KARACHI: Historical society waits for federal grant
By Bahzad Alam Khan
KARACHI, July 26: Strapped for funds, the Pakistan Historical Society has not received its federal grant this year. The PHS general-secretary, Dr Ansar Zahid Khan, told Dawn on Saturday that previously the society used to receive over Rs150,000 as a federal grant. He added that the last federal grant totalled Rs65,000. He said the federal grant was supposed to come in March.
The Pakistan Historical Society was established in 1950. Actually first a History Board had been constituted to prepare a history of South Asia. The Board was converted into an ad-hoc committee, which on Nov 12, 1950 elected office-bearers and a group of 27 historians as its members for an interim period. The ad-hoc committee drew up a constitution and published a book prepared by the History Board and held the first history conference in 1951 in Karachi which was inaugurated by the then governor-general, Khawaja Nazimuddin.
Former education minister Fazlur Rahman was PHS president and Dr I.H. Qureshi and Prof A.B.A. Haleem vice-presidents. Dr S. Moinul Haq was elected general-secretary of the PHS. After Mr Rahman, Dr I.H. Qureshi became president of the society (1966-76). He was succeeded by Hakim Mohammad Said (1976-98). After Mr Said’s assassination, Dr Haq remained president till his death in 1989.
At present, Sadia Rashid is PHS president and Prof Mrs Mumtaz Moin and Dr N.A. Baloch are vice-presidents.
Dr Khan said that other sources of Society’s revenue included subscription fee and membership fee obtained from members and those who got the PHS quarterly journal called “The Historicus”, which had seen 51 years of continuous publication. He added that the PHS also received financial assistance from the Hamdard Foundation.
Dr Khan said that in spite of financial constraints the Society had published 86 books — monographs, texts of original sources and translations — over the past 54 years. He added that some of the important titles included “The history of the freedom movement” (four volumes), “Biographical dictionary of Ibn Khallikan” (revised English translation, eight volumes), “Tabaqat Ibn Saad” (English translation, two volumes), “Seerut-un-Nabi” (English translation by Fazlur Rahman), “Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan”, “The administration of Delhi sultanate” (by I.H. Qureshi), “Kotwal’s diary of happenings in 1857” (edited by Dr Khan), “Tadhkirah al-Umra” (Persian, two volumes), “Bahr al-Asrar” (Persian, two volumes), “Kitab al-Taji” (Arabic text and English translation), “Al-Biruni’s Kitab al-Jamahir” (English translation), “Tadhkirah Ulama-i-Hind” (Urdu translation) and “Life and times of Muhammad (S.A.S.)” by Dr S. Moinul Haq.
Dr Khan said that the PHS was in the process of bringing out another volume of “Tabaqat”. He said that a Masnavi composed by Babar would also come out shortly.
