah Jahan
Early in April 1657, while on his way from Lahore to Kash- having ruled for thirty-one years was faced with the open
mir, Amir ul Umara Ali Mardan Khan passed away from this rebellion of his sons led by the grasping and cruel Au-
243
life. His corpse was brought back to Lahore and buried rangzeb. The king preferred his crown to pass on to Dara

The City that Loh Built

under the dome where some years earlier he had interred Shukoh, the eldest. A bibliophile, artist and a devotee of
his own mother. Shah Jahan, we are told, was ‘much the Sufi saint Mian Mir, Dara Shukoh, titled Shah Buland
grieved’ to hear of this transition. Iqbal (Lord of Exalted Fortune) by his father, was a liberal
heterodox of kindly disposition. Like his ancestor Akbar,
Now, in those days, any dying nobleman’s property auto- he together with his wife Nadira Bano and sister, the ad-
matically reverted to the crown. In the case of Ali Mardan mirable Jahan Ara Begum, believed in religious syncretism
it amounted to ‘one crore’ or ten million rupees. That was rather than division. As the three stood beside the ailing
right royal affluence. In his benevolence, Shah Jahan gave king, Aurangzeb, whose religious views conflicted with
half of it back to the man’s son Ibrahim Khan. those of his elder siblings, made ready to do battle.

Mountstuart Elphinstone mentions Ali Mardan’s ‘skill and The eighth day of June 1658, the seventh of the month of
judgement’ in public works and tells us there is in Delhi the fast, was a sad day on the field outside Samugarh. The
canal named after Ali Mardan. I have serious reservations imperial army led by Dara Shukoh faced off against the
on that but it is difficult for me to explain how a canal got combined armies of the renegade princes Aurangzeb and
 Murad Buksh. The intellectual prince was no match for and sent messages to their pursuers to come get them.
the battle-hardened orthodox adversary and the defeat
was nothing less than disaster. With Dara Shukoh in flight, Bahadar Khan and Raja Jai Singh, both one-time Shah
hotly pursued by Aurangzeb’s forces, the victor drove his Jahan loyalists, hurried from the island fortress of Bhakkar
father Shah Jahan to abdicate. Not two weeks had passed between Sukkur and Rohri and on the second day of
since his victory at Samugarh when Aurangzeb had himself September 1659, took Dara, his son Sipihr Shukoh and the
crowned with festivities continuing for another fortnight. rest into custody. Six weeks later, Dara having reached the
capital of Shahjahanabad, the spiteful Aurangzeb ordered
Abandoned by his father’s allies, Dara Shukoh fled south public humiliation of his elder brother and nephew by
to Gujarat and then through Sindh towards the Bolan being paraded in the city on elephant back dressed in
Pass in order to make Persia for refuge. His wife Nadira mean and filthy garments, their feet bound, but their
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Begum had begun to show signs of exhaustion even as hands free. As Dara Shukoh passed through the bazaar
they traversed the unforgiving salt flats of the Great Rann stoically sitting in the open howdah with bowed head, a
of Kutch. At Dhadar, just short of the lower (south-eastern) public outcry of sympathy stung Aurangzeb deeply.
mouth of the Bolan, the fugitive prince sought shelter
in the house of the local chief Jeevan Khan. The prince That same evening, Aurangzeb sentenced Dara Shukoh
thought he would be safe in this house because years to death for apostasy. He was beheaded and his head-
244
earlier the man having been sentenced to death by Shah less and bloodied torso once again paraded through the
The City that Loh Built

Jahan had found reprieve on Dara Shukoh’s intervention. streets. His blood lust not sated, Aurangzeb soon had his
Here, Nadira Begum, her body consumed by dysentery nephews too executed. He did not even spare the life of
and the fatigue of the harrowing journey, gave up her his confederate younger brother Murad Buksh.
ghost.
Dara Shukoh was unceremoniously interred in a vault in
Having performed her last rites, the heart-broken Dara the tomb of his forebear Humayun in Delhi. His beloved
Shukoh prepared his wife’s body to be despatched to Nadira Begum lies close to the green-domed mausoleum
Lahore to be buried near the tomb of his religious mentor, of Mian Mir in Lahore. Her two-storeyed tomb, simple and
the celebrated Sufi Mian Mir. The funeral cortege was
10
without any ornamentations save some curvilinear forms
to be accompanied by the bulk of his remaining soldiery. in the dome most of which are lost to decay, exudes a sad-
No sooner was the prince’s party stripped of its military ness to reflect the tragedy of her life. Niccolao Manucci,
strength that Jeevan Khan placed the royals under arrest the Venetian who had taken up service with Dara Shukoh

