Every tourist place in Kashmir Valley is unique. If there is a perfect mountain Valley in the world, it is certainly the magnificent Valley of Kashmir. The majority of the tourist don’t have detailed information about these tourist destinations. Their visit becomes just like “touch and go”. Since you are not visiting Kashmir often, try to enjoy the real beauty of these beautiful places and be well-informed by knowing details about places and their background. This guidebook is your friend and guides in your entire Kashmir valley tour. This invisible personal guide will explain every tourist place in detail with a personal touch, every necessary information will be at your fingertips.
Paradise on Fire is the story of the struggle for national liberation of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, spearheaded by Syed Ali Shah Geelani. This political biography of Kashmir’s leading freedom fighter reveals the true horror of the Kashmir dispute, the dynamics of this historical struggle for self-determination, and Geelani’s huge contribution in leading this search for liberation.
This book traces the historical identity of Kashmir within the context of Islamic religious architecture between early fourteenth and mid-eighteenth century. It presents a framework of syncretism within which the understanding of this architectural tradition acquires new dimensions and possibilities in the region. In a first, the volume provides a detailed overview of the origin and development of Islamic sacred architecture while contextualizing it within the history of Islam in Kashmir. Covering the entirety of Muslim rule in the region, the book throws light on Islamic religious architecture introduced with the establishment of the Muslim Sultanate in the early fourteenth century, and focuses on both monumental and vernacular architecture. It examines the establishment of new styles in architecture, including ideas, materials and crafts introduced by non-Kashmiri missionaries in the late-fourteenth to fifteenth century. Further, it discusses how the Mughals viewed Kashmir and embellished the land with their architectural undertakings, coupled with encounters between Kashmir’s native culture, with its identity and influences introduced by Sufis arriving from the medieval Persianate world. The book also highlights the transition of the traditional architecture to a pan-Islamic image in the post-Independence period. With its rich illustrations, photographs and drawings, this book will interest students, researchers, and professionals in architecture studies, cultural and heritage studies, visual and art history, religion, Islamic studies and South Asian studies. It will also be useful to professional architecture institutes, public libraries, museums, cultural and heritage bodies as well as the general reader interested in the architectural and cultural history of South Asia.
Kashur-The Kashmiri Speaking People is the out come of a dedicated research where in the author on the basis of geological, archeological, chronological and linguistic evidences has presented a truthful and unbiased account of the group she herself belongs to. She projects, and rightly so, that the Kashur from the ancient eras possessed highly developed spiritual and intellectual caliber that helped these people per se to evolve into one of the richest social, religious and literary cultural linguistic group. In this effort she has analyzed and given clarification to certain commonly held misconceptions. She explains that legends created by primitive ancestors are not myths made up as entertaining stories but are based on reality and are representations of the living truth that has been perceived by the compilers. Those interested in the rich cultural heritage of the Kashur, their architectural acumen, their proficiency in historicity, their mastery in languages, their zeal as torch bearers of various religions, and their ever-changing social order inclusive of their faults and foibles will find this book a great help and a guide. This book even records the excesses, hardships and tyrannies that the Kashur has had to face under the rule of various invaders and usurpers in their long political chronology of almost 5,000 years and the struggles they have had put in, to survive these onslaughts bravely and at times even slyly.
