Yamga Wakhani Museum is a treasure trove of artefacts, pottery, musical instruments and various objects invented by or remained in use of the Mubarak Wakhani Farman Ali Mubarakkadam Ibn Abdullo, popularly known as Mubarak Wakhani, was a multi-faceted personality — a philosopher, poet, musician, astronomer, art teacher, and Sufi (mystic) scholar — from Badakhshan, Tajikistan. Born in 1839 in a small village …

British colonial officer John Biddulph’s book is considered as one of the pioneering works in English that provided an insight to the secluded societies, lifestyles, languages,  customs, marriages, festivals, ruling families and general characteristics of the many tribes that inhabited the Hindu Kush region Reviewed by Basharat Wakhani Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh written by British colonial officer John Biddulph is considered as one of the …

Herald Report An Italian hard rock ballad has penned a song to in memory of two young climbers who met a tragic death while pursuing their passion on one of the 14 high mountains in the Pakistani-administered Gilgit-Baltistan region. The tragic end of Italian climber Daniele Nardi and his British colleague Tom Ballard during an ascent on the most difficult …

By Lorenzo Alfano Antonio Gramsci died on April 27, 1937, after eleven years in fascist prisons. We remember his revolutionary life and his contributions to the struggle against capitalism. It’s late at night on Turin’s Via dell’Arcivescovado. A man with a Southern accent shows up at L’Ordine Nuovo’s office, insisting on speaking with the lead editor. For L’Ordine Nuovo is not only the workers’ …

While science and technology flourish in the modern world, a vast majority of Muslims, engulfed by obscurantism, still find solace in fantasies of a bygone era By Waseem Altaf As we remain enamored by our past achievements in the sciences, we forget that there is very little “original” we as Muslims can celebrate and be proud of. It was during the …

Today is the 41st anniversary of the hanging of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the first elected Prime Minister of Pakistan By Waseem Altaf Military dictator Ziaul Haq imposed martial law in Pakistan on July 5, 1977. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and all his cabinet ministers were arrested and assemblies dissolved. The constitution was suspended and civil rights set aside. The validity …

Herald Report In 2012, a team of archaeologists discovered ancient artifects on the Naryn campus of the University of Central Asia (UCA), says a report published in the newsletter of the university recently. The University mission to help the people of Central Asia preserve and draw upon their rich cultural traditions and heritages as assets for the future came to …

History remains the slave of victors only when people internalize the master’s version of history. History can be salvaged, retrieved and appropriated through multiple and even in mundane sources not necessarily sublime one, writes Aziz Ali Dad. By Aziz Ali Dad History is an enigmatic discipline because it deals with events of the past but its understanding tends to change …

From the National Geographic archives, a look back at the Citroën-Haardt Trans-Asiatic Expedition. By BILL JONES   GEORGES-MARIE HAARDT was one of those latter-day explorers who completed the first journey on wheels across Central Asia. Covering 8,000 miles, the trip’s purpose was to open up the Silk Road to cars. “Across desert wastes and windswept plateaus, over snow-clad mountain passes, …

In his book, Nomads and Soviet Rule: Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Alun Thomas examines the experiences of Kazakh and Kyrgyz nomads in the NEP (New Economic Policy) period and demonstrates the Soviet state’s treatment of nomads to be far complex and pragmatic. He shows how Soviet policy was informed by both an anti-colonial spirit and …

Abhrajyoti Chakraborty on a giant of the Bengali renaissance   When Rabindranath Tagore died in 1941, crowds gathered outside his ancestral mansion in Calcutta hoping to catch a last glimpse. As soon as the body was brought out of the house, everyone charged toward it at once. Hairs were plucked from his beard, wreaths tossed from buildings on the funeral …

Ikat is a fabric that got its name from the resist dye technique used to make its patterns. But Professor Elmira Gyul, Chief Researcher at the Institute of Art Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, explains about ikat from a different perspective not as a unique artistic creation, but as a social phenomenon whose role has changed from …

By Raza Naeem Raziya Sajjad Zaheer (1917-1979), who passed away in Delhi 40 years ago today, was one of Urdu’s most accomplished but least celebrated and acknowledged women writers. She was a novelist, short-story writer and translator, and a Communist activist and Progressive writer born in Ajmer in 1917. She won the Nehru Award in 1966. She had been contributing short …

Herald Report Soviet architecture in Central Asia, as the name tells, is a fusion of Soviet modernity with traditional Central Asian culture that remains remarkable to this day, writes Xeniya Mironova, in Voice on Central Asia website. Persian and Islamic motifs can be still found among Soviet buildings in Dushanbe, Tashkent, Almaty, and Bishkek. But these buildings are becoming exceedingly …

Artists, historians, and writers are marking Punjab's secular epic, 250 years after it was penned by Waris Shah