Lahore

• 1. Introduction

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  Lahore is a city that has been conquered, sacked, and rebuilt more times than almost any other on the subcontinent. Its origin reaches back into antiquity, with people living on its ground for roughly two millennia. Yet no definitive record of its early history survives, and its ambiguous past has bred theory after theory about how it began. Alexander the Great's historians made no mention of any city here during his invasion in 326 BCE. The first document to name the place is the Hudud al-'Alam, written in 982 CE, which described a town of impressive temples, large markets, and huge orchards. How does a town of orchards become the second-largest city in Pakistan, home to over 14 million people? Why do more Mughal-era monuments stand here than in either Delhi or Agra? And what does it mean that one man's army stripped the white marble from the very monuments that made the city famous? The answers run through emperors and invaders, through a diamond and a partition, and through a name nobody can quite agree on.

• 2. The Disputed Name

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  Luhawar, Luhar, Rahwar, Lahanur, Lawhur, Alahwar. Early Muslim historians could not settle on what to call this city. The polymath and geographer Abu Rayhan al-Biruni wrote it as Luhawar in his 11th century work, the Qanun. The poet Amir Khusrow, who lived during the Delhi Sultanate period, recorded it as Lahanur. Yaqut al-Hamawi set it down as Lawhur, noting it was famously known as Lahawar. One theory holds the name is a corruption of Ravawar, since shifts from R to L are common in languages descended from Sanskrit. That trail leads back to Iravatyawar, a name possibly drawn from the Ravi River, called the Iravati River in the Vedas. A competing idea ties the name to Lohar, the word for blacksmith. Legend offers something grander. It says the name comes from Lavpur, the City of Lava, founded by Prince Lava, the son of Sita and Rama. The same account credits the founding of nearby Kasur to his twin brother Kusha, though that town was in fact established only in the 16th century.

• 3. Capital After Capital

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  Ghaznavid Sultan Mahmud conquered Lahore between 1020 and 1027 and folded it into his empire. He appointed Malik Ayaz as governor in 1021, and under a later sultan, Ayaz rebuilt and repopulated a city devastated by invasion. Ayaz raised city walls and a masonry fort in 1037 to 1040 on the ruins of an older one. A confederation of Hindu princes laid siege without success in 1043 to 1044. The city was made the eastern capital of the Ghaznavid Empire in 1152, and after the fall of Ghazni in 1163 it became the sole capital, drawing poets and scholars until it was renowned for verse. After the Ghurid ruler Muhammad captured the city in 1186, Lahore became the first capital of the Mamluk dynasty of what would later be called the Delhi Sultanate. Under Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, it held more poets writing in Persian than any other city. The Mongols then arrived and kept arriving. They sacked the city in 1241, overran northern Punjab in 1287 under Temur Khan, and struck again in 1298 and 1305. The repeated assaults pushed the region's administrative centre south to Dipalpur, turning Lahore into a city on a frontier. When the conqueror Timur captured it in 1398, he did not bother to loot it. By then it was no longer wealthy.

• 4. The Mughal Zenith

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  Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire, captured and sacked Lahore, then retreated when Lodi nobles backed away from helping him. Humayun reconquered the city in February 1555, and Mughal rule brought the most prosperous era in its history. Beginning in 1584, Lahore became the Mughal capital as Akbar re-fortified the ruined citadel and laid the foundations for the revival of the Lahore Fort. Akbar rebuilt the city walls and extended them east of the Shah Alami bazaar, and the Akbari Mandi grain market he set up still functions today. Under Jahangir in the early 17th century, the bazaars were vibrant and stocked with goods from far away. In 1606 the Sikh Guru Arjan Dev was executed in Lahore for his role in a rebellion, and the roots of Mughal-Sikh animosity took hold. Jahangir chose to be buried here, and his tomb rose in the Shahdara Bagh suburb in 1637, built by his wife Nur Jahan. His son Shah Jahan was born in Lahore in 1592 and gave the city some of its most celebrated monuments, among them the Shalamar Gardens in 1641. His viceroy and physician Wazir Khan built the extravagantly decorated Wazir Khan Mosque and the Shahi Hammam. Aurangzeb, last of the great Mughal emperors, raised the Badshahi Mosque in 1673, the largest of the city's Mughal monuments, and the Alamgiri Gate of the fort in 1674. During this golden age, suburban districts held perhaps six times as many people as lived within the Walled City itself.

