Samina Quraeshi who was raised in Pakistan and educated in the west has brought her unique view point to the creation of her second book, Lahore –The City Within.

Trained in art and architecture in the USA Mr. Quraeshi, together with professor Annemarie Schimmel has produced a beautifully illustrated book of 292 pages containing 240 color photo graphs.

In reviewing the combination of scholarship and visual vignettes the writer takes the reader from Lahore’s ancient origins to today’s city of narrow bustling lanes and horse drawn tongas.

Lahore – The City Within is published by concept media, Singapore

The five life-giving and sustaining rivers, the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej which give the Punjab its name ( The Persian Punjab) are themselves all tributaries of the mighty Indus. On the left bank of the River Ravi is the fabled city of Lahore, its origins shrouded in the mists of legend and folklore. Lahore’s ancient designation as the Fort of Loh, suggests that it is also one of the oldest cities in the world.

The earliest known princes of Lahore were Rajputs and for nearly a thousand years the strategic importance of Lahore with its prized Fort was realized. Several Hindu dynasties followed each other in the Punjab, fortifying Lahore with a citadel of unbaked bricks.

Its history as a Muslim city however began only after the year 1000. When the Sultan Mahmud of Ghazan had invaded the Indian subcontinent several times, Lahore finally became a Muslim stronghold and was incorporated into the Muslim empire. The name of Sheikh Muhammad Isma’il al-Bukhari al-Lahorei stands out as the first known Muslim scholar to preach Islam and to propagate the prophetic traditions in the north-western part of the sub-continent. His original home, the city of Bukhara in Central Asia, was a centre of Islamic learning from which in the centuries to come scholars and mystics migrated to strengthen Muslim scholarship and piety.

Lahore soon became the capital of the Ghaznavids, eventually becoming known as little Ghazna. It was during this period that this most poetic of places spawned several Persian speaking poets, most importantly ‘Umar al-Jullabi-al-Hujwiri’. His great legacy was the treatise ‘The Unveiling of Hidden’, the first such work in the Persian language which then was the idiom of literary people. The common language of communication at that time being Hindi or simple Punjabi.

When Hujwari died in 1072 his tomb became a place of pilgrimage and became known to the people of Lahore as Data Ganj Bakhsh, ‘the Giver of Treasures’.

In 1187 the Ghaznian dynasty was replaced by the invading Ghorids under the Amir Muhammad Ghauri. After a series of epic battles, the source of legends and folklore, he eventually triumphed over the Rajput chieftan Prithvi Raj Chauhan, crowning himself Sultan of Lahore.

Under the Ghaurians, Lahore prospered until it was pillaged by the Mongol herders. After years of continuous invasion Lahore suffered its final and barbarous onslaught at the hands of Timur, the last of Mongols.

In 1524 Lahore was taken by a new invader from Central Asia, Zahiruddin Babur, the father and founder of the Mughal dynasty. The famous first six Mughal rulers, Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Sa\hah Jahan and Aurangzeb, were all directly descended from the legendary Chingiz Khan and his successor Timur.

The Mughal’s fondness for gardens is one of their more praiseworthy passions and one of the pavilions erected by Babur’s son Kamranm Mirza on the bank of the river Ravi stands intact today.

Lahore fell next to Sher Shah Suri, a wise far-sighted ruler who built and enlarged the ‘Grand Trunk Road’ through northern India. Humayun retook Lahore in 1555, just a year before he died. His son and successor, Akbar made the city his headquarters and a base from which to reconnoiter new territories.

Abdur-Rahim who was born about the same time as the young akbar ascended the throne was in turn to become “one of the truly great figures of Indo-Muslim history”. A true patron of poets and a poets himself he was also a prolific builder, adorning many cities, including Lahore with places and seraglios.

Fine art in the form of painting, especially miniatures, flourished in Mughal times, just as did weaving and carpet making. A17th century historian referring to the carpets produced in Lahore wrote “So soft and delicate are these carpets that compared with them, the carpets made at kirman in the manufactory of the kings of Iran, look like coarse canvas”.

It was Mughal court life which inspired the story of that legendary lovely anarkali whose name lives on today, immortalized in the crowded business district of Lahore, Anarkali Bazaar.

Akbar’s son and successor, Salim Jahangir was in power at a turning point in Indian history when the Sikh community rebelled against the Muslims, resulting in their conquest of large parts of the Punjab over the following two hundred years. It was jahangir, who having successfully quelled a rebellion by his son, further distinguished himself by having the popular erudite scholar and author Nurullah Shushtari, the Qadi of Lahore, flogged to death.

The potentially cruel Jahangir was at the same time a great patron of architecture and apparent lover of wild life. Just west of Lahore he had built a tower on the bank of an artificial lake called Hiran Minar, in memory of a beloved deer. Jahangir spent much time and effort in restoring and enlarging Lahore Fort and with his Persian Queen Nur Jahan endeavoured to emulate Sulaiman, the prophet-King Solomaon. The “great many pictures on the walls” as witnessed by visitors at the time depicted historical scenes of the great Mughals. The outer walls were not neglected. They were decorated with out glazed tiles showing men and angels, elephants, dromedaries, lions and other animals in a mass of radiant colors.

