MEMORY OF INDEPENDENCE

Pakistanpaedia Minar-e-Pakistan


The base of the tower is raised approximately 4 metres from the ground. It rises up to approximately 13 metres. forming a sculpted, flower-like base. From this point it tapers as it rises. The base platform is shaped like a 5-point star and it encloses crescent shaped pools. The overall height of the monument is approximately 60 metres. It is constructed in reinforced concrete, all poured in-situ. The floors and walls are rendered in stone and marble. From base to some 181 feet height, concrete and steel has been used, while the top 16.5 feet portion is made of stainless steel to avoid it from corrosion.

The lower portion / base is made of coarse marble, indicating the initial rough days of independence, while walls and upper portion have smooth marble showing gradual development and prosperity. On the base, all around the Minar are ten marble slabs of seven feet tall and two feet in width, on with 99 names of Allah have been written. Other inscriptions include excerpts from the speeches of Mr. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan related to ideology of Pakistan, in Urdu, Bengali and English, besides the National Anthem in Urdu and Bengali and a verse from Dr Allama Iqbal. Some Quranic verses (Surah Baqarah, Surah Al e Imran, Surah Myedah and Surah Ra'ad) have also been inscribed. On the main entrance "Allah o Akbar (Allah is the Greatest) and "Minar-e-Pakistan" are inscribed. There are 324 stairs to go to the top, besides a lift.

The first balcony is 30 feet high, second at 50 feet. There is a separate "Chabootra" abou 12 feet high some distance away from the Minar, on which Quranic aya "Allah al mashriaq wal maghrab" is inscribed. The resting place of Hafeez Jalandhari, the writer of the national anthem of Pakistan, is also in the courtyard of the minar. The Mianr was initially named "Yadgar-e-Pakistan" but was later rightly renamed as "Minar-e-Pakistan

MINAR-E-PAKISTAN

Minar-e-Pakistan in the lqbal Park, Lahore was constructed to commemorate the famous Lahore Resolution which on 23 March 1940, in which Pakistan Muslim League, the single representative political party of all Muslims of the India in its historic 34 annual session unanimously demanded the creation of a separate homeland for the Muslims of this sub-continent. The Minar is a blend of Mughal and modern architecture and has been very boldly designed. The foundation stone was laid on 23 March 1960 by the governor West Pakistan Mr Akhtar Hussain in the Minto Park, which was later renamed as Iqbal Park, after poet Dr Iqbal who first gave the idea of a separate Muslim country for the Muslims of the British India.

The minar was architectured by Naseer ud Din Mira'at Khan who was a graduate of St. Petersburg University and originally belonged to Daghistan, USSR. He came to Pakistan and married here. From 1953-58 he was consultant to the Government of Pakistan on construction and was the man behind the designing of Police Training College, Sihala, Qadaffi Stadium Lahore and many other buildings. It i s said that in early 1963,President Ayub Khan called Mr. Mira'at in governor house Lahore and took out fountain pen from his pocket and placed it vertically on the table and asked Mr. Mira'at that he wanted a monument "burj (the word he used)" like this to be build. The design approved by the President was built under the personal supervision of Mr. Mira'at by Mian Abdul Khaliq and Company. The Minar was completed on 31 October 1968 at an estimated cost of Rs. 7.5 million. The money was collected by imposing additional tax on the cinema and horse racing tickets.

EDUCATION IN PESHAWAR

The historic old city of Peshawar was once a heavily guarded citadel with high walls. Today, not much remains of the walls, but the houses and havelis have an essence of days gone by. Most of the houses are made of unbaked bricks with wooden structures for protection against earthquakes. Many of them have beautifully carved wooden doors and latticed wooden balconies. Areas such as Sethi Mohallah still contain many fine examples of the old architecture of Peshawar. There are many historic monuments and bazaars in the Old city, including the Mohabbat Khan Mosque and Kotla Mohsin Khan, Chowk Yadgar and the Qissa Khawani Bazaar.

The walled city was surrounded by several main gates which severed as the main entry points into the city, some of which still survive today. They include:

• Lahori Gate

• Sarasia Gate

• Ganj Gate

• Sirki Gate

• Sard Chah Gate

• Kohati Gate

Educational institutions

With the level of higher education on the rise, there has been a surge of prestigious educational institutions in Peshawar.

