Historic Mosques Of Lahore

Historic Mosques Of Lahore,A must have book by Ihsan Nadiem.

(Sange Meel Publications 25, Shahrahe Pakistan (lower) Mall, Lahore, Pakistan.)

This book gives a beautiful introduction in detail, about some of the most reknowned mosques in Pakistan especially the Punjab area. The architectural beauty of mosques is a treasure of Muslim culture. In the subcontinent, South Asia, there are several mosques which show the architectural, art and motif detail of the periods of Muslim rule as most of the mosques were built by the rulers and rich persons of their era.

Punjab occupies a central place both in geographical terms and also in terms of the contribution to culture of the subcontinent.The book gives an insight into the makings of these beautiful mosques and takes the reader into a journey where actually he or she may feel the urge to see these magnificient structures themselves. The mosques of Punjab are present in areas in Pakistan which themselves have a magnificiently rich culture of their periods, like Bahawalpur, Peshawar, Lahore, Multan.

Mr. Nadiem writes in his preface ‘A mosque being the most favorite architectural expression with the Muslims, has frequented the face of the earth more than any other one type of structures.Lahore, since it’s first encounter with the faith,did not lag behind any other place.’ He further tells that as such records were not available, he took the task of compiling this record by the suggestion of his friend Chaudry Niaz Ahmed. This was encouraged by the endeavor under ‘Heritage Of Pakistan’ by titles such as ‘Moenjo Daro: Heritage Of Mankind’ , 'Rohtas:Formidable Fort Of Sher Shah’, and ‘Lahore: A Glorius Heritage’,being both approved by the scholars and the enthusiast readers alike. (196-Karim Block, Allama Iqbal Town, Lahore, Pakistan).

In the chapter ,Historic Mosques Of Pakistan : An Overview, he goes to explain how the early mosques are available as few excavated sites.For example he writes about ‘Deybal’ a place where the young general Mohammad Bin Qasim first arrived in subcontinent, a mound gives indication when excavated of the first mosque in Bhambore, near Karachi.

The other is Mansurah Jami Masjid which was excavated , and gives an indication of it being built in the early period as on the plan of the Damascus Mosque of the early Ummayad period. He further writes that the next two or three centuries did not witness any activity of mosque building. When Ghaznavi entered through the northern regions, also no evidence of mosques is found. Only in Swat , as a result of Italian excavations, a mosque structure proves their presence in first half of 11 th century.There is  a representative picture also showing this mosque.

In early mosques he writes about the dynastic rule of Ghiasuddin Tughlaq during which(1320) a new kind of architecture is seen.He lists the mosque built on the precincts of Mausoleum of Sheikh Alauddin, as one  such structure.Another mosque , that built by Firoz Shah Tughlaq in Okara is representative of the same architecture.He then lists information about the mosques built in connection to sufi saints like Jalaluddin Surkh Bukhari, Safiuddin Gazruni, Jahaniyan Jahangasht, Rajan Qattal.He describes the beautiful mosques of Thatta such as Dabgran Mosque and Shahjahani Mosque.

Beautiful pictures are present throughout the book for the viewer to enjoy.

The next chapter is entitled ‘Mosques of Lahore’.Here he gives a beautiful description of the many mosques. He writes ‘ Lahore came under  the regular rule of Muslims with the conquest by Mehmood of Ghazna in 1025. It is recorded that after his conquest of Qannauj on return, he built a mosque and a tower in Lahore fort, to commemorate his success.’ Khishti (brick –built) Masjidin Arab Mohalla was one such structure.

The Data Darbar is a complex of the tomb and mosque structure built in early Ghaznavid period.The new mosque structure is not on the old mosque basis which is much smaller.

The Badshahi mosque, Marium Zamani Mosque,Nawab Wazir Khan Mosque are some magnificient structures still giving th visitor a glimpse into the glorious architectural past.

Badan Dareeda By Fehmida Riaz..On request!

Meherzaidi ...The Translation.

  Sasarane Do Zara Raat Ke is resham ko
Is mein malfoof  kisee ehd ki ek laash bhi hay

Raat jo jurm bhi hai jurm ki padaash bhi hai
Raat paani ki tarha sar se mere behtee hai
Mere ballon se tapaktee hui boondayn jesay
Mere shanoon se dhalaktee hui girtee jaeen
Band honey lagaeen aankhey woh nasha taree hai.