• 5. Decline And Plunder

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  Civil wars over the Mughal succession after Aurangzeb's death in 1707 loosened Delhi's grip and began a long decline. Nader Shah's brief invasion in early 1739 wrested control from Zakariya Khan Bahadur, and though Khan won it back, the trade routes had shifted south toward Kandahar. The Indus ports near the Arabian Sea that served Lahore silted up, draining the city's importance further. The Durrani ruler Ahmad Shah occupied Lahore in 1748, then invaded again and again, his fourth campaign coming in 1757. Marathas, Afghans, and Sikhs traded the ruined city through the middle of the century. Sikh Misls secured control in 1767, and in 1780 the city was split among three rulers, Gujjar Singh, Lahna Singh, and Sobha Singh. By the late 18th century the population had drastically declined, the extramural suburbs lay abandoned, and travellers had to pass through miles of ruins before reaching the gates. Ranjit Singh seized the region after a series of battles, his army entering through the Lohari Gate when its keeper, Mukham Din Chaudhry, opened it. His rule restored some lost grandeur but at a steep price. His armies stripped the white marble from the Tomb of Asif Khan and the Tomb of Nur Jahan and the Shalimar Gardens to send across the empire. The Badshahi Mosque was turned into an ammunition depot and a stable for horses. He built the Hazuri Bagh Baradari in 1818 to celebrate capturing the Koh-i-Noor diamond from Shuja Shah Durrani in 1813.

• 6. The British Capital

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  The British East India Company seized Lahore in February 1846 from the collapsing Sikh state. After the defeat of the Sikhs at the Battle of Gujrat, British troops deposed Maharaja Duleep Singh, and Punjab was annexed in 1849. At the start of British rule the population was estimated at 120,000. The British viewed the Walled City as a bed of social discontent and disease, so they largely left it alone and built their own capital to the south, first called Donald's Town and then renamed Civil Station. They repurposed Mughal monuments without ceremony. The Tomb of Anarkali became an Anglican church in 1851, the Dai Anga Mosque became railway administration offices, and the tomb of Mir Mannu was used as a wine shop. The Lahore Railway Station, built just after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, was styled as a medieval castle with thick walls, turrets, and holes for gun and cannon fire, designed to ward off any future uprising. Around the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887 the British raised the Lahore Museum and the Mayo School of Industrial Arts in the Indo-Saracenic style. Many of the city's important buildings were designed by civil engineer Sir Ganga Ram, considered the father of modern Lahore. The 1901 census counted 20,691 houses in the Walled City and an estimated 200,000 residents.

• 7. Independence And Partition

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  At midnight on the 31st of December 1929, the Declaration of the Independence of India was moved by Jawaharlal Nehru and passed unanimously at Lahore's Bradlaugh Hall, where the Indian Swaraj flag was adopted. The city's jail held independence activists such as Jatin Das, and it was there that Bhagat Singh was hanged in 1931. Under Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the All India Muslim League passed the Lahore Resolution in 1940, demanding a separate homeland for the Muslims of India. The city's fate was then fiercely contested. The 1941 census put Lahore at 671,659 people, 64.5 percent Muslim, with the rest Hindu, Sikh, and a small Christian community. Hindus and Sikhs argued the city was only 54 percent Muslim by 1945 ration figures, and noted they owned two-thirds of the shops and 80 percent of the factories. Cyril Radcliffe, who drew the boundary, reportedly said he had first planned to give Lahore to India before placing it in Pakistan, having already awarded Calcutta to India. Partition brought the worst riots the city has known. Early riots in March and April 1947 destroyed 6,000 of Lahore's 82,000 homes. By late August, 66 percent of Hindus and Sikhs had left, and the Shah Alami Bazaar, once a largely Hindu quarter, was burnt down entirely. On the 17th of August 1947, Lahore was awarded to Pakistan on the basis of its 1941 Muslim majority. In India, the loss of Lahore spurred the building of a new modernist capital at Chandigarh.

• 8. A City Reborn

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  Industrial production fell to one-third of its pre-Partition level by the end of the 1940s, and only 27 percent of manufacturing units were operating by 1950. The weakened economy and the city's nearness to the Indian border cost it the role of national capital, which went to Karachi for its relative calm and stronger infrastructure. Reconstruction of the Shah Alami Bazaar began in 1949, and the Tomb of Allama Iqbal was built in 1951 to honour the philosopher-poet who inspired the Pakistan movement. In 1955 Lahore was named capital of all West Pakistan during the single-unit period, which lasted until 1970. The Minar-e-Pakistan was completed in 1968 to mark where the Pakistan Resolution was passed. Today the city's economy by purchasing power parity has been estimated at around 40 billion dollars, with some 9,000 industrial units and a shift toward service industries. It remains the foremost centre of Pakistan's literary life, a UNESCO City of Literature where 80 percent of the country's books are published. Its Walled City still holds the Lahore Fort and the Shalimar Gardens, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981. The mausoleum of Ali al-Hujwiri at the Data Darbar shrine draws an annual urs of up to one million visitors, a reminder that the city of orchards named in 982 CE never stopped gathering crowds to its gates.