• Abasyn University

• Khyber Medical University

• Institute of Management Sciences

• Agriculture University of Peshawar

• University of Engineering & Technology (U.E.T.)

• National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (FAST-NU), (Peshawar Campus)

• Islamia College Peshawar (1913)

• Gandhara University

• Iqra University

• Institute of Management Studies

• ICMS

• Oxfords College University Town Peshawar

• City University Of Science & Technology

• Institute of Business & Management Sciences

• CECOS

• Gandhara Medical College

• Sarhad University

• Ghulam IOshaq Khan Institute of Science & Technology, Topi, NWFP

• College of Aeronautical Engineering (CAE, NUST), Risalpur, NWFP

• Peshawar Medical College

• University of Peshawar

• Preston University

• Greenwich University

• PAC

• Government Frontier College Peshawar

• Jinnah College for Women

• Edwardes College Peshawar

• Government College Peshawar

• Superior Science College Wazirbagh Peshawar.

• Fazaia Degree College (PAF Degree College)

• St. Francis' High School

• University Public School (1964)

• University Model School

• Peshawar Model School

• Collegiate School Islamia College

• Oxfords College School University Town Peshawar

• Peshawar Public School and College

• The Convent High School

• Army Public School

• BeaconHouse School System

• The City School

• The Educators

• The Roots School

• American International School

• I.L.M

• The Smart School

• Qadeems Educational System

• Iqra School

• daffodils Kindergarten (Hayatabad Town)

• Frontier Model School

• Peshawar Grammar School

• Lahore Grammar School (Peshawar Campus)

• Saint Mary's High School

• Forward Model School

• Forward Public School

ARRIVAL OF ISLAM

The Pakhtuns began to convert to Islam following early annexation by the Arab Empire from Khurasan (in what is today western Afghanistan and northeastern Iran).

Sebuktagin dying in 997 was succeeded as governor of Khorasan by his son Mahmud, who throwing of all dependence on the Samani princes, assumed the title of Sultan in 999, and from this reign the Hindu religion in these parts may be said to have received a death blow. In the early reign of this celebrated invader of India the plains of Peshawar were again the scene of some great battles, the first of which was fought on the maira between Nowshera and the Indus, in the year 1001. Mahmud was opposed by Jaipal, who had been constantly endevouring to recover the country wrested from him by Sebuktagin, still aided by some Pathans whose allegiance to the Muslim governor of Peshawar was not of long continuance.

The battle took place on November 27 and the Hindus were one again routed, Jaipal himself being taken prisoner, who upon his subsequent release resigned the crown to his son Anandpal. On this occasion Mahmud punished the Pathans who had sided with the enemy, and as they were now converted entirely to the Islam, they stayed true to their new allegiance, and joined the Sultan in his wars against the infidels.

Peshawar was taken by Turkic Muslims in 988 and was incorporated into the larger Pakhtun domains by the 16th century. The founder of the Mughul dynasty that would conquer South Asia, Babur, who hailed from current Uzbekistan, came to Peshawar and founded a city called Bagram where he rebuilt the fort in 1530. His grandson, Akbar, formally named the city Peshawar, meaning "The Place at the Frontier" in Persian and expanded the bazaars and fortifications. The Muslim technocrats, bureaucrats, soldiers, traders, scientists, architects, teachers, theologians and Sufis flocked from the rest of the Muslim world to Islamic Sultanate in South Asia and many settled in the Peshawar region.

INDO-GREEK PESHAWAR

The area that Peshawar occupies was then seized by the Greco-Bactrian king, Eucratides (170 - 159 BCE), and was controlled by a series of Greco-Bactrian and later Indo-Greek kings who ruled an empire that spanned from ancient Pakistan to North India. Later, the city came under the rule of several Parthian and Indo-Parthian kings, another group of Iranic invaders from Central Asia, the most famous of whom, Gondophares, ruled the city and its environs starting in circa 46 CE, and was briefly followed by two or three of his descendants before they were displaced by the first of the "Great Kushans", Kujula Kadphises, around the middle of the 1st century CE.

