Faisal Mosque

Faisal Mosque

The Faisal Mosque in Islamabad is the largest mosque in Pakistan and South Asia and the fourth largest mosque in the world. It was the largest mosque in the world from 1986 to 1993 when overtaken in size by the completion of the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, Morocco. Subsequent expansions of the Masjid al-Haram (Grand Mosque) of Mecca and the Al-Masjid al-Nabawi (Prophet's Mosque) in Medina, Saudi Arabia during the 1990s relegated Faisal Mosque to fourth place in terms of size.

Faisal Mosque is the National Mosque of Pakistan. It has a covered area of 5,000 m2 (54,000 sq ft) and has a capacity to accommodate approximately 300,000 worshippers (100,000 in its main prayer hall, courtyard and porticoes and another 200,000 in its adjoining grounds). Although its covered main prayer hall is smaller than that of the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca (the world's third largest mosque), Faisal Mosque has the third largest capacity of accommodating worshippers in its adjoining grounds after the Masjid al-Haram (Grand Mosque) of Mecca, the Al-Masjid al-Nabawi (Prophet's Mosque) in Medina. Each of the Mosque's four minarets are 80 m (260 ft) high (the tallest minarets in South Asia) and measure 10 x 10 m in circumference.

The Faisal Mosque is named after the late King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, who supported and financed the project.

History

The impetus for the mosque began in 1966 when the late King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia supported the initiative of the Pakistani Government to build a national mosque in Islamabad during an official visit to Pakistan. In 1969, an international competition was held in which architects from 17 countries submitted 43 proposals. After four days of deliberation, Turkish architect Vedat Dalokay's design was chosen. Construction of the mosque began in 1976 by National Construction of Pakistan, led by Azim Borujerdi, and was funded by the government of Saudi Arabia, at a cost of over 130 million Saudi riyals (approximately 120 million USD today). King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz was instrumental in the funding, and both the mosque and the road leading to it were named after him after his assassination in 1975. The mosque was completed in 1986, and used to house the International Islamic University. Many conservative Muslims criticised the design at first for its non-conventional design and lack of the traditional dome structure, but virtually all criticism was eventually silenced by the mosque's scale, form, and setting against the Margalla Hills upon completion.

Location

It is located in Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan. It is situated at the north end of Faisal Avenue, putting it at the northernmost end of the city and in front of a magnificent backdrop provided by the Margalla Hills, the westernmost foothills of the Himalayas. It is a focal point of Islamabad, and a famous and recognized icon of the city.

Design

The Faisal Mosque is the most famous work of renowned Turkish architect, Vedat Dalokay. The mosque's relatively unusual design fuses contemporary lines with the more traditional look of an Arab Bedouin's tent, with its large triangular prayer hall and four minarets. However, unlike traditional masjid design, it lacks a dome, and like a tent, the weight of the main prayer hall in the center is supported by the four minarets. The minarets borrow their design from Turkish tradition and are thin pencil like. The interior of this prayer hall holds a very large chandelier and its walls are decorated with mosaics and calligraphy by the famous Pakistani artist Sadequain. The mosaic pattern adorns the west wall, and has the kalimah writtern in early Kufic script, repeated in mirror image pattern.

The mosque's architecture is a departure from the long history of South Asian Islamic architecture. However, in some ways it makes a bridge between Arab, Turkish and Pakistani Islamic architectural traditions.

Kot Diji Fort

Kot Diji Fort

The Kot Diji Fort, formally known as Fort Ahmadabad, dominates the town of Kot Diji in Khairpur, Pakistan about 25 miles east of the Indus River at the edge of the Nara-Rajisthan Desert. The fort was built between 1785 to 1795 by Mir Sohrab Khan Talpur, founder of the Kingdom of Upper Sindh in 1783. In addition to the fort, a 5 kilometer, 12 feet wide mud wall was built around the city. This defensive wall had bastions throughout its length and a huge iron gate served as the city's only entrance.