Haan dehan mein hai mere zaeqa un boson ka
Jin  ko chakhne se bhi inkaar kiya tha dil ne
Meree rag rag mein woh sayyal rawan hai abtak
Jis say bach jane pe israr kiya tha dil ne

Mere atraf patango ki tarha urtai hain
Mere bose woh mere jhoot se bojhal bose
Khoon ki cheentayn urraate huay ghayal bose
Kab ki woh kash makashe zehn o zabaan khatam hui
Ek tarap baaqi thee so dushmane jaan khatam hui
Ab to woh meri thakawat bhi mujhe chor chuki
Ek siyah lehr bahaye liye jaati hai mujhe
Khoon rawani Se badan chor raha ho jaisey
Neend hai, maut hai ya yeh koi be hoshi hai
Ab to har saans dam baaz paseen  lagti hai

Translation:

Let me feel the night's silky ambience!
Engulfed in it is the period of my death!

This night ,oh this night!
That is my crime and how it punishes me!
This night which slips away like water from my head, fleeting, only fleeting!
Like drops of water falling from my tresses,
thence to my shoulders falling ,thence down!
My eyes are closing in stupor!


I can feel the agony of the kisses in my mouth
Those kisses whose taste my heart refused!
My entire body feels the flowing lava till now
The touch of whom, my heart had forbidden.

Oh how they fly like moths all around me!
My kisses, my false kisses!
Blood soaked, lying, pretending!
The eternal fight between the mind and the tongue finishes!
The flicker of light extinguishes!
The tiring weight of existence, leaves me.
A dark, dark wave takes me away!
Just like the blood of life leaves me surely, quickly, steadfastly.
Is this eternal slumber?
Is this death?
Is this stupor?
Oh How every breath that I take appears the last breath!

Fehmida Riaz, The True Godess Of Undauntable Spirit And Everlasting Truth!

The quest for truth is the eternal search for all living souls. There are billions of us humans who just pass through life in a daze. We neither think  nor look for answers and life just passes by quickly uneventfully. Such people are ordinary, nameless, face less in the vast sea of humanity. Then there are a few, who are alive , thinking, questioning. These people struggle, sacrifice, stand up to fight for the underdog, the supressed , the 'mazloom'.Such are the great souls that stand tall above all .
Fehmida Riaz  is one such great , fighter and tall "devi' in poetry and spirit. She stood up for the supressed, poets in Sindh and all of Pakistan. She fought the injustices, she spoke the truth, under the sword. She was supposedly punished. But was this punishment or a slap on the faces of those who were the tyrants, the evaders of truth, the hiders of truth, the 'mujrims'?
Her eternal quest for truth, her thirst for the right way to the truth led her restless and bold self to face endless challenges. She stands tall both in the literary world in her work and also in the quest of truth and human rights in Pakistan. The verse by another poet ,
 'Mein Kis Ke Haath Pe Apna Lahoo Talaash Karoon,
Tamam Shehr Ne Pehne Huwe Hain Dastane.',

 so aptly represents her feelings as she rightly questions the state of affairs in the current political context. In  a festival ' Shanaakht ' in Karachi , a person was glorifying the association with a violent group proudly in Afghanistan in the past. She could have just listened and not questioned as she was invited to speak in another discussion. But the agony of the untruth tormented her honest soul so much that she seemed pained and mentioned this seemingly negligible behaviour in the forum she was to read from her favorite author. I was so impressed by the honesty of her feelings. She is a rare breed an asset for Pakistan.
Translation of verse mentioned ; On whose soiled hands do I find the stains of blood, my death? Alas the whole city is in collusion, gloved!

