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Karachi won't be Karachi without the sea

ghazi52

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Mar 21, 2007
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Karachi won't be Karachi without the sea


Karachi is Pakistan’s largest and most populated metropolis. It is also the country’s busiest trading post and a highly pluralistic city. But the crime rates here have been the highest in the country; and its politics have been complex and fractious, mostly due to the economic and political tensions between the various ethnic groups which reside here.

Karachi has a long coastline along the Arabian Sea. It was here that small fishing villages first sprang up more than 2000 years ago. Some of them are mentioned by Greek commander, Nearchus, whose forces arrived here in 325 BC.

These villages began to expand from the 18th century onward, until the area became an economic hub and a multicultural conurbation under the British. The city grew even more briskly after it became part of Pakistan in 1947.

Let’s explore Karachi’s coastline as it stands today – thousands of years after it was first dotted by obscure fishing villages.

Clifton
Clifton is a sprawling area in Karachi which is also one of the closest to the sea. It is a popular residential, commercial and recreational locality. It is also Karachi’s most expensive zone.

Clifton was largely barren till it began being developed in the late 19th century by British colonialists who build houses here. The houses were only used as temporary breakaway pads by British families who mainly lived in the more developed areas of Karachi. This was mainly due to the fact that there was no running water available in Clifton and hardly any roads.

In the early 20th century, wealthy Zoroastrian families began to build permanent houses here. They were followed by rich Muslim and Hindu families. A bridge (Clifton Bridge) was constructed to directly connect the area with the city centre.

Till even the 1960s, Clifton was a largely desolate area with only a few hundred houses owned by rich families. However, from the late-1970s onward, Clifton began to emerge as a busy commercial and recreational hub.

Today it is one of Karachi’s most attractive and busy localities with large apartment blocks, multiplexes, malls, schools, colleges, bungalows, parks and restaurants.

A growth in population and commercial activity in Clifton has also triggered the emergence of some ‘low-income’ areas, mainly populated by men and women who work as house helps in bungalows, apartments, restaurants and shops in the area.

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Clifton, 1905. The quiet area by the sea.


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Clifton today: A busy commercial, recreational and residential hub.


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The Khotari Parade, 1922. It was constructed on the shores of the Clifton Beach on land granted by a rich Hindu businessman. The structure and walking path were built on a hill a few meters from the sea.


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The Khotari Parade today (behind which now lies the massive Qasim Park). Till even the 1950s, much of the land on which the park was laid (in the mid-2000s) was submerged under sea water.


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Shrine of ancient Sufi saint, Abdullah Shah Ghazi, in 1947. It was built in the 13th century on a sandy hill beside the sea in the area which became to be known as New Clifton.


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The Abdullah Shah Ghazi shrine today. The Sufi saint is also known as the patron saint of Karachi.


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Frere Road in 1902. It leads to Clifton which (as can be seen in the horizon) was largely barren. In the 1930s, a bridge (Clifton Bridge) was built to connect the city centre with Clifton.


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The Clifton Bridge in 2014. The bridge was built in the 1930s to connect Clifton with the rest of Karachi. Till the late 1950s, high tide in the Arabian Sea used to submerge the landing of the bridge, marooning the area’s residents for hours.
 
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1910: In the background is Bath Island, a spot in Clifton which was surrounded by sea water from three sides.

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Bath Island in 1979. The area was still one of the most expensive in the city. Residents were mostly wealthy Zoroastrian and affluent Muslim families.


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Bath Island today – packed closely with town houses and large apartment blocks. It has now become a middle-class locality. The waters around it have completely vanished.


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The future Sea View area at the Clifton Beach in the 1940s.


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Families enjoy a camel ride on the shores of Clifton Beach in the 1950s. A mammoth shopping mall stands at this very spot today.


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A Rickshaw driver on Frere Road heading towards the Clifton Beach in 1965 after that year’s heavy monsoon downpours and a tidal wave which hit Karachi’s coastline.


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Picnicking at the Clifton Beach in the early 1970s.


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The Clifton Beach/Sea View in 1982. Town houses and apartment blocks began to emerge here in the early 1980s.
 
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The Clifton Beach/Sea View today. It has become a bustling recreational, commercial and residential expanse.

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The main Clifton Road in 1901.


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Clifton Road in 1975.


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Clifton Road today. It has become one of the busiest roads in the city. Tall shopping malls and apartment blocks have continued to appear along its path.


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An old painting of The Mohatta Palace surrounded by shrubs and other coastal vegetation. The palatial house was built in 1927 by a businessman as a summer retreat close to the Clifton Beach. In 1964 it became the home of Mrs. Fatima Jinnah. She was the sister of Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.


