LAHORE: Lahore is connected with its past, its present and its future, says historian and academic F.S. Aijazuddin in his short lecture on Lahore on the opening day of the Lahore Literary Festival here on Friday.

Trying to compress the millennium-long history of the city in his fifteen-minute lecture, he used images created by foreigners who witnessed Lahore in different eras. He quoted the Paradise Lost of John Milton where the poet eulogised the city of Lahore in his immortal epic poem.

He referred to Loh, the son of Hindu god Ram, from whom Lahore derived its name and whose modest shrine is situated inside the main gate of Lahore Fort. Through pictures and images, Aijazuddin mentioned Malik Ayaz, the favourite of Mahmud of Ghazni whose mausoleum still exists in the city. “Under his rule, Lahore became a city renowned for its sculpture, aesthetics, poetry and literature. Had Unesco existed in 11th century, Lahore would not have waited for a thousand years to be declared a City of Literature.”

Aijazuddin said the Mughal emperor Akbar made Lahore the capital of his nascent empire and the old city was secured by 12 gates. Referring to the inclusiveness of Akbar, he said the emperor welcomed people from different religions in his court. According to Aijazuddin, Jahangir was fond of self-aggrandisement and proved it from a painting of the emperor with his Persian counterpart Shah Abbas, one standing on a lion and Abbas on a lamb.

“Jahangir loved Lahore so much that he liked to be buried in the garden of his favourite wife Nur Jahan.”

Aijazuddin termed the painting wall, which has been restored recently, of the Lahore Fort worth visiting. He said a French traveller has shown the road between Lahore and Agra shaded with trees.

Aijazuddin talked about Wazir Khan, an officer in the Shah Jehan era, and his gifts to Lahore in the form of a mosque and a baradari, both still intact and in use.

Through the help of paintings and images, Aijazuddin described the changes that the city went through.

ADHAF SOUEIF: Egyptian novelist Adhaf Soueif described the current political situation in Egypt since the Arab Spring in 2011 that ended 30 years rule of Hosnei Mobarak.

“After the revolution, the current regime did not give any space to opposition or dissent. There is no space for expression, including literary expression and the media.”

She said the regime had bought producers and set up giant companies for producing programmes and songs.

Soueif said her country had no free judiciary and no recourse of the law for the people.

“There are curbs even on social media and one of the activists was sentenced to five years in prison for retweeting a tweet about human rights,” said Soueif.

“The country is borrowing a lot of money on high interest rate and the external debt of Egypt has reached USD140bn . It is negotiating another IMF loan.”

Soueif said the money and loans were being used for construction and buying weapons.

“There seems to be a mania for construction and its being done at a high speed and most construction projects are being carried out by the military.”

She lamented that history and cultural heritage were being destroyed in Egypt as old buildings and cemeteries were being bulldozed.

OTTOMANS: American-British historian Marc David Baer, the author of The Ottomans, said the Ottoman empire was not simply Turkish as it was a multiethnic and multilingual empire that stretched across Europe and Asia.

Baer said until World War I, the Ottomans controlled parts of Europe and they saw themselves as the inheritors of Rome, not by virtue of incorporation of territory alone but because of their vision of building a universal empire. He said because of overemphasis on their religiosity, the secular aspects of the Ottomans were less known in history.

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2022