Photography

‘Glimpses into Islamabad's Soul”, published by Sungi Development  Foundation,  is a trail blazing book, which promotes the multi cultural heritage of Islamabad, and respect for ‘Nature’. It is a pioneering work, which identifies, locates, catalogues and preserves  historical, architectural, cultural, natural heritage including flora and fauna of Islamabad.  It documents the ancient trees of Islamabad  in addition, advocates its protection.

Reviews

It is a marvellous book, wonderfully bringing alive the mix of natural and man-made heritage in the Islamabad area and doing so with the aid of the most arresting photography. I hesitate to say it is not the Islamabad I mostly recall, but that is part of Fauzia's  point! Given how little material Fauzia had to go on I was most impressed at how she made it seem a truly "historic" city. My only question is whether it may need a part two, in which Fauzia draw's attention to the early buildings of the 1960s which might merit listing and safeguarding. Today's modern buildings are tomorrow's historic ones, and if we do not save them history will never have a chance to tell its story. Sir Simon David Jenkins, former editor of The Times newspaper. He is currently a member of the Buildings Books Trust, and a trustee of the Somerset House Trust and the Architecture Foundation.

JEWEL IN THE CROWN

Fauzia Aziz Minallah debunks the notion that Islamabad is a cultural wasteland.By Zainab Iqbal. Newsline March 2008 pg;117

Fauzia Aziz Minallah has been a resident of Islamabad for over 32 years and is truly passionate about the city, though her birthplace is Hazara. Her recent book, ‘Glimpses into Islamabad ’s Soul’, is a pictorial documentation of the heritage sites of the city by “someone who loves the mystical, historical and natural aspects of the city” Islamabad is mistakenly considered a dead city by many non-residents.

Despite the fact that the locals are struggling to develop their own culture, the country’s youngest city is preceded by thousands of years of history and is the site of one of the earliest human settlements in Asia . In her quest to explore the lives of people who had been living in villages close to Islamabad long before the city came into existence, Minallah collected most of the photographs found in the book during family picnics.  The book is published by Sungi Development Foundation, which aims to highlight the factors critical to a well-rounded development process. Renowned archaeologist Prof Ahmad Hassan Dani’s research has also guided Minallah’s book. 

The author brings forth the vestiges of the rich culture of the Potohar region which are slowly fading away in the name of development. She takes the reader from the rock shelter in G-13 sector to Buddhist caves, mosques and shrines of the Sufi saints. The description of each site is well-supported by photographs and fascinating historical milieu. Interestingly, the common thread among all these sites is the presence of banyan and pipal trees at each sites some even centuries old.

Unfortunately, these ancient temples and shrines are falling apart as old villages are being demolished to be replaced with modern infrastructure.However, they are of great educational importance; they serve as “open air museums for children” that provide links to living traditions and help transform a beautiful walk in Islamabad ’s forests into an unforgettable encounter with history.  The writer explores the ancient architectural marvels and natural heritage of the city, including the banyan and pipal trees. These hold clues to the past and add richness and depth to the capital’s landscape. 

One can feel the author’s pain as she reminisces about the loss of a grand old banyan, christened the ‘Buddha Tree’by student of Jamia Faridia a few years ago. She fears that the 1,200-year-old banyan tree,named ‘Mother and Nine Children’ by villagers living in Suniari, may also be lost if it is not looked after. Descriptions of places infused with spirituality, such as the over 125-year-old railway station of Golra Sharif, which is perhaps, the most well preserved heritage site of Islamabad, transport the reader to a previous era. Pictures of majestic trees planted during the British Raj, vintage furniture and the museum complement the write-up.

