Dawn, The Review, sometime in September 2000 Sharing a husband with seventeen other wives and several hundreds of slave girls is far from the romantic picture of an all-encompassing love that frames the portrait of Nurjahan in popular stories. However, the fact remains that she was indeed loved by her royal husband in ways unusual […]
Dawn, The Review, September 7-13, 2000 ‘What’s your sun sign?’ The answer to this question could decide one’s appointment to the civil services in the days of Humayun, if one is to believe the story that he organized his entire administration on astrological elements. According to this account, for instance, the officers belonging to water
Dawn, The Review, sometime in 2000 He was raised like an orphan. Not that his parents were dead, but his father was in exile and the little infant was in the custody of its uncle. A merciless uncle he was, for he had wrung the infant, barely a few months old, from the hands of
Dawn, The Review, August 24-30, 2000 Somewhere around 430 BC in Greece, a man in his mid-fifties completed a medium sized book on which he had been working all his life. The book was about the heroic struggle between his own people, the Greeks, and the mighty empire of the Persians. But this political story
Dawn, The Review, August 10-16, 2000 It would be erroneous to call anyone the father of all knowledge, but if such a title were to be given to a single person, it would have to be Aristotle. This great old man of Greece lived more than 23 centuries ago, but his stamp can still be
Analyzing Aristotle Read More »
Dawn, The Review, July 20-26, 2000. Prince Salim, the would-be emperor Jahangir, is being taken to the gallows for rebelling against his father, the emperor Akbar. He turns around to face a crowd that has gathered, not to see the bloodsport, but out of devotion to the noble prince. “Remember this as my dying wish,”
Unveiling Jahangir Read More »
Dawn, The Review, July 13-19, 2000 Alexander the Great can be singled out as a figure in human history who has inspired every generation in almost all regions of the world for twenty-three centuries without being founder of any religion. It can be said that each age has re-evaluated the meaning of Alexander’s life in
The mystery of Alexander Read More »
Dawn, The Review, in May 25-31, 2000 Every society carries two evils in its wake. The first is a desire for conformity. The second, arising out of it, is a vengeance against anyone who stands out as different. This is true of any society, irrespective of its form of government. Be it a monarchy or
Socrates – The trial of reason Read More »
Dawn The Review, sometime in June 1999 There were better days. Karachi used to be a different city. Stage plays were in vogue and people from a cross-section of the society used to throng the auditoriums. That was the early 1950’s. And that is when Latif Kapadia started. He was born on 27 March, 1935,
Dawn, The Review, May 13-19, 1999 There seems to be no rest for the poor soul of Saadat Hasan Manto. While he was alive the conservatives held him in abuse for advocating women’s freedom. Now, in the so-called post-feminist age of literary criticism he seems to have become a popular target for energetic novices of
Portrayal of women in the stories of Saadat Hasan Manto Read More »