Home > Articles > Pakistan Heritage - The Magic of Lahore
I saw Lahore, star of the Punjab, at night, and took its soul unawares. The birds were roosting in the shadow of the banyan trees. The pellucid notes of a sitar were heard, and suddenly a flute joined in.
According to the books, and to hearsay, Lahore is the most beautiful city in Pakistan. The Indus makes the plain of the Punjab gleam with its tributaries, which from earliest Antiquity have brought life and cultural riches with them. Here at this fertile crossroads Lahore was born and grew, to become a key administrative, religious and business centre.
Lahore lies on a secondary track of the Silk Road, and is watered by the river Ravi. It assumed its importance in the eleventh century, when it became the capital of the sultans of Rhazni. After a long period of turmoil, destruction and short-lived rulers it became in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries one of the great cities of Mogul India.
Babur, founder of the Mogul empire, made it a star of the first order: under the Mogul dynasty Lahore was adorned with buildings that now form a splendid legacy. |
