|
|
January 5, 2003
REVIEWS: Lahore: a tall order
The problem with historical cities like Lahore is that they present too vast a canvas to write a book about. Creating meaningful architecture, likewise, is also a multi-faceted challenge that draws heavily on the knowledge gathered by historians, human anthropologists and sociologists regarding how people have lived in a continuously inhabited settlement through the ages. Modernity, then, throws in its own challenges making the task of an architect-writer a more complex one, that is, if it has to be interesting.
The book under review takes into account most of the said issues, and can be termed a selective historical review of the building of the city of Lahore through the ages, but it is far from being an authoritative work owing to its obvious omissions and shortcomings.
The idiom in which the book is written is refreshingly honest and factual, a challenge in itself that few professionals have accomplished in Urdu. The language is simple although it has some archaic expressions. The author, perhaps because he is also a poet, has struggled with the language at a few places to coin new terms in Urdu for their English counterparts, which even though they convey the meaning, one fears, would remain elusive to the Urdu reader.
A classic example of this term-coining by the author is the compound word alwah-i-tashheer (plural) for hoarding. The singular for this would be loh-i-tashheer, which has the same etymology as that of the word loh-i-mazar for epitaph, for instance. This would have made perfect sense if it weren’t for the fact Urdu already has come up with a more contemporary word for hoarding, i.e. ‘sign board’ or even simply ‘board’. Alwah-i-tashheer thus sounds archaic.
The book does not reveal anything new about Lahore’s origins or how the city’s collective/cumulative lifestyle, and the buildings, have undergone change through the centuries. The bibliography is rather sketchy and does not even include the 19th century Gazetteer of Lahore, whose reprints were issued by Sang-e-Meel not too long ago. The contents of the book follow a sporadic order, revealing information bit by bit, which at times is found to be contradictory when one goes on to read the next chapter. The book does not have a focus in that it discusses certain aspects of the city’s development in somewhat detail and leaves out others altogether.
There is, for instance, some emphasis on how the new colonies of Samanabad and Shadbagh were plan-built soon after Partition. But then there remain two gaping holes in the development of the city beyond its ancient citadel. The 19-20th century settlements built immediately outside the walled city and Model Town, and then Gulberg in the 60s only find a passing reference.
Of the few resource books the author has consulted, it seems he did not bother to sift through the contradictory information provided by those very resource books. Consequently, at one point the book says the Sikhs entered the city through Lohari Gate (late 18th century), and then a few pages later, it says they had entered though Delhi Gate.
The Sikh invasion of Lahore was relatively a recent historical event, which is really not shrouded in mystery. An excellent resource book for a detailed account of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s invasion of Lahore is Khushwant Singh’s History of the Sikhs in two volumes, while his recent paperback edition of Ranjit Singh: Maharaja of the Punjab, presents a condensed version of the same voluminous work.
A similarly casual approach is adopted when it comes to writing about the 13 gates of Lahore. It is conjectured that the Taxali Gate either took its name from the mint that was located inside it or because it faced Taxila. No existing city in the subcontinent has a gate named after Taxila (Takshasila), not even Peshawar (Pushkalawati) that was part of the Gandhara civilization and is proved to be much older than Lahore, or Multan, whose settlement also predates Lahore’s.
The chapters on the havelis of Lahore and Mochi and Bhati gates also suffer from oversimplification where some of the better known havelis of the 19th century that still exist have been either left out of the discussion altogether or only mentioned in passing. A similar fate also befell the many tertiary localities of Lahore which were built around the sufi shrines — Mozang, Mauj Darya, Shah Abdul Ma’ali, Mian Mir... the list can go on — and where the shrines, as opposed to the mosque, were the pivots of the early community life.
The discussion is then unnecessarily littered with references to Cairo, Baghdad and Mashhad, although no comparisons are brought forth to bear upon the actual development of the urban settlement in Lahore. The making of the Lahore Cantonment by the British, which also happens to be very well-documented — most recently by F.S. Aijazuddin in his work titled Lahore — is only mentioned in passing.
Perhaps it would have been more appropriate if the book had been titled Androon Lahore, gallion aur guzargaahon par chand a’ara (Old Lahore: some perspectives on streets and alleys). Notwithstanding the said acts of academic omission, the book makes for a light, interesting, read on the general history of Pakistan’s most celebrated city.
Lahore: ghar, gallian, darwaze
By Ghafer Shahzad
Idraak Publications, 15-F First Fl., Sharjah Centre, 62 Shadman Market, Lahore Distributed by Fiction House, 18 Mozang Road, Lahore
E-mail:
archline2000@hotmail.com
127pp. Rs300
|
|
|