"Rijm" (stonong to death), (from her collection, Badan Dareeda);

Pagal Tan Mein Kyun Basti Hai
Yeh Wahshi Tareek Aarzoo
Buhat Qadeem Udaas Aarzoo
Taareeke Mein Chup Jaane Ke
 Ek Lamhe Ko
Ek Lamhe Ko
Rabbe Qahar Yeh Kiya Mojeza Hai
Tera Khalq Kiya Hua Adam
Lazzat e Sang Ka Kyun Khuwahan Hai
Us Ke Sehar Zada Cheekhon Mein
Yeh Kis Barzakh Ka Naghma Hai
Kya Thi Badan Ke Zakhm Ki Lazzat
Betaabi Se Yun Raqsaan Hai
Har Bune Mun Se Surkh Wa Siyah Lahoo Ka Darya Ubal Para Hai!

Translation By Meherzaidi:

Oh how this dark lust, this agitation resides
In my crazy soul,
Ancient,Sad, Desire!
To hide away in the darkness,
Only for a moment, temporary,passing,
Oh, punishing, nurturing God,
Is this a miracle,
This adam, your creation?
Why Does the stoning
Gives him satisfaction, sadistic!
Her screams are a song
Of another world in his ears.
Oh, how a fleeting pleasure of the flesh
Is dancing in the agony of punishment,
While Black And Red blood Flows Through all the pores of her body
Once filled With Pleasure!

A Scream, I Say! Are You Listening?

Is your hearing impaired? Damaged? Are you listening? Ah , yes I am an ordinary worker, toiling in your kitchen, washing your dirty dishes, after you have gluttoned away incessantly the whole day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner! Washed your fat, pudgy fingers,  cleaning on a dry towel.Burping out of your ugly mouth. I am still hungry, of two kind words, a small kind glance from you. But then you are so blind and deaf! Are you listening to the screams of the people around you. Still seekling some redressal of the wrongs done unto them. Are you hearing anything bieng said by the people who need justice? But how can you! You are so engrossed in your unfulfilled, utterly useless quest for satisfaction, superficial and shallow!
Life for me is so dark, and and bleak! no future, no way!
I stand alone on a cliff, barely and blindly clutching to the weak twig, lest I fall !
What if I fall, and fall I will. No hope, no future.
That is how I will end screaming, and you will not hear, you deaf people!

Jinnah, India-Partition, Jaswanth Singh's Book, A Critical Look.4

So he writes "The advent of Islam (Muslims) into India was in three broad waves,spread over almost eight centuries."Arabs in the seventh nd eighth centuries...in Sindh...fought a fe skirmishes and left...Muhammad Bin Qasim also left after initial entry.....Nadir Shah and other (Turkic-Mongols) and some Afghans ,of which some stayed back."The advent of Persianised Turks into inndia is routinely characterised by historians as 'Muslim conquest'.This to my mind , is an oddity,for to term this entire period from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century as a 'Muslim Era' is wrong ,also, simplistic.Principally, because there is a significant conceptual and terminological error here, which over the centuries has got embedded.The query bieng: are we to term an invasion,any invasion for that matter by the faith or religious beliefs of the invader: Islamic/pagan/ancestor-worshipper/shamanistic or whatever; or establish identity by ethnicity and the place of origin of the invader?When we relate these invasions of India with comparable historical encounters elsewhere,then the oddity....Why do we not speak of 'Christian conquest ' of America?"
(continued)


He then goes to explain that the "recordings of most 'Indo -Persian' chroniclers of medieval India identified Islam with the fortunes of their royal patrons.....and these 'sycophants' then reduced accounts of those reigns into such 'hagiographical nonsense' ".

Two questions arise here in my mind: Mr Singh is obsessed with the fact that the historical writings of those times always refer as 'Mulim invasion' and not the other way round. To this a rather simplistic answer maybe,the writers ,sycophantic or otherwise ,even European historians are studying or recording this in the context of 'Muslim' history.