Jahangir found his last resting place in his favorite city, Lahore in 1629 at Shahdara where he was entombed in a sumptuous mausoleum, notwithstanding his last wishes for a much simpler burial place.

His queen survived her husband for almost twenty years and was  eventually buried some distance from Jahangir’s tomb. Today, as if to emphasis her Persian origins, a railway track completely separates her small but elegant tomb from the garden of Shahdara.

Khurram Shah Jahan, Jahangir’s son who was actually proclaimed King on January 17, 1628, several months before Jahangir died shared his father’s preoccupation with architecture. He caused many existing buildings to be enlarged and new ones built.

In 1645 he had constructed a small mosque the Moti Masjid or ‘Pearl Mosque’. Although it suffered later at the hands of the Sikhs and also served as a treasure house for the Maharaj Ranjit Singh it was rescued by Lord Curzon in 1900. Under his supervision it was restored to almost its original beauty.

Today the greatest attraction for most visitors to the Fort is the Shish Mahal, the ‘Mirror Palace’.  The whole interior of this building is inset with hundreds of small mirrors. It was in the Shish Mahal that the Treaty of Lahore was ratified in 1846 and in 1849 in the same building the British government assumed the sovereignty of the Punjab.

Shah Jehan’s interests also extended to gardens on a grand scale. The most famous and probably the most costly to create are the Shalimar gardens completed for 600,000 rupees around 1642.

The Wazir Khan Mosque in the old city provides today’s visitor with an insight to how Mughal Lahore may have looked. The Mosque was built at the behest of one of Wazir Khan, a high placed physician. Professor Schimmel recommends that one should visit the mosque in the late afternoon “when the sinking sun changes the yellows and oranges of the tiles into deep gold, and the greens become more lively, when the flower bouquets on the three galleries of the minarets seem to grow into bushes while the live pigeons on the uppermost part of the frieze of tiles appear like part of the decoration ..” while the rhythmical recitation of some boys studying the Koran in one of the mosque’s rooms screens off the noise of the busy street”.

Mughal ladies too loved to build gardens. Gulabi Bagh, the garden and mausoleum of Dai Anga (built in 1671) and the well known Chauburji garden, Founded in 1646 by Princess Jahanara, Shah Jahan’s eldest daughter are two examples. Today only the entrance gate of Chauburji garden is left.

Lahore continued to foster scholars, poets and saints. Madho Lal Husain who rote with so much anguish of his Divine Beloved, the mystic Mian Mir who reached Lahore in 1575 and the ascetic poet Mollah Shsh who settled in Lahore in 1614. Prince Dara Skihoh, more interested in poetry and religious ideas than politics who with his wife Nadira Begum was a devotee of Main Mir was eventually a victim of the power struggles between his brothers. He was buried in the mausoleum of his ancestor Humayan in Delhi where his brother had him executed.

Lahore was during these times also a flourishing trading city. In 1611 a British merchant William Finch, described the city thus “The buildings are faire and high, with bricks and much curiosities of carved window and doors; most of the doors of six seven steps ascent and very troublesome to get up, so built more security and that passenger should not see into their houses”.

Thirty years on Fra Sebastian Manrique talks of a people who “Filled the streets, some on foot, some on camels, some on elephants and others in small carts, jolting one against the other as they went along”.

Under the Emperor Aurangzeb a new gateway, the Alamgiri Gate was added to the Fort, opening straight toward a major new mosque known today as the Badshahi Mosque. This magnificent structure in red sandstone is at once huge yet graceful and can accommodate tens of thousands of the faithful in its courtyard.

During the period of the Maharaja Ranjit Singh when the Sikhs became the rulers in the Punjab Lahore once again suffered. It was described by a British visitor of the time as “a melancholy picture of fallen splendor”.

Under British control Lahore again became a livelier city. They built a cantonment in 1822 at Mian Mir and planted trees, evidenced by the greenery that is today abundant in this area of Lahore. In the years that followed educational and cultural institutions were founded, beginning with the Majo Hospital. A civil Service Academy and the prestigious Aitchinson College and the famous University of the Punjab were also created.

It was at this time that the cannon in front of the Museum which was opened in 1864 was immortalized by Rudyard Kipling who worked in Lahore as a journalist.

After Pakistan came into existence on August 14, 1947 the Alamgiri Gate, a symbol of the spiritual and practical aspects of Islam, was reopened.

Since Kipling’s time Lahore has again grown. Today the city extends far beyond the old Mughal guarters and like all great cities is all things to all men.

Aziz Ahmed who makes his living as a metal craftsman in the city today once bet his cousin that if he were to be placed blindfold anywhere within the city walls he would still be able to identify the spot. Not all of its millions of modern day inhabitants would claim to know Lahore that well but most will say that all of this great city is theirs.