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The Mohatta Palace today. It was locked up and ignored after Ms. Jinnah’s demise in 1967. In 1995 it was restorted by the Sindh govornment and turned into a museum.


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A mangrove forest near the sea in a virgin area of Clifton.


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Clifton’s popular Boat Basin area. It was built over a large mangrove forest. The area is famous for its restaurants, cafes and 24/7 eateries.
 
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Pakistan’s tallest building (the ICON Tower) being built in the New Clifton area.

DHA
Defence Housing Authority (DHA) was first established in the 1950s as a cooperative housing society. It is one of the best planned and maintained areas of the city. Its boundaries merge with Clifton and like Clifton it too is an affluent locality.

DHA is mostly a ‘posh’ residential vicinity, but over the years pockets of commercial zones have also sprung up. So have some low-income areas which are populated by those serving as help and labour in DHA’s bungalows.

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1975 photo of the turning in Clifton Road which leads to DHA Phase 2 and 4.


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DHA today.
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Road leading to DHA Creek Club


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Restaurants by the sea in DHA.


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Expensive apartment blocks have begun to come up in DHA. This is one of the largest in the area (Creek Vista).



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DHA’s famous Taiba Mosque (also called Gol Masjid). It was built in 1969.

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The largest multiplex cinema in Karachi stands in DHA Phase 8. Till even the early 1970s, the area on which this building stands was under sea water.
 
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The Karachi Boat Club (KBC) in the 1950s. It was built in the 19th century along the same mangrove forest.


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The KBC in the 1970


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KBC today. The waters and mangroves which run alongside it have become extremely polluted.


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The Karachi Port in the 1850s.


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The Karachi Port today.


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Karachi Port view at night.
 
I feel sorry for those mangroove forests .

Asians in particular are destroying environment for posh living .

for them "You cant eat Concrete Buildings"
 
Queen’s Road/ Mai Kolachi / Karachi Port

The Queens Road is an old Karachi locality which runs along mangrove forests of Karachi’s coast line. It is famous for three main landmarks: The Karachi Boat Club; the Beach Luxury Hotel; and the Native Jetty Bridge. It is also an affluent residential area. The wide Mai Kolachi Road connects it with Clifton.

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The Native Jetty Bridge in 1957. It begins where Queens Road ends. It was built in 1954. It connects the city to the Karachi Port.


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The Native Jetty Bridge in 1979. Till the early 1970s, this bridge was also an infamous ‘suicide spot’ for heartbroken Romeos and Juliets.


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The Native Jetty Bridge today (Pic: Irfan Sattar).


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Locals and foreigners wine and dine at a restaurant at the Beach Luxury Hotel in 1969. The hotel was built laterally to a mangrove forest in the Queens Road area.


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The Beach Luxury Hotel today.


Manora

Manora is one of the oldest areas of Karachi. It was here where the Greek commander, Nearchus, came across native fishing villages almost 2000 years ago. It is also one of the areas from where the British navy invaded Karachi in the 1840s.

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Manora in 1850s.
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Manora today, with its famous lighthouse and old church
 
Karachi: What’s in a picture?
NADEEM F. PARACHA

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19th-century sketch of Greek commander, Nearchus, leading his fleet across River Indus in the present-day Sindh province of Pakistan.

Nearchus was a commander in ancient Greek king, Alexander’s army which had invaded India. In 325 BC, Nearchus exited India with his section of the army by sailing over the Indus and exiting from Balochistan.

He entered Balochistan by first reaching the mouth of Indus which emptied the river’s waters in the Arabian Sea. Historians believe this was where the coastal Manora area is in Karachi today.

A great storm from raging and Nearchus found a fishing village here led by a matriarch. He named the place Morontobara (Greek for Woman’s Harbour).

Source: The Voyage of Nearchus from the Indus to the Euphrates: William Vincent(Nabu Press, 2011).
Karachi in the Mirror of History: M Usman Damohi (Al-Abbas Publications, 2011).

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An 1839 sketch of Karachi drawn by a British traveller on the eve of Britain’s conquest of the city.

At the time, Karachi was just an insignificant dot on world maps. It was a small fishing town ruled by the Sindhi-Baloch dynasty (the Talpurs). It had a fort made of dry mud and an underdeveloped harbour. The town had no paved roads and no sanitation or garbage-collecting system.

It had a population of about 20,000 people who were mostly involved in the fish trade. Crime was high, and disease was rampant. The bulk of the population was made up of Sindhi, Balochi and Gujarati-speaking Hindus and Muslims.

Source:
Gazetteer of the Province of Sind. B Volume 1 Karachi District 1919.