The other objection I have to the use of the term 'hagiographical nonsense' and he has written earlier that "is this acccount merely a recapitulation of those happenings; a linear narrative of events simply recounted?" 'Or is it to be what the great Arab historian Ibn Khaldun reflected history to be,rather ought to be, in his epic treatise 'The Muqadammah'.Is all recording of history done in the form of "correct" historical writings. Are there not various methods of recording history ? When is historical writings or treatises consider authentic? When is the earliest record of historical writing first seen? Do recordings of events in holy books such as the Bible, Bhagavad Gita, Ramayan not a part of 'historical knowledge'

Jinnah, India-Partition, Jaswanth Singh's Book, A Critical Look.3

The image of Jinnah is bieng formed in Mr. Jaswanth Singh's mind in the introductory paras as "the Muslim League in that sense truimphed under Jinnah's leadership, for he achieved what he had set out to" , "carving out for himself a Pakistan,even if 'moth-eaten' and from birth". "For this ,in essence, was also Muhammad Ali Jinnah's political journey. How could or rather why did , a person of such central importance to the front rank of India's political leadership for almost the first forty-seven years of the twentieth century relegate himself to a finge of it?"
Two questions arise here on reading this; first exactly what was the 'central role' Jinnah that he did play in India uptil this time? Here the basic question of the true 'leadership' identity question or 'shanakht' of Muhammad Ali Jinnah is the most pertinent one. We will read Mr. Jaswanth's assesment of why and how Jinnah became ' the Quaid -e Azam ' later on.
The second issue is regarding the 'fringe' of India concept that he refers to frequently. He seems obsessed with the geographical division of India and other areas that became Pakistan as 'peripheral' or 'fringe'. this labelling in itself appears to impart as a 'lowly' status to the new geographical entity.The concept of bieng 'mainstream',does it actually mean 'central' in the geographical sense or acceptable ideologically?And if acceptable then why and how does a 'fringe' community becomes a new geographical entity and the 'peripheral minority' becomes a central majority in the 'new' state.
Mr Jaswanth Singh clearly has raised the "spectre" for his generation of Indians of the logic or 'reality' of the formation of Pakistan.It seems to me that a scene is bieng created in his reader's mind almost reminiscent of the last coals bieng inflammed before the final die out. I hope a real winter comes on this chapter as enough violence and useless buildup of arms against each other deluding real peace and a prosperous peaceful coexistence has engulfed the two nations since birth.(Continued)

Jinnah, India -Partition, Independance, Jaswanth Singh's Book...A Critical View 2

He writes painfully "How did Islam with ease first become Indian, then struggled to become a geographical supernumerary to it, to this great spread of what was their own home. And..."It became the faith of the "separator" of those that divided the land" And...."The League had claimed that it was the true upholder of of Islam's ideological authentication...therefore demanded just a single Muslim medium...and asserting it's identity as a different conceptual 'nation',claimed a separate land for itself which is why this agonising question continues to grate against our sensibilities......tragically Nehru and Patel and the Congress party had assented, Jinnah in any event having demanded adopting to just such a recourse.
The pain, the agony ,the sense of bieng utterly let down by Nehru and Sardar Patel is clearly evident in this para, which to me explains the crux of the writing of this book, probing the historical context, the mindsets, the fights as in that moment which he describes as a vivisection. He asks painfully as to why..."how do you divide a geographic (also geopolitical) unity?

There are several questions in this painful why.India has never really accepted division and the existence of Pakistan . At least this generation that Jaswanth Singh belongs to. The mindset of holding on to this notion of "Akhand Bharat" has led to the massive buildup of armies so much so that nuclearisation of Pakistan has resulted although the Indian bomb was primarily against China.The new generation of Indian needs to move on, accept the existence of Pakistan but is this going to be possible now, earlier? Post 9/11, post Mumbai and now the latest ideas in militant Pakistan paint a bad omen , picture for the future of India -Pakistan relations.
Pakistan itself questions this "Islamic" existence now as the extremist violent groups are creating havoc in it's cities. Just as Jaswanth Singh asks..."relegating such of faith that remained within India to a life of perpetual self questioning and doubt about their true identity."
The agonising reality of partition seems lost on the people as now more and more evidence in the behaviour of "Muslim"groups in Pakistan appears to make the call for a seperate homeland questionable for Indian Muslims. Why was the Bangladesh created? He will ask later. The answer seems apparent! The sociopolitical divide is mainly of economic and empowerment struggle. Race, tribalism, religion, ethnicity are the rallying points of struggling groups in order to distinguish themselves and assert their identity and existence.A very clear example is to become "American" even of such diverse people as Chinese, Mexican or Indian.
I still do not understand what Mr. Singh means by "Indianisation"of Islam. Is this a cultural context or what?(Continued)