Minallah also gives an engrossing account of the famous 17th century Sufi Saints Barri Imam, buried in the village of Nurpur at the foot of Margalla Hills. References to Dr. Dani’s research reveal the losses suffered by this site during General Zia’s era. It is disheartening to learn that although millions of rupees have been allocated for its renovation, the new proposed design completely overlooks the protection of old banyan trees.  Another place that grasps the attention of the reader is Saidpur Village . Mentioned in the Panjab Gazetteer of 1893-94, it is known for its rich traditions and religious harmony. Minallah stresses the need to preserve the area as a cultural heritage site for tourists and future generations. She exposes the work of two brilliant potters of the area who have kept alive an art that would otherwise have been lost. Minallah also highlights the presence of a Hindu temple in this culturally rich village, besides the well known legacy of  Sufi saint. All these heritage sites are suffering from neglect and it is high time the relevant authorities recognized their full potential as tourist sites.

Throughout her career as an artist, designer and writer, Minallah has been one of the most inspiring advocates of peace, tolerance and conservation. Her book is a stark reminder of the gap that exists between modernization and protection of the country’s heritage. It introduces people to new ways of not only seeing, but also caring for, their culture and tradition. 

A NEW CITY WITH AN OLD SOUL 

Fauzia Minallah’s passion for art and design converges with her activism through writing and campaigning for heritage, conservation, environmental and social matters. So does her  enthusiasm for raising issues of peace, tolerance and justice as well as her involvement with children, on a platform that she has provided to them in the shape of an NGO called Funkor Child Art Centre, carrying out workshops for children living in shanty towns, for children with disabilities; refugee children and so on.

Fauzia Minallah is an unconventional artist whose time has been well spent so far pursuing social issues, Fauzia is a graduate of the famous Pratt Institute New York . She emerged on the Karachi art scene , several years ago as an art and heritage activist, curating a show of traditional carved tombstones, the dwindling craft of chitarkari-slate engravings—that the craftsmen from her parents’village in Hazara,in the North west Frontier Province of Pakistan, were slowly giving up as people started preferring other materials, such as marble. Her own inspiration to work in slate, clay and other materials emanated from working with these craftsmen.

The recent publication, Glimpses into Islamabad ’s Soul researched and developed by Fauzia who has so far also written three children’s books is a hardbound, pictorial coffee-table publication. It is a complete departure from other books on Islamabad that focus by and large on the urban glitz and glamour of  Pakistan’s capital city.Fauzia,on the other hand,who has spent over three decades in Islamabad, and is in love with its heritage, presents the history of the Potohar region, where Islamabad built in the early 1960s is located. On the western side of the Margallah Hills, lies the oldest of the region,Taxila---site for the famous Gandhara civilization.

As the reader turns page after page, old Banyan and  tree of splendid characters spread out their arms and aerial roots to engulf her/him, into warm embrace, reminding one of all the historical accounts that these living things must have witnessed, and whose lives are now threatened as the land mafia takes on or official ‘development’, expansion and ‘modernization’ of the city takes place. Already, the bulldozers have wiped out not only some of the gigantic trees, but also many unsung man-made monuments. The author traces ancestral homes in remote villages nestled in the green Margallah Hills that stand as bastions, the lost clay traditions of the village of  Saidpur, but takes up the cause of promoting its pottery so that the ‘spiritual’ side of  Islamabad is not lost forever.’’ For instance, her photographs showing each stage of  Gharoli- making lend much interest in this diminishing craft, which she is poised to save with her infectious perseverance. This particular pitcher is traditionally used for bathing the bridegroom and it is embellished on all sides with ornaments of clay flowers, pendants and mirrors.

