Harking Back: Surely we can learn from wonders of the Moors

The last weekend was spent in the splendour of the old Spanish city of Seville, followed by a visit to the utterly stunning Alhambra in Granada. For a ‘pen-pusher’ devoted to exploring and writing about Lahore, it was a great learning experience.

Thrilling as the experience was, it also made me sad, very sad, for our old walled city of Lahore, if restored to its original glory, can do equally well, if not better. In Seville if you walk through the old city lanes and streets, cobbled and spotlessly clean, you experience the same pleasure I have felt over the years when walking with friends through the ‘ghattis’, ‘galis’, ‘kuchas’ and ‘katras’ of old Lahore. Each turn has its own unique story. The human characters of Lahore are so interesting. Our city is much larger, and its ‘havelis’ can easily be restored to form exquisite living spaces for tourists. Surely old Lahore, if restored, can attract at least a million persons a year. That surely has to be our future. The depressing thing is that I do not see it happening soon. Happen it will one day, of that I am sure.

Seville is a city that was once ruled by the ‘Moors’, who were mostly of Berber origin. Religious hatred ultimately decimated them, but the creations they left remain testimony to a glorious civilisation. Such is the power of heritage. Everywhere you look you can see glimpses of their traditions. The palace and gardens of Al-Cazar (Al-Qasr in Arabic), built by the Al-Muhad Caliphate of Al-Muwarak in 1360s, is proud proof of the skill of Moorish architects classified as the Mudejar style. It made me think of the Sheesh Mahal in the Lahore Fort, only that we have let it deteriorate beyond measure.

The gardens outside the eleven palaces in Al-Cazar are full of orange trees, which tempt visitors to break a few. But then the entire city is full of such orange and lemon trees. My ‘better half’ kept wanting to pick a few out of sheer ‘Lahori’ instinct. Luckily she held back. My mind ran to the gardens of Lahore and it made me sad, for these days felling trees seems to be second nature to our political leaders. They call it development. Surely it is greed. A road sign in Seville says: “Trees are alive, if you hurt them they cry” (Al-Quran).

But for me the old city was a greater attraction, for here we have a living city. It reminded me of my father who brought us up to believe that “Lahore is the world’s largest living museum”. He instilled in us the belief that a day will come when people from all over the world will come to see the old walled city of Lahore. He had, surely, failed to comprehend how our trader-politicians would even demolish the walls. Nothing like free bricks. But then surely all this can be reversed, that is if the younger generation is more powerful than us weaklings who have silently watched the destruction of our amazing old city. Criminal silence is a better description.

Here I was constantly reminded of Aga Khan, who helped to put into place a ‘demonstration model’ on how to bring back old Lahore by restoring all the houses in Gali Surjan Singh inside Delhi Gate. People living in the old city saw the results and wanted their houses restored. A few were even willing to pay for it. But then no official plan exists for such an undertaking. Matters are now almost at a standstill.

Take just one example to understand the power of heritage ‘restoration’. The Shahi Hammam, inside Delhi Gate, was restored to the finest international levels by the Aga Khan Trust. It is attracting tourists, and is today the main attraction for people wanting to see the old city. Mind you this is just one of over 311 sites in the old city that can be restored. The mind boggles at the prospect of having so much to see. The problem is that we have stopped dreaming for our land and our city.

One can write endless columns in a comparative analysis of what exists in Seville in Spain and what Old Lahore can be if we tried. But let me move to the north to Granada in Andalusia, and discuss the lessons to be learned from the magnificent Alhambra (‘Qala al-Hamra’ in Arabic means ‘the red one’). Rest assured we do not have anything to match its magnificence. We have many smaller monuments, and a lot of them, inside the Lahore Fort of relatively recent origin in historic terms, all of which need to be restored to its original beauty. The variety we have is surely staggering.

As we entered the Alhambra Palace to one side was an old water gravitational filtration structure, said to be at least 1,000 years old. It looked exactly like the three that were built outside Lahore’s Shalimar Gardens. Now this brings us to a very important fact which we should keep in mind. The Alhambra and the Shalimar Gardens are both ‘water-based’ monuments. Without water these monuments have no meaning. For the Shalimar to be alive the Mughals had a canal dug to keep water flowing and it was all based on a gravitational model that did not need any mechanical assistance and the fountains never stopped. So it remains still for the Alhambra. But a ‘Road to India’ project, and now the Orange Train Project of the two Sharif brothers completely destroyed the critical three water gravitational filtration structures that existed outside the Shalimar Gardens. It could surely have been avoided.

In purely scientific terms, as has been assessed by Prof Dr Robin Coningham of Durham University, the Unesco professor reporting on the Orange Train threat to the Shalimar (naturally denied visas to visit Lahore), the garden depends on the gravitational water filtration structures. Outside them it is of little historic value. This must be understood if we are to understand the Shalimar Gardens in its totality. Even dozens of tube-wells cannot restore this massive setback. All it does is throw pipe rust into the garden fountains. Surely they can be restored for detailed plans of the 12 such structures in Granada are there to learn from. To believe that they cannot be restored is to hoodwink the people, and to blame are bureaucrats with shady agendas.

So as I walked through the narrow winding streets of Old Seville, through the gardens of the Palace of Al-Cazar, and through the magnificence of the fort of Alhambra, it made me sad that my city is decaying. Just imagine the carnage that our trader-politicians have created inside the old walled city. In Seville I noticed that they are a café-addicted people who love to eat quality food and drink the finest lubricants. In the evenings everyone is out in the thousands of cafes. The people of Lahore and Seville are so similar.

That reminded me of the typical Lahori who loves his food and is famous in the sub-continent for it. The colourful flamenco dancers of Seville owe their origin (DNA has proved this) to the gypsies found on the banks of the rivers of Punjab. To add to this colour we have Basant and they have bullfighting. So the grounds are all there for us to build on. If we manage Lahore will again be a great tourist city that the poet Milton in his poem ‘Paradise Lost’ described: “Agra and Lahore revealed after the Fall as future wonders of God’s creation”.