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Alexander's legions and the
southern wing of his army were held up here in 327 B.C.
for forty days at a fort excavated recently, 27 1/2 kms
(17 miles) 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 lndo-Pakistan
sub-continent.
The pass and the valley
have resounded to the tramp of marching feet as
successive armies hurtled down the crossroad of history,
pathway of commerce, and migration arid invasion by
Aryans. Scythians, Persians, Creeks.
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 arid long, loose shirts, wear bullet-studded
bandoliers across their chests or pistols at their sides
as a normal part of their dress.
There is just that little
touch of excitement and drama in the air that makes for
a frontier land. An occasional salvo of gun fire-no, not
a tribal raid or a skirmish in the streets hut a lively
part of wedding celebrations.
Remember we are in the land
of the 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
the most well-known, though much misrepresented, Pathans
are faithful Muslims. Their heroes, like khushal Khan
Khattak, the warrior-poet and Rebman Baba, have moulded
their typical martial and religious character. A
preacher and a poet of Pushto language.
Today, they themselves
guard the Pakistan-Afghanistan border along the great
passes of the Khyber. The Tochi, the Gomal and others on
Pakistan's territory, but before independence they
successfully defied mighty empires, like the British and
the Moghal 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. Tribal,
traders and tourists - this is old Peshawar the
journey’s end or at least a long halt, for those
traveling up north or coming 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. |
