Fascinating History. Interesting Medieval Incidents from Indian and Middle Eastern past.

The land called Levant, encompassing Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, is rife with warfare, bloodshed, migrations, bombings and untold miseries for its people. It doesn't have to be so provided that the lessons of history are taken as a guide. In the year 1274 BC, three and a quarter centuries ago, the Egyptian empire located along the River Nile and Hittite empire spread over present day Turkey went to a prolonged war over control of this very area but then negotiated and signed a peace treaty. It was a remarkable diplomatic triumph that assured peace and cooperation between the two nations till Hittite empire disintegrated a century later. We will recount the story of this remarkable treaty. In 1822, the French Egyptologist Jean Francois Champollion decoded the ancient Egyptian writing. One of the texts translated by researchers was 30 lines of writing at the Temple of Karnak on the wall extending south of the Great Hypostyle Hall in present day Luxor on the right bank of ...

I have always enjoyed watching live telecast of tennis and get glued to television during the semifinals and finals of the four grand slam championships. Tennis, like other individual sports, is the epitome of technique, stamina and sheer grit. The top players climb the champions’ ladder because they just don’t give up, and this attitude is brazenly at display at a major championship. I had never found an opportunity to attend a grand slam event in my life. Therefore, now that circumstances brought me to Melbourne in January this year during the Australian Open season, I resolved to attend it for at least one day. My daughter, who resides here, bought tickets for Tuesday 28th Jan for me and her young daughter. My granddaughter has been playing tennis once a week for last many years. She is fairly good but, contrary to my wife’s hopes, will not be good enough to play a grand slam event. There are several classes of tickets to the championship. The ‘ground pass ticket’ allows one to ...

Visiting Australia this southern summer, this scribe has come experienced with the ravages of climate change and its horrific effects on the lives of people. This continent sized country has always been beset with summer bush fires. High temperatures and strong coupled with dry weather creates conditions for easy ignition and rapid spread of fires across its grasslands and jungles. However, the fires this season have been extremely alarming and the year will go down as one of the worst ever in many aspects. The statics reveal the terrible extent of damage. As of mid January 2020, fires this season have burnt an estimated 18.6 million hectares (46 million acres; 186,000 square kilometers; 72,000 square miles). That is more area than Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg combined and half the size of Germany. Fires have destroyed over 5,900 buildings, of which are 3000 homes and killed about 40 people, including many fire fighters. And the fire season is still not over. It is estimated by Prof...

Griffith is a small town in the interior of New South Wales State of Australia. It is an agricultural region with vast and numerous vineyards, citrus orchards, almond fields and livestock farms. The area, known as Riverina, lies in the northern part of the Murray- Darling basin along Murrumbidgee River, one of their major tributaries. Agriculture in this semi arid area has become possible due to the irrigation canals laid out to channelize the waters stored in Burrinjuck Dam over Murrumbidgee River and Blowering Dam over Tumut River, a smaller tributary of the Murrumbidgee. The area is the food basket of Australia and produces prodigious quantities of rice, cotton, wheat, vegetables, melons, strawberries and other agricultural products of every kind. The local industry too is farm based including chicken processing, juice extraction and ginning factories. The town and its surrounding villages have a large number of wineries. One in every four bottles of wine produced in Australia is ...

The annual Sikh Martyr Games -Shaheedi Games- are held in Griffith in the state of New South Wales, Australia on the second weekend of June, which is a three-day long weekend being Queen's birthday. The event commemorates death of thousands of Sikhs during the mayhem of 1984, unleashed by extremist Hindus in the wake of murder of Prime Minister Indra Gandhi. Having attended the games in 2007 and 2015, where I enjoyed the ambience a great deal, I happen to be here again in 2017 and spent a joyful two days surrounded by true unadulterated Punjabi culture under a sunny winter sky. The games are held in the lush green, undulating, penta-level Ted Scobie Oval with a small hill on its northern side, in the Collina suburb of Griffith. When I am here, I go to this picturesque ground regularly for my daily walk. My son in law's house, where I am staying, is across the road from this playground. Being a 'Gill', a caste that he shares with many of the local Sikhs, and a fluent P...

In the first part of this article published last week, it was submitted that while referring to the Golden Age of Islam, Iqbal favoured the mystics and religious guides over the rational thinkers and scientists. It will be opined now that Iqbal was nostalgic for the Muslim past and in doing that, he lost touch with reality. Iqbal desired the Muslims to merge in one large nation that stretched over the continuous block from the Atlantic shores of Africa, through the Arab and Persian heartlands, to the eastern fringes of the Turkistan. In his dreamy scheme for Ummah he, in one of his verses, saw one nation along the geographical line from the banks of Nile to the soil of Kashghar. This was in suppression of historical, ethnic, sectarian, cultural and linguistic realities. While the verse is allegorical and heart warming, the concept harks backs to the Abbasid times when this was the extent of the Caliphate. This axis leaves the status of Indian Muslims as vague and excludes the Muslim ...

It is a tragic epitaph on the literary life of Iqbal that his poetry is more often employed by the religious clerics in their public sermons to further their obscurantist message and by the military to strengthen the morale of their profession, than by the practitioners of natural, liberal or secular sciences. A study of his poetry clearly reveals that this direction of Iqbal's poetry is well deserved. This series of articles will draw attention to a few dichotomies in the ideology of Iqbal as enunciated in his poetry. His poetical progression was divided in two phases; the first as an articulator of an Indian nationalist and the second as a proponent of Islamic revival. These articles will propound the confusing signals that emanate in the second phase of his literary journey. Iqbal was a beneficiary of education from Murray College in Sialkot. Without this missionary school, he wouldn't have stepped on the first ladder of the steep elevator that took him to the British est...