Kanishka's Rule

Peshawar formed the eastern capital of the empire of Gandhara under the Kushan king Kanishka, who reigned from at least 127 CE. Peshawar became a great centre of Buddhist learning. Kanishka built what may have been the tallest building in the world at the time, a giant stupa, to house the Buddha's relics, just outside the Ganj Gate of the old city of Peshawar.

Excavations of Kanishka's Monastery in central Peshawar

The Kanishka stupa was said to be an imposing structure as one travelled down from the mountains of Afghanistan onto the Gandharan plains. The earliest account of the famous building is by the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim monk, Faxian, who visited it in 400 and described it as being over 40 chang in height (probably about 120 m or 394 ft) and adorned "with all precious substances". "Of all the stûpas and temples seen by the travellers, none can compare with this for beauty of form and strength." It was destroyed by lightning and repaired several times. It was still in existence at the time of Xuanzang's visit in 634. From the ruined base of this giant stupa there existed a jewelled casket containing relics of the Buddha, and an inscription identifying Kanishka as the donor, and was excavated from a chamber under the very centre of the stupa's base, by a team under Dr. D.B. Spooner in 1909. The stupa was roughly cruciform in shape with a diameter of 286 feet (87 meters) and heavily decorated around the sides with stucco scenes.

Sometime in the 1st millennium BCE, the group that now dominates Peshawar began to arrive from the Suleiman Mountains of southern Afghanistan to the southwest, the Pashtuns. Whether or not the Pashtuns existed in the region even earlier is debatable, as evidence is difficult to attain. Some writers such as Sir Olaf Caroe write that a group that may have been the Pakhtuns existed in the area and were called the Pactycians by Herodotus and the Greeks, which would place the Pakhtuns in the area of Peshawar much earlier along with other Aryan tribes. Ancient Hindu scriptures such as the Rig-Veda, speak of an Aryan tribe called the Pakht, living in the region.

Regardless, over the centuries the Pakhtuns would come to dominate the region and Peshawar has emerged as an important center of Pakhtun culture along with Kandahar and Kabul as well as Quetta in more recent times. Muslim Arab and Turkic arrived and annexed the region before the beginning of the 2nd millennium.

HISTORY OF PESHAWAR

Being among the most ancient cities of the region between Central, South, and West Asia, Peshawar has for centuries been a centre of trade between Afghanistan, South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. As an ancient center of learning, the 2nd century B.C.E. Bakhshali Manuscript used in the Bakhshali approximation was found nearby. Peshawar is also the setting of the famous story Peshawar Nights, which was an exchange between a Shia scholar and a Sunni audience over the course of eleven nights, which presumably resulted in their acceptance of Shi'ism.

Peshawar was a major center of Buddhist learning until the 10th century. As an indication of its importance, Peshawar was also the site of Kanishka's Great Stupa which housed relics from Gautama Buddha, and was widely considered to be the tallest building in the world at the time of its construction. Ancient Chinese manuscripts tell of Buddhist pilgrims such as Faxian, Sung Yun, and Xuanzang reporting that the 7th century stupa, which was rediscovered in 1908, had a height of 591–689 feet.

PESHAWAR

Being among the most ancient cities of the region between Central, South, and West Asia, Peshawar has for centuries been a centre of trade between Afghanistan, South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. As an ancient center of learning, the 2nd century B.C.E. Bakhshali Manuscript used in the Bakhshali approximation was found nearby. Peshawar is also the setting of the famous story Peshawar Nights, which was an exchange between a Shia scholar and a Sunni audience over the course of eleven nights, which presumably resulted in their acceptance of Shi'ism.

Peshawar was a major center of Buddhist learning until the 10th century. As an indication of its importance, Peshawar was also the site of Kanishka's Great Stupa which housed relics from Gautama Buddha, and was widely considered to be the tallest building in the world at the time of its construction. Ancient Chinese manuscripts tell of Buddhist pilgrims such as Faxian, Sung Yun, and Xuanzang reporting that the 7th century stupa, which was rediscovered in 1908, had a height of 591–689 feet.