10) Breaking Mughal tradition where princes and kings had multiple wives, Dara Shukoh never married another woman. Throughout life, he and
Nadira Bano Begum remained unstintingly devoted to each other.
and stayed loyal to the prince until his bloody end, has a The sign said ‘Tomb of Khan e Jahan Bahadar Zafar Jang
differing report on the death of Nadira Begum. According Kokaltash’. He was reportedly a nobleman in Aurangzeb’s
to him, having made Dhadar, the princess was completely court who died in 1697, ten years before his master. In
broken in body and soul. Despairing of the horrible end
she knew was approaching her beloved husband and sons
she took poison to end her life.

In the grounds surrounding Nadira Begum’s tomb young-

sters play cricket; the dried water channels serve as
cemented pitches for them to practice bowling. Inside,
the floor has recently been tiled with marble and the
single sarcophagus made over and adorned with a marble
plaque bearing the princess’s name. With this makeover,
the junkies who once used Nadira Begum’s last resting
place as their den have been ousted. The hour or so I
spent sitting on the threshold of this forlorn house, no
visitors came to raise up their hands in orison and send a
245
blessing on the long departed princess. Only the sadness

Chapter Name
remains. And that is accentuated by the cooing of blue
pigeons.

Shedding the gloom of Princess Nadira Begum’s wretched

end, we were making for Wagah. Driving east along the
canal, on our left stood the lofty dome of an octagonal
brick structure that I had seen all my life and never asked
who gave it a name. We drove off to the left behind the
railway officers’ residences. I thought of the various Baha-
dur Khans in the service of earlier Mughal kings but as we Nadira Begum who could have been empress of India, died a broken
neared the monument, Azeem indicated I consider the woman in faraway Dhadar in Balochistan. Her tomb is only a short way
from that of the Sufi Mian Mir to whom she was much devoted.
features on the building.
‘Mature Mughal?’ I asked still a little doubtful. Azeem Aurangzeb’s estimation, this man, who started life as Malik
nodded. Hussain, deserved a grand burial and the title Bahadur
 Khan Zafar Jang. At the battle of Samugarh, he was one of to stop and ordered all of us out of the car. There, about
the two generals leading Aurangzeb’s forces to rout Dara seven hundred metres to our east, standing tall above
Shukoh’s army. He was the man who then relentlessly pur- the trees, were two flagpoles, their banners swaying in
sued the ill-starred prince across the country to Gujarat. the cold north wind. In the thick mist of late afternoon it
As the prince and his retinue braved the burning salt flats was difficult to make out which was Pakistani and which
of the Great Rann of Cutch, Bahadur Khan bided his time Indian. But we knew the nearer one was ours. There we
in the island fortress of Bhakkar in Sindh. turned right on the far bank of the BRB to drive through
the bazaar of Nathoke. Beyond the straggle of houses,
It was here he received the message from the treacherous amid well-worked blocks of agriculture, we spotted what
Jeevan Khan to reach Dhadar and take the prince.11 Baha- we sought.
dur Khan placed Dara Shukoh under arrest and escorted
him back to the capital of Shahjahanabad where he led Having travelled around India as the ambassador of Se-
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

the humiliating parade of the defeated prince. And when leucus Nikator, one of the inheritors of Alexander’s empire,
Aurangzeb sought council regarding the fate of his elder Megasthenes was well-equipped to write about India after
brother, Bahadur Khan and five others loudly argued for his fifteen-year (BCE 300-285) sojourn here. He told us
his execution. of stone pillars erected at every ‘ten stadia’ as distance
markers. What we saw on our right amid the fields was the
246 Upon Bahadur Khan’s death in 1697, Aurangzeb ordered second and last one of the two stone pillars or kos minars
a majestic tomb for his mortal remains. But before the that remain in Pakistan.
The City that Loh Built

lofty domed edifice could be completed, the king himself

passed away from this life. His sons, consumed by mutual The other one accessible either from Garhi Shahu in
rivalry and each ridden by the desire to be king, had little Lahore or from the railway workshop of Mughalpura was
time for Bahadur Khan’s mausoleum. The building, pocked once visible as one drove through the Garhi Shahu bazaar.
with holes that held the scaffolding, shows that it was Now it is caught between mushrooming housing and had
never completed. the government not walled it off and nailed a sign on the
brick structure declaring it a protected monument, it
would surely have been razed so that the five hundred
Upstream along the Lahore canal, we went to the very end square metres that it occupies could be gainfully em-
where it takes off from the Bambanwala-Ravi-Bediañ Link ployed for construction.
Canal, commonly called the BRB. Azeem told the driver