Fort Kot Diji

Mir Sohrab Khan Talpur, King of Upper Sindh.1783-1830
Map of Sindh. Confederacy of Talpur KingdomsThe fort was considered invincible and served as the residence of the Ameers of Khairpur in times of peace. It is, therefore, the ancestral home of royal house. During war time the zenana (female members of the royal family), would be shifted to Shahgarh Fort, formerly within the realm but since 1843, after the conquest of the rest of Sindh, it is in the Jaisalmer desert, now in India. When the Zenana moved into the comfort of palaces, it stood mainly as a decorated reminder of more violent times. Throughout its whole history, however, Fort Kot Diji was never attacked.
Construction

Kot Diji is a very practical fort constructed on a limestone hill with kiln-baked bricks. Bricks were used because the locally available limestone rock was very brittle and would have shattered easily on impact with a cannonball. The hill is about 110 feet high, above which the walls of the fort rise another 30 feet. It has three strategically placed towers about 50 feet tall.

The fort is over half a kilometer long. Its walls are segmented by about 50 bastions, and its 1.8 km outer perimeter wall identically follows the double crescent-shaped contours of the hill it stands on. This allows the fort to surround the attacking enemy on three sides on the west front. On the east, where the entrance lies, the fort is divided by three elephant-proof gates into three overlapping levels, so that the first two levels can be attacked by the next level above them in the event of the lower level being overrun by the enemy. The first gate is not a prominent portal but rather an indirect entry so that the gate cannot be rammed on a charge. The walls and bastions have arrow slits in them, allowing defenders to attack their enemy from two levels: from the battlement on top and from within the wall.

The fort was built at a time when cannons had become common and its design and position reveals that. It includes a multitude of stations for cannons and, because it is positioned high on a narrow ridge, enemy cannons would have had to fire at a great distance, permitting little accuracy. Cannonballs could either hit the hill or perimeter or would simply fly over the fort and fall on the enemies' own forces on the other side.
Location

Kot Diji was located at the edge of the desert; this provided an advantage over enemies marching from the east, because an exhausted army could be met before it could take supplies and water from the irrigated lands. In fact, the Mirwah canal was built in 1790 specifically to irrigate the lands west of the fort and bring water to the military base.
Role under the British Empire

The Kingdom of Upper Sindh later was recognized by the British as the princely state of Khayrpur, after the East India Company had reduced its area to less than a third of its original size of over 50,000 km². The Fort was allocated the role of central military base for the Kingdom, especially to resist Afghan invasion. It was the strongest of the 20 or so Talpur forts and was named after the Persian architect Ahmed, who designed it. According to folklore it took 30 years to build; in reality, a much shorter, tactically feasible period may have been possible by mobilizing peasants and soldiers on a massive scale.

Recent history

After the merger of the State with Pakistan in 1955, the fort could have been included with the personal property of the Mir of Khairpur (as is the case with other ex-sovereign rulers who still possess their forts). However, Mir Ali Murad II thought it appropriate to hand it over to the government of Pakistan, expecting better maintenance. Since then, the fort has fallen into serious disrepair and is presently in a derelict condition. Most of the lime mortar plaster has fallen of the walls, leaving the bricks exposed. During the dictatorship of Ayub Khan, 192 cannons and mortars based at and collected in the fort were stolen or destroyed by being thrown from the bastions; other decorative fixtures and fittings were stolen as well. Apart from many indigenously made cannons, the collection included those built for Nadir Shah, the Kachar emperors, and the Kalhora, Mughal and Safavid dynasties, along with antique European cannons.
Prince Mehdi Raza exposes government corruption showing the use of sand instead of cement as mortar.Jan, 2006In 1994 the provincial government of Sindh leased out the limestone hill on which the fort stood for demolition and quarrying for limestone extraction, in order to construct buildings and form foundations for government-built roads. However, public outrage - focusing partly on the abundance of limestone throughout the region - caused the surprised government to back down.