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An 1860 photograph of British ships entering Karachi waters (Arabian Sea). By now the city had been made Sindh’s capital and absorbed into British India.


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A woman suffering from the fatal bubonic plague awaits treatment in 1890, Karachi.

The city’s worsening sanitation conditions fed the infected rats which arrived on ships from elsewhere in India. Hundreds of people perished from the plague. The British began work on providing the city with an effective sanitation and sewerage system.

Source:
Gazetteer of the Province of Sindh. B Volume 1 Karachi District 1919.




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A 1919 photograph of Karachi’s Saddar area.

By the mid-1900s, Karachi had grown into an impressive trading post. The British developed Karachi’s harbour and it became one of the busiest in India. The British also built a robust infrastructure (roads, bridges, hospitals, parks, railways, etc.); and introduced modern policing and city governing systems.

The crime rate saw a sharp decline; and the city’s economy boomed. Fifty-one per cent of the city’s population was Hindu; 40 per cent was Muslim; and there were also large Christian and Zoroastrian communities.

There was a Jew community too, apart from thousands of British officers, doctors, engineers and administrators and their families residing here. It was during this period that Karachi became known as ‘the Paris of Asia’.

Source:
Gazetteer of the Province of Sind. B Volume 1 Karachi District 1919.
 
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Statue of the British Queen being unveiled at Karachi’s Frere Hall/Park during a ceremony.

The statue was shipped all the way from London. The ceremony was attended by British and local officials of the city government, British military personnel, Karachi’s wealthy Hindu, Muslim and Zoroastrian dignitaries and the general public.

A few years later, a statue of King Edward, too, was placed here. Both the statues remained in place when Karachi became a part of Pakistan in 1947. However, the statues were removed in 1956 when Pakistan’s first constitution declared the country a republic.


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Karachi, 1948: An open area dotted by hundreds of temporary camps, housing government officials who ran matters of the country and the city from inside these dusty tents.

Karachi became the capital of Pakistan in August 1947. It witnessed a huge influx of Muslim refugees arriving from various Indian cities and towns. Karachi did not have the resources to accommodate such an influx. Many of its buildings were packed to capacity. Many civil servants, police personnel and ministers of the new country shifted to these tents from where (for almost a year and a half) they navigated the fate of Pakistan and its capital city.

Source:
Pakistan’s Capital (A feature in LIFE Magazine’s June, 1948 issue).

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A 1951 photograph of a busy commercial area of Karachi.

The city began to recover from the early demographic tremors caused by the dramatic influx of refugees when Karachi became the capital of Pakistan.

Another reason for the recovery was the sudden boom that the city’s economy enjoyed when Pakistan became a leading exporter of jute, cotton and other agricultural goods to the US troops stationed in Korea during the Korean War. The bulk of the goods were exported through cargo ships leaving from the city’s harbour.


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Men and women workers laying bricks during the construction of a building in 1952.

The brief economic boom that the city enjoyed (see previous picture and text), facilitated the government to erect some much needed buildings to house the growing number of government officials and refugees (Urdu-speaking Mohajirs).

In the early 1950s, a bulk of the city’s labour force was made up of the working-class sections of the refugees. By the late 1950s, much of the force comprised Pakhtun migrants arriving from the NWFP province (present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).
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Pakistan’s first Republic Day parade. In 1956, Pakistan became a republic. The occasion was marked by a parade held on March 23, 1956 in Pakistan’s then-capital, Karachi.

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Pakistan’s constituent assembly in Karachi passing the country’s first constitution in 1956.

The constitution declared the country a republic and promised Pakistan’s first election based on adult franchise. Assembly members were all indirectly elected, and consisted of legislators from the centre-right Muslim League, the centrist Republican Party and the left-leaning Awami League.

The assembly also consisted a few members from the left-wing Azad Pakistan Party. An alliance of centre-left outfits called the United Front had the second largest number of members in the assembly after Muslim League. The assembly did not have any member to form a religious party, even though the small Nizam-e-Islam Party (based in East Pakistan) was part of the United Front.
 
Lahoris: we have Minar e Pakistan
Karachities: we have sea.
Lahoris: we have food street.
Karachities: we have sea
Lahoris: we have rain.
Karachities: we have sea
Lahoris: We have Badashi Masjid
Karachities: we have sea.

Hey qaymat a gae

Karachities: we have.

Hahah :rofl: :haha:

No sorry.

@The Sandman ( @The Eagle @PaklovesTurkiye *cough* )

@Zibago @django
Karachi:We have sea
Lahore we have chota and mota baboon :-//
 
karachis people are soo amazing.when i went pakistan after 10 years i went to