Owais Mughal
This is the second post in our series on architecture of Pakistan. Earlier we covered Merewether Tower, Karachi.
The old city of Peshawar is called the ‘andar shehr’ (the inner city). The mosque of Mahabat Khan is located in andar shehr. The mosque was built in the seventeenth century and it is named after Mahabat Khan Mirza Lerharsib who twice governed Peshawar under Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. Its exact date of completion is unknown, as there is no surviving epigraphical or literacy evidence to indicate the fact. Doing a quick web search I found three years marked as its completion (1627, 1630 & 1670 AD) years. More sources cite 1670 as the completion year than the other two.
It is said that the mosque was almost razed to the ground during the great fire of June 1898 (also cited as 1895 at some web sites) which raged through the bazaar. According to a contemporary chronicle the mosque was saved only by the ‘unremitting efforts of the faithful’.
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Owais Mughal
Photo Credits belong to my friend Benedict Benjamin who took this photo on February 21, 2008. Subject is an Electronics Shop at Regal Chowk, Karachi.
I chose this photo because it captures a live snap of a Pakistani street. There are people busy in discussion inside the shop. The person sitting outside the shop looks bored and then there is an over-exposed perception of motion and life passing by in the form of a blurry motor-cycle.
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Raza Rumi
Much has been said on how the election results are a referendum against the policies of General Musharraf. While there can be little disagreement with this, there is a clear lesson for Pakistan’s urban intelligentsia that had been screaming about the futility of this election.
True, Pakistan’s troubled polity will not transform overnight, nor will the endemic civil-military imbalance dissipate in the air with the formation of the new civilian government. But this is the magic of electoral politics — it allows the least risky path to a civilian transition. The road ahead is messy we know, but that is the only road that a fractured polity can tread.
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