11) William Irvine, translator of Storia do Mogor (History of the Mughals) of Niccolao Manucci, my source for this episode, writes that the name would
correctly be Jeehan with a palatal n ending. Nowadays this is still a popular male given name among the Baloch.
The stone pillar we now approached outside Nathoke pass this way to Delhi or Agra. Azeem asked him where he
is still free standing among amid open fields. But I fear had heard this.
not for very long as housing schemes eat up this prime ‘Oh, everyone knows it. That is what the elders always told
agricultural land and engulf the four hundred year-old us,’ he said.
monument.
It was my turn to tell Sadiq that the elders knew nothing.
Leaving the car on the tarmac, we walked a few hundred They just made up stories. I told him also that historical
metres to it. Its height of about seven metres seemed ex- stories remained valid only until the mid-1960s. The
actly the same as that of the other one which might have advent of television in Pakistan killed the tradition of
been a laid down standard. But these pillars and the one I stories being passed down from generation to generation.
have seen in India near my ancestral village Uggi in Jaland- Poorly researched television reports did considerable
har district, do not date back to Chandragupta Maurya’s damage to the telling of history. Sadiq, who was in his early

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

time. Basing on the earlier tradition, they were raised fifties, did not remember the time before television.
during Jahangir’s period. This was the third restoration
of the furniture along the Grand Trunk Road; the second Azeem, himself on his way to the pilgrimage in a few
being during the zenith of the Gupta Period sometime months’ time asked him when he had performed the ulti-
between CE 319 until its decline in 543. mate Islamic rite. With just a shade of contrition, he said
he had only done the lesser pilgrimage, the Umra. I said he 247
The raising of such towers to mark distances was not a did not have the right to call himself Haji. Umri, perhaps, I

The City that Loh Built

purely Indian tradition. From classical times we know of said jokingly. But certainly not Haji.
the existence of at least three cities called Tashkurghan. ‘Here in our villages it does not make any difference.
The one in northern Afghanistan, another just across the When I came back from the Umra everyone in the village
Khunjerab border with Xinjiang province of China and the was calling me Haji sahib. I did not object,’ said the man.
third in Fergana valley. In Turkic languages tash is stone ‘And then you appended the title to your name yourself as
and kurghan pillar. All these settlements take after now well,’ I teased him.
forgotten stone pillars that once stood there as ancient
milestones. Haji Sadiq shrugged and took off with his sheep.

We were joined by a local man with a few sheep. Haji Back on the tarmac, we returned the way we had come
Sadiq said this pillar marked the place where they had a and hit the six-lane highway that heads for the border
sort of bandstand which would play when word arrived crossing at Wagah. For two countries perpetually in a
that His Majesty had set out from Shalimar Gardens to state of war, this first-class high-speed highway is puzzling.
 248
from Landi Kotal to Wagah
Strangely enough, across the border too the road heading
for Amritsar is identical. It seems as if there was a fleet-
ing moment in time when both countries almost came to
peace. Then the usual occurred all over again.

We did not turn east. Our journey that had started at

Landi Kotal in the purported jail house and gallows of
Tamerlane had come to an end. But the Grand Trunk Road
does not terminate at the post on the line drawn by Cyril
Radcliffe in August 1947. It rolls on, across the great land-
mass of India all the way to the rain-drenched flatlands of

from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Bengal. That is the Utra Rajapatha – Northen Royal Road
– that Chandragupta’s road building and maintenance
department cared for. Across the gated and closely guard-
ed border post lies the rest, more than two-thirds, of the
grand old highway of history. And that is another story.

249

The City that Loh Built

A few hundred metres short of the modern border post at Wagah, this
Mughal kos minar stands amid cultivation. One wonder for how much
longer for as the need for housing grows, it will be engulfed.
from Landi Kotal to Wagah

Photo Credits
All photographs in this book are © UNESCO/Asad Zaidi except for the photographs on
the following pages which are © Salman Rashid.
250
Photo Credits

Pages 56, 77, 104, 139, 142 (top right), 148, 159, 169, 189, 203 (bottom right), 204, 237 and 239
Price: Rs 5,000