The book, replete with photographs taken by the author, also makes use of  artist   Ghulam Rasul’s paintings that depict the rustic charm of the environs and the colorful magnificence of its  blossoming trees such as the Amaltas, the Kachnaar, Jacarandas, Poinsettia, Flame of the Forest, and more. In fact, Fauzia acknowledges that his paintings were an inspiration for the book

The author points out how the lack of vision, imagination and ‘feel’ for heritage within the callous government functionaries  is either killing old sites by removing them forever or ‘uplifting’ and ‘facelifting’ them, such as the shrines of sufi saints and other spiritual places that are revered by the Hindu and Buddhist communities of the region. Flooding places with electrical lights, where hundreds of oil lamps have been lit traditionally or using modern materials to replace the age-old rustic ones-making them ‘attractive’ for tourists but throttling their very souls, is a very high price to pay for these heritage sites. The author has traversed to caves that were used for meditation by holy men, visited baithaks of pirs and faqeers and also spoken to hundreds of common people who are either still inhabiting the villages or they have been evacuated and hence are displaced. She has been documenting these elements on her digital camera. Moreover, she has spoken to professionals, such as the eminent archaeologist Dr A.H.Dani, who has also penned the foreword for this important book.                                                                        One hope that Glimpses into Islamabad ’s Soul will provide fodder for thought to all those who are at the helm of decision-making in the relevant departments, and to urban planners and sociologists, and  ‘‘ Islamabad ’s Soul’’ and their own souls could find solace in unification.

Tribute to the Unsung Wealth of Nature,

by Sara  Akhtar
Friday Times 01/02/2008

Did you know that just before sunset on Thursdays - half a kilometre north of the Margalla Road, just past the junction with Seventh Avenue- the villagers of Saidpur   light diyas at the baithak of Zinda Pir on the slope high above the village? Children joyfully tackle the lamps and grown ups quietly pray for their worries to be solved while the lights of the city flicker below. 

Some five kilometres further west along the base of the Margalla Hills in the undeveloped E-10 sector, the shrine of an unknown saint at Mehra Behri attracts the devotion of local mothers. They come to pray for the health of their children and hang their clean clothes on the branches once their prayers have been answered. Close by is a pond where kids in monsoon season deftly set their pebbles skimming along the surface of the water or swing jubilantly from the giant  tree – half banyan half indigenous mulberry – that offers a fine launching pad for a quick plunge. 

Following the line of the Margallas in the same direction as far as a point some three and a half kilometres due north of the famous shrine at Golra,  you reach the dargah of the Sufi saint, Shah Allah Ditta. A short walk north of this Mughal shrine brings you to a cave complex where Buddhist monks lived the contemplative life in the early centuries of the Christian era. The discovery of tools from the Middle Stone Age at the same site is evidence of even greater antiquity. Not the least of the caves’ marvels is  the magnificent banyan tree whose aerial roots have poured out of the rock crevices to re-root and form a cluster of pillars.

From the caves, a way opens up into the hills taking the explorer on a comparatively short walk through history.  Mid way, the picturesque path climbs to a plateau boasting a sixteenth century well known locally as the Emperor Akbar’s. Before reaching the end of the path - the ruins of Giri in Taxila dating from the pre-Christian centuries of Gandhara civilization -  the wayfarer will have traversed the secluded valley of Banrh Faqiran. Rich with the silence once enjoyed by Buddhist monks and Muslim contemplatives, it is quite possible that the valley also resounded to the march of Alexander’s men on their journey from Taxila to Jhelum in 326 BC.

A triumph of camera work, Fauzia Minallah’s book is an outstanding tribute to the unsung wealth of nature, history and humanity that enriched her childhood growing up in the nation’s capital on the verge of the Margalla Hills.  The record is meticulous on all fronts: favourite banyan trees, water spots and hill paths; secluded ruins, mosques and shrines;  villagers at home and at work including the Saidpur potters absorbed in their age-old craft and the Station Chief at Golra masterful in his spruce domain.

The many pictures of children relishing the freedom of trees and ponds or eagerly exploring ancient sites that bring the past to life underline the fact that this is a book about heritage. The text too bears this out. Each site is given a brief historical lineage; the larger sites at Saidpur, Nurpur Shahan and Golra receive extended treatment. For example, the section on Saidpur pays tribute to its rich multi-faith material culture - Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh and Sufi. It also celebrates in a sequence of detailed pictures the village potters’ dying art of making the spectacular gharoli - the decorative water pitcher given to local bridegrooms for the pre-wedding bath. Complete with  a prefatory map, site key and timelines for the periods documented, one of this book’s achievements will surely be to motivate schools and families to go out and claim the legacy that is within easy reach.  

