From K.K. Aziz’s Coffee House: Arab Hotel, Lahore

Adil Najam

This installment of excerpts from K.K. Aziz’s The Coffee House of Lahore (read book review by Raza Rumi, here) presents a portion of his profile of the Arab Hotel, Lahore. An institution of old Lahore, now long gone. A fascinating glimpse into the Lahore that was. Another fascinating description of Lahore’s hostelleries is provided by A. Hamid in this fascinating account. For ease of reading, as before, we will not indent the selected excerpt as quoted text; everything beyond these lines is in K.K. Aziz’s words (as are the two paragraphs above).

From K.K. Aziz’s The Coffee House of Lahore (pages 15-16):

No description of the cultural life of Lahore can be complete without mentioning the Arab Hotel. Once the old-fashioned baithaks (sitting rooms of the orient) had gone out f use, the literati wanted a pace where they could meet, eat and talk. For those ‘orientalists’ of the 1920s the Mall was too Westernized, distant and costly. By chance they started patronizing a small, unclean restaurant on Railway Road, opposite the gate of the Islamia College. A clean-shaven but dirty Arab from Kuwait, known as Bhai Aboud, ran the shop and was happy to serve kebabs and tea to his intelligentsia even on doubtful credit.

Soon the ‘club’ grew in numbers and in the quality of its customers. Chiragh Hasan Hasrat is said to have been the pioneer, and he brought in his friends and colleagues. Gradually it had a glittering membership: Abdul Majeed Salik, Ghulam Rasul Mihr, Akhtar Shirani, Syed Imtiaz Ali Taj, Professor Bokhari, Maulana Salahuddin, Husain Mir Kashmiri, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Khizr Tamimi, Ashiq Batalvi, Hafeez Jullundheri, Abdul Majeed Bhatti, Madan Gopal Mittal, Sahir Ludhianvi, Abdullah Butt, Hameed Nasim, Zaheer Kashmiri, Shad Amritsari, Davinder Sathiarthi, Bari Alig, and others. On the upper floor was the workshop of the famous calligrapher, Pir Abdul Hameed, who inscribed the Quran for the Taj Company.

Slowly as Lahore became more modern, comfortable and moderate-priced, places opened on the Mall, the Arab Hotel group shifted to the West End. The diaspora began in the late 1940s, and was complete in the 1960s with Bhai Aboud’s growing interest in women and speculation. In 1965 or 1966 he died and the ‘club’ vanished. For a quarter of a century the Arab Hotel was a sparkling intellectual tavern, the equal of the best in the 18th century London. When and if a proper chronicle of the cultural history of Lahore is written the finest chapter will be on this ‘hotel.’

In about 1946 most of the Arab Hotel group shifted to the Nagina Bakery in Nila Gumbad and stayed there for a decade. But its coherence and strength was sapped by the proximity of the Coffee House, the Tea House and the Cheney’s Lunch Home. Today both the men and the places have completely disappeared. The Arab Hotel is an unidentifiable spot, the Coffee House was closed down and nobody seems to know when, and the Tea House has vanished and its traditional clientele has moved to other places. Thus, not only has Lahore’s culture disappeared from view but its original landmarks have been obliterated. Progress is a terrible thing.

Also see:
- K.K. Aziz (1927-2009): History Shall Miss Him
- Books: K.K. Aziz’s The Coffee House of Lahore
- From K.K. Aziz’s Coffee House: Lahore as it Used To Be
- From K.K. Aziz’s Coffee House: Visiting a 4-Anna Film Stall at Bhati Gate with Zaheer Kashmiri