Peshawar; The City Of Flowers

Peshawar derives its name from a Sanskrit word "Pushpapura", meaning the city of flowers. Peshawar's flowers were mentioned even in Mughal Emperor Babur's memories.

Alexander's legions and the southern wing of his army were held up in here in 327 B.C. for forty days at a fort excavated recently, 28km north-east of Peshawar at Pushkalavati (lotus city) near Charsadda.

The great Babur marched through historic Khyber Pass to conquer South Asia in 1526 and set up the Moghal Empire in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent.

The pass and the valley have resounded to the tramp of marching feet as successive armies hurtled down the cross-roads of history, pathway of commerce, migration and invasion, by Aryans, Scythians, Persians, Greeks, Bactrians, Kushans, Huns, Turks, Mongols and Moghals.

And Peshawar is now, as always, very much a frontier town. The formalities of dress and manner give way here to a free and easy style, as men encounter men with a firm handclasp and a straight but friendly look. Hefty handsome men in baggy trousers and long, loose shirts, wearing bullet studded bandoliers across their chest or pistols at their sides as a normal part of their dress.

There is just that little touch of excitment and drama in the air that makes for a frontier land. An occasional salvo of gunfire--no, not a tribal raid or a skirmish in the streets but a lively part of wedding celebrations.

Remember, we are in the land of Pathans--a completely male-dominated society. North and South of Peshawar spreads the vast tribal area where lives the biggest tribal society in the world, and well-known, though much misrepresented.

Pathans are faithful Muslims. Their typical martial and religious charaters has been moulded by their heros like Khushal Khan Khattak, the warrior-poet and Rehman Baba, a preacher and also a poet of Pushto language.

Today, they themselves guard the Pakistan-Afghanistan border along the great passes of Khyber, the Tochi, the Gomal and others on Pakistan's territory, but before independence they successfully defied mighty empires, like the British and the Moghals and others before them, keeping the border simmering with commotion, and the flame of freedom proudly burning.

Peshawar is the great Pathan city. And what a city. Hoary with age and the passage of twenty-five centuries, redolent with the smell of luscious fruit and roasted meat and tobacco smoke, placid and relaxed but pulsating with the rhythmic sound of craftsmen's hammers and horses' hooves, unhurried in its pedestrian pace and horse-carriage traffic, darkened with tall houses, narrow lanes and overhanging balconies, intimate, with its freely intermingling crowd of townsmen, tribals, traders and tourists--this is old Peshawar, the journey's end or at least a long halt, for those travelling up north or comming down from the Middle east or Central Asia, now as centuries before when caravans unloaded in the many caravan-serais now lying deserted outside the dismantled city walls or used as garages by the modern caravans of far-ranging buses.

Until the mid-fifties Peshawar was enclosed within a city wall and sixteen gates. Of the old city gates the most famous was the Kabuli Gate but only the name remains now. It leads out of the Khyber and on to Kabul.

You come across two-and three-storeyed houses built mostly of unbaked bricks set in wooden frames to guard againt earthquakes. Many old houses have beautifully carved heavy wooden doors and almost all have highly ornamental wooden balconies. There is a tall and broad structure whose lofty portals look down upon the street. This historic building houses the police offices and the site was occupied centuries ago by a Buddhist stupa, then by a Hindu temple and then by a Moghal serai. It was, in Sikh days, the seat of General Avitable, an Italian soldier of fortune in the service of Ranjit Singh.

The prime attraction in the region is the Khyber Pass situated in the Sulaiman Hills which form the western barrier of Pakistan. The hills dip down here, leaving a passage sometimes as broad as 1.5km and sometimes as narrow as 16 meters. The pass begins near Jamrud Fort 18km from Peshawar and extends beyond the border of Pakistan at Torkham 58km away. At Torkham PTDC has a motel-cum-Information Center which is closed at present due to unsettled conditions in Afghanistan.