I wanted to explore the city of Peshawar and show its sights to the children in the family. I arranged with a local guide, Saeed Khan, who picked out a few sites, and we set off.
1The first stop was the Peshawar Museum, which holds a great collection of Gandhara Buddhist art.
The building itself has a rich, colonial history. It was constructed in 1906–1907 to mark the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria, Empress of India, and was originally called Victoria Hall — a community hall and assembly space for public gatherings. Soon after, it was repurposed into a museum to house the growing collection of Gandharan artefacts and other archaeological treasures. Inside are numerous statues discovered at sites across the province.
2For the second stop we parked at the old Qissa Khwani Bazaar, the famous Market of Storytellers, and walked through its narrow alleyways. Dotted around the old city are ancient pipal (Ficus religiosa) trees.
We reached Masjid Qasim Ali, where I took the children to see the grave of my great-grandfather, Ghulam Samdani, who is buried in the mosque. Outside, the shopkeepers offered us local green tea.
3The final stop was Gor Khattri, a historical and archaeological site in the heart of Peshawar whose history spans thousands of years.
Its story reaches back to the Vedic period, when it was a place of spiritual significance; the name roughly translates from Sanskrit as “Warrior’s Grave.” There is an old Hindu temple dedicated to the sage Gorakhnath — we were allowed in, but not to take pictures, as it is a functioning temple. The site also held the Peshawar Fire Brigade Committee, formed under British rule in 1912 to oversee the city’s fire-fighting services; an old fire engine still stands there.
Excavations here have unearthed artefacts from period after period, confirming more than two thousand years of continuous use. Beginning with the Indo-Greeks (2nd–1st century BCE), it became a centre of Buddhist culture under the Kushan Empire (1st–3rd century CE), notably under Kanishka the Great. It then passed in turn to the Sassanians, the White Huns, and the Hindu Shahi Dynasty (9th–10th century CE). Peshawar’s Islamic history began with its conquest by Mahmud of Ghazni, followed by the Ghurids and the Delhi Sultanate. Under the Mughals the city flourished; it later served as a winter capital for the Durrani Empire, before annexation by the Sikh Empire under Maharaja Ranjit Singh. After the British defeated the Sikhs in 1849, Peshawar became a key city of the Raj, and with Partition in 1947 it became part of Pakistan.
After a picnic of locally made chapli kebab, we went home.