Yet an elegiac note sounds throughout the compilation of photographs and text.
One aspect of this is the way that the drive for  “development” erodes the sense of connection between past and present. At the Jori Rajgan cave site twenty two kilometres west of Islamabad - where evidence of Old, Middle and New Stone Age artefacts has been found - blasting by FECTO cement has left barely one cave section intact for posterity. The camera records the devastation. The same brutal upheaval is witnessed in Saidpur,  where the drive to develop a cute tourist venue catering to the  entertainment needs of the urban elite has led to large-scale eviction of residents along with the destructive violation of conservation norms. The bulldozer is everywhere flattening traditional lanes and dwellings to create road and restaurant access; the original decorative features of the surviving Hindu temple have given way to Mughal floral designs; adobe renders sit oddly alongside the traditional brickwork of village houses.

Matching the threat from development is the threat from puritanical ignorance: at the shrine of Barri Imam in Nurpur Shahan for instance. Until the eighties, the shrine was a modest structure surrounded by a thick growth of trees. Alas, the zeal of Islamization has meant inappropriate renovation: a grander structure and  many fewer trees. Fortunately, the path that leads from the  shrine to the saint’s cave retreat at Loidandi, high in the Margalla hills, is still a glorious trek to the accompaniment of chirping birds, darting butterflies and curious monkeys bouncing from the banyans. The cave itself with its animal rock formations and snake-like banyan roots remains unchanged with one important exception:  women are no longer granted access.

Underscoring further the threat of the conservative religious approach to a remarkable legacy, the author notes several wanton acts of destruction to unconventional Islamic and non-Islamic religious sites. One is the damaged niche at the tomb of Mai Ji, the legendary female mystic of Hazara. Located near the baithak of Zinda Pir in Saidpur, Mai Ji’s resting place has long been a place of meditation for men and women alike. Yet the broken niche signifies that for extreme adherents of contemporary Islam a female saint’s tomb is no longer considered sacred.  The encroachment of intolerance  is further evident in the destruction in 2003 of the giant banyan located in the E7 sector, used by Islamabad’s tiny Buddhist community for its simple rituals.  On an encouraging note, the writer records the pressure successfully exerted through a newspaper campaign that saved a banyan tree in the western sectors of the city from destruction by the Frontier Works Organization.

This handsome survey of the Margallas’ unique heritage comes with a timely message.  The first part of the message draws the civilized reader’s attention to the disturbing tendency of modernization and religious intolerance to ignore the significant contribution of heritage protection to the structuring of a humane and equitable society. The second part of the message is the call to act now.  Socially concerned citizens, the writer pleads, can organize effectively to oppose the threat that governments and other interest groups pose to the integrity of their environment. In other words, if this book has made your heart alive to the richness of your surroundings, surely it will also have touched your conscience to act to preserve it.    

The garden city

Glimpses into Islamabad's Soul
By Fauzia Minallah
Published by Sungi Development Foundation, 2007.
Pages: 152

By Fiona Torrens-Spence
In the past travel writers have been dismissive of Islamabad, passing it off as 'sterile' and 'dull'; somewhere to be got through before visiting the real Pakistan. And the local joke 'Islamabad, twenty minutes from Pakistan' also belittles the country's capital city by implying it is essentially foreign to the rest of Pakistan; a soulless, high rise city full of diplomats and other feather bedded foreigners.

As Fauzia Minallah writes, Islamabad and its surrounding villages have both a soul and an immensely long and fascinating story. It is sometimes hard to locate historic sites and harder still to find information about them so I wish that I had been able to read Fauzia Minallah's book before living in Islamabad as I know I have seen many sites around Islamabad, such as the prehistoric shelter which can be seen from the Kashmir Highway, and entirely missed the story behind them.