Today the town wall is barely visible. The massive historic iron gate was sold for scrap soon after the takeover of Khairpur by Pakistan. Here, as with other places, Khairpur's heritage and history are being erased; some claim that this part of a deliberate effort by the federal government to erase the Khairpur identity. In 1995 a check of 500 rupees (approximately US$8) was provided for the repair of Kot Diji. Repeated requests by citizens for permission to repair it privately have apparently been ignored. In 2005, about 25 million rupees were handed over to a repair scheme which has apparently left it even more damaged. Sand was used as mortar to replace the original mortar and, as a result, the walls are highly susceptible to rainfall.

Recently, the federal government handed over the fort to the government of Sindh. Since Sindh, which nominally has a provincial status, is widely considered to have a corrupt government, it is perhaps unlikely that the fort will benefit. However, Prince Mir Mehdi Raza Khan Talpur (younger of the two sons of the ex-ruler) is giving personal attention to the fort and has stated his commitment to its repair if sufficient funds can be acquired.

The Khunjerab Pass

The Khunjerab Pass is the highest paved border crossing in the world and the highest point on the Karakoram Highway. The roadway across the pass was completed in 1982, and has superseded the unpaved Mintaka Pass and Kilik Pass as the primary passage across the Karakorum Range.

On the Pakistani side, the pass is 125 km (78 mi) from Sust, 270 km (170 mi) from Gilgit and 870 km (540 mi) from Islamabad. There is a security outpost in Dih, and a customs and immigration post near Sust. On the Chinese side, the pass is 130 km (81 mi) from Tashkurgan, 420 km (260 mi) from Kashgar and some 1,890 km (1,170 mi) from Urumqi. The Chinese port of entry is located 1 km (0.62 mi) away from the mountain in Tashkurgan County.

The long, flat pass is often snow-covered during the winter season and is closed from November 30 to May 1. There is excellent grazing on the Chinese side of the pass, and domesticated yaks and dzu (a cross between yaks and cows) may be seen from the road. On the Pakistani side, the highway travels about 50 km (31 mi) across the extensive Khunjerab National Park before reaching the security outpost of Dih.

Since June 1, 2006, there has been a daily bus service across the boundary from Gilgit, to Kashghar, China[1]
Strategic Position

Khunjerab Pass is in a strategic position between the Pakistani autonomous region of Gilgit-Baltistan (formerly the known as the Northern Areas, and once part of Kashmir and the Xinjiang autonomous region of China.
Railway

In 2007, consultants [2] were engaged to investigate the construction of a railway through this pass to connect China with transport in Pakistani-administered northern areas of Kashmir. A feasibility study started in November 2009 for a line connecting Havelian 750km away in Pakistan and Kashgar 350km in China. [3]
Television

Khunjerab Pass can be seen in episode 13/30 of the NHK television series The Silk Road. The series was first shown in Japan in the early 1980s.
See also

Sust

Khunjerab National Park

Karakoram Highway

Northern Areas

Wagah border

mind those in power in both countries that they will only do as well as their relationship with the other country. The India and Pakistan of today have been shaped more by their mutual relationship than any other single factor. This relation-ship has been sour at best, and hateful at worst. But it is this relationship that will determine to what extent any force in Indian or Pakistani politics – be it the military, the religious right, or maybe even the people – is successful

Habib bank Karachi

HBL established operations in Pakistan in 1947 and moved its head office to Karachi. Our first international branch was established in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1951 and Habib Bank Plaza was built in 1972 to commemorate the bank’s 25th Anniversary.

With a domestic market share of over 40%, HBL was nationalized in 1974 and it continued to dominate the commercial banking sector with a major market share in inward foreign remittances (55%) and loans to small industries, traders and farmers. International operations were expanded to include the USA, Singapore, Oman, Belgium, Seychelles and Maldives and the Netherlands.

On December 29, 2003 Pakistan's Privatization Commission announced that the Government of Pakistan had formally granted the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED) rights to 51% of the shareholding in HBL, against an investment of PKR 22.409 billion (USD 389 million). On February 26, 2004, management control was handed over to AKFED. The Board of Directors was reconstituted to have four AKFED nominees, including the Chairman and the President/CEO and three Government of Pakistan nominees.

