u’arrikh Likhay Ga! (Historian will write!) has long been the prevailing public perception in Pakistan. It casts historians as authoritative and impartial voices capable of drawing conclusions based on evidence. In Pakistan, where history is not widely read and there are only a few historians, discussions about history writing are infrequent. Major approaches to writing about the past in Pakistan fall into two categories: 1) tribal and regional nationalistic histories, and 2) religious histories and historical fiction focused on Muslim conquests.

In the primary arena of the global knowledge circuit, academic institutions in Pakistan have largely perpetuated the colonial paradigm of history writing into the post-colonial period. Despite the significance of history writing, there has been a notable absence of intellectual debate on the topic of decolonisation.

In his essay titled The Perils of Rejecting History, historian Professor Manan Ahmed Asif highlights that “Pakistan was created with a deficit not only in funds, armies and bureaucracies, but also in history.” This vacuum in history writing and historiography, both institutional and professional, has been filled by self-published histories, travel writings, journalistic literature and simplistic narratives that provide a singular perspective of history. Old buildings and places, especially forts, have often been overlooked as physical manifestations of the past, neglecting their relevance to the present and their role in shaping our understanding of history.

Their rich history and architecture notwithstanding, Forts have remained marginalised in the public discourse on Pakistan’s past. The local academic literature predominantly focuses on surveying forts, treated as an archaeological exercise to collect primary data rather than a comprehensive historical analysis. In 2005, the first comprehensive survey, Historical Forts in Pakistan by Sheikh Khurshid Hasan, was published as a continuation of his earlier work. Covering more than 100 forts across Pakistan, the book is a meticulous exploration that draws on Mughal court histories, British colonial gazetteers, reports and a few local histories. Hasan primarily views forts as an evolution of military craft and tools of war, emphasising their military architecture, but acknowledges the social, economic and political purposes behind their construction.

However, the book fails to establish how certain architectural features, such as defensive walls and vigilance points, qualify a structure as a fort. The term fortress is used for structures with smaller areas and architectures. The survey does not address the critical question of how to decide whether a given structure should be labelled a fort. Some structures, like Rawat Inn and Sangni Prison of Gujar Khan, have been named forts despite lacking a historical association with military purposes or battles. This highlights a need for a nuanced understanding of the multifaceted roles these structures played in the past beyond a mere focus on military function.

Historian Henri Pirenne defines a medieval town with a fort as having administrative centrality, a population engaged in industry, trade and commerce, and a constitutional setup. Forts were historically the seats of power for ruling dynasties or tribes, serving as points of social intersection, urban centres, local markets and guarding points that inherently became guardians of histories. However, most forts in Pakistan lack sustained documentation and excavations, leading to a scarcity of scholarly work. Existing surveys and studies often focus on specific forts and global scholarship on South Asian forts tends to exclude those in Pakistan, with only casual references to landmarks like Lahore Fort.

The forts in Pakistan are not only historical monuments but also representatives of the diverse topographies in the country. However, the popular media has often limited the documentation of Pakistani forts to a few.

In the available documentation, forts are often periodised based on a colonial paradigm of historiography, emphasising religious lines such as Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim periods. Many forts in Pakistan, once seats of power for dynasties and tribes, later became administrative buildings for princely states during the colonial era. Despite these princely states becoming part of Pakistan through accession, many forts remained private. Some of those are now claimed as political symbols by descendants of former rulers. Notably, areas like Swat, which became a state before the end of British colonialism, and influential tribes asserting princely state titles, as seen in Khanpur in the Hazara region and Amarkot (Umerkot) in Sindh, exemplify the complexity of fort identities.

The practice of adding the prefix Shahi (royal) before fort names has contributed to defining new identities. For example, forts labelled Shahi often share architectural similarities, object placements like cannons, and local imagination, drawing parallels with Lahore’s Shahi Qila as a prototype. This raises the question of what non-royal forts represent. Some forts, like Lahore Fort, Attock Fort and the Bala Hissar Fort in Peshawar, have been occupied by powerful institutions, limiting public access and transforming them into symbols of military might. In some cases the sites have been associated with brutal tyranny.

Travel writing in Pakistan has faced a significant challenge in that many writers have unintentionally glorified certain ruling tribes associated with forts. These writings have tended to focus on eulogies and biographies of the rulers, often neglecting the broader concept of people’s history. Despite being a sub-literary genre, travel writing in Pakistan has not gained acceptance in academic circles.

Influenced by Edward Said’s concept of Colonial Discourse, post-colonial scholars have critiqued travel writing for its associations with colonial perspectives. Cultural and literary historian Professor Paul Fussell, known for his influential work Abroad: British Literary Travelling Between the Wars, contributed to shifting critical attention to a genre often dismissed as insignificant and sub-literary. Fussell equates the term travel writing with a literary form, using the terms travel book and travelogue.

Digital documentation and ethnography of forts through advanced technologies, including drone cameras, offer a new and multi-dimensional perspective, allowing for a broader geographical context and enhanced exploration of these historical sites.

In the field of history writing, particularly in Pakistan, there is a lack of established schools of historians, contrasting with the situation in India. The theoretical framework presented in Writing History: Theory & Practice, edited by Feldner and Passmore, sheds light on the role of a historian. Historians in Pakistan have not established a monopoly over their field, unlike practitioners in other professions. Unfortunately, Pakistani universities have yet to produce knowledge that meets global standards of scholarly work. Institutionalisation has mainly led to the development of career structures and mechanisms, lacking the necessary settings for robust scholarship. As a result, new historians may lack crucial skills and methodologies, such as palaeographic, philological and contextual expertise, that historians traditionally employ.

The forts in Pakistan are not only historical monuments but also representatives of the diverse topographies in the country. However, the popular media has often limited the documentation of Pakistani forts to a few. Accessibility, location in major cities and their vastness contribute to their attractiveness. Unfortunately, the perception of these forts in popular imagination tends to emphasise their architectural aesthetics, vintage appeal and suitability for leisure visits rather than recognising them as significant sites for understanding the region’s rich history.

The writer is a historian, travel writer and translator. He has extensively written on non-Muslim history and heritage of Pakistan. He is now turning some of the material into history writing