I would recommend any visitor to Islamabad to invest in a copy of her book, particularly if they will be living in Islamabad for long enough to get out and about and explore. The book has the best map of Islamabad and surrounding areas which I have yet seen. The map explains the city's grid system and how it extends beyond the currently developed areas and shows the location of the places she describes in such a way that it would be comparatively easy to find them on one's own. (Maps of the surrounding areas of Islamabad were non-existent when we lived in Islamabad which filled me with sadness as I am a very visual person.) Her book also has a very good timeline which puts the sites she describes into a historical framework.

Fauzia Minallah's book has beautiful photos of Islamabad and reproductions of the paintings of the well-known Islamabad artist, Gulam Rasul illustrating the exceptional beauty of "the garden city" and its surrounding villages. The photography and arrangement of the art work is a tribute to Fauzia Minallah, who is a well known artist in her own right successfully exhibiting throughout Pakistan and Europe.

The book is more than a tourist guide, a coffee table book or a nice memento of a stay in Islamabad but not without a message for the reader: many sites and traditional crafts are now under threat as a result of the speedy development of the capital. She is particularly concerned about lavish plans for Bari Imam and for Saidpur which will destroy genuine history and put American style Disney theme parks in its place.

These "show pieces" are designed to appeal to V.I.P visitors but I think the visitors would much prefer to see authentic historical sites which are well maintained. Food street in Lahore was a great success because it highlighted history and preserved a collection of fascinating historic buildings which might otherwise have been demolished, but some of the plans for 'prettifying' Islamabad are extremely destructive of irreplaceable heritage sites. Fauzia Minallah maintains that it would be more worthwhile to maintain and explain historic areas of Islamabad and incorporate them into development by placing them in strategically placed parks than to bulldoze priceless and fragile examples of ancient architecture.

Fauzia Minallah has filled in an enormous gap by producing her book. She has not only produced very interesting and well researched descriptions of historic places around Islamabad but has identified artisans who are producing ceramic ware in Saidpur village in a way which has probably not changed greatly since the days of Alexander or earlier.

She gives a particularly good stage by stage description of how a traditional wedding gharoli (water container) is produced and concludes that presently potters have given up making these unique and beautiful wedding gifts as people are unwilling to pay even Rs15 for them. The elderly potters struggle to make a living and have no younger potters who are willing to learn the art. It might be worth trying to organise apprenticeship grants for young potters from Lok Virsa, or encouraging art students to spend a semester studying traditional pottery production before the skills disappear. The potters are national treasures in themselves who should be cherished and helped. However, it would seem their traditional workshops are now under threat as they may be 'demolished' as part of the C.D.A programme for improving Saidpur.

Besides looking at issues of heritage, and traditional craftsmen, Fauzia Minallah is concerned with protection of the environment and preservation of some of the ancient banyan and pipal trees which provided the "the tree of life" carpet motif. Sadly, some of these trees which have been providing people with welcome shade for over 1,000 years, have been wantonly vandalised by young people. Others have not been given sufficient space to grow properly. As an artist myself I share Fauzia's sadness at the loss of these trees which are literally irreplaceable, especially in the short run. They too are part of Pakistan's rich heritage. Her photograph of a group of boys climbing an old banyan tree and clearly having a lot of fun is particularly attractive.

Fauzia gently points out the sadness of excluding poor people from public parks in the city centre, particularly as they have no other space in which to relax and (if they are children) play.

I lent Fauzia Minallah's book to my mother who was born and reared in Rawalpindi before Islamabad was built. She visited me, when I lived in Islamabad, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience as it bought back many childhood memories. She enjoyed the book as much as I did and commented that the only thing that is missing from this book are the smells!!

Fauzia Minallah should brings out a pocket edition of the book in paperback for those who want to visit the places she describes. She could leave out some of the beautiful photos and artwork if necessary. Most importantly, all the members of the C.D.A should read Fauzia Minallah's book.