The Denso Hall

The Denso Hall

Denso HallThe Denso Hall was built in memory of Max Denso, a prominent resident of the city who had also chaired the Karachi Chamber of Commerce from 1870-71. A sum of Rs. 9,000 was collected by his friends for the construction of the building, whereas the Karachi Municipality allocated an important site on the fast-developing Bunder Road, as well as additional funds in order to provide the facility of a public hall, reading room and library in an area close to the "Old Town".

The Denso Hall was designed by James Strachan and was built in 1886 in the Market Quarter of the city, and was made out of local Gizri Sandstone. The architecture of the building was a relatively simple design which was Venetian Gothic in character. It employs The Denso HallTudor arches in the ground floor of the building whereas ogive arches are used for the first floor openings. Projecting balconies with carved balusters punctuate the long facade. The building includes an entrance hall, library, reading room and some small rooms on the ground floor. The upper floor is a large hall (60 ft x 30 ft) accommodating about 500 persons and was used for different types of social gatherings. The illuminated clock on the eastern front of Denso Hall was a gift from Rao Sahib Ramdas Morarji.

Karakoram Highway

he souls that paved the way for the modern tarmac road named the Karakoram Highway still seem to flicker amongst the sharp moving shadows of the unstable rocks and the almost countless but crumbly lucent glaciers that constantly threaten it's existence. There has always been a long pass into, and out of China over what is sometimes called the 'roof of the world' but in ancient times it was a very perilous pathway.

Extant writings, etched in a fourth century A.D. Chinese travelers diary, record ' The trail was very precipitous, and vertigo accompanied us as we edged along it...' The path was certainly narrow, and often clung to the sheer faces of the many deep resonant gorges that still confine their turgid, animated rivers. Even today, one can still see vestiges of an old crumbling trail high up above the present road. Although it is not the same trail that this particular merchant scrabbled breathlessly along, if one scrambles up to it and edges along it for a few meters, one can experience the same feelings of dizziness and danger that the diarist wrote about.

The new wide metal led road also winds along high palisade like cliffs in some places, and sometimes short sections of the tarmac rumble down into the river below or become buried under tones of rock and mud. However a modern traveler on this modern road will not experience the same fear or vertigo as the ancients.

The present highway is also popularly called the 'Silk Route' by many romantics because it approximates the trail of what was once one of the many silk, jade and spice carrying caravan trails that congregated somewhere near Xian, in China, and terminated in the vicinity of modern Syria on the Mediterranean sea coast. Like long lines of exploring ants, determined traders, merchants, and adventurers wore a path through narrow gorges, high grass sheathed valleys, across waterless deserts, around 6,000 meter - and higher mountains, and over raging rivers in pursuit of barter.

Karakoram Highway The passage of time hasn't altered any of these geophysical conditions, nor were the reasons for building this new road (apart from its obvious military significance) any different from the ancients reasons for undertaking such a hazardous journey. The new road was built to facilitate trade between China and Pakistan.

Tourist literature published by the Pakistan Tourist Authorities states that the road took twenty years to build. The pamphlets also mention the amount of earth moved, rocks blasted out of the way and more poignantly, the number of men and women, both Pakistani and Chinese who died in this great joint engineering feat.

Although the brochures write that it 'took twenty years to build', the road is in fact never finished! Because of the uniqueness of it's geophysical surroundings, constant natural activity frequently destroys sections of the highway. A small army of workers are on hand to reroute the road and join the new sections to the ends of the undamaged highway. The road in other words, is constantly being moved!

Put very simply, the road meanders through an area where highly active tectonic plate pressure is causing mountains to grow faster than the elements can wear them down! Swift flowing rivers and the measurable movements of glaciers crush, undercut and wash away the sides of these same mountains contributing to the constant rock falls and landslides that changes the face of the land almost daily! This uniquely accelerated geological activity can be felt, seen, and heard if one sits quietly on any high vantage point for a few hours. The road is in fact an observable reflection of man's incessant, but unequal struggle against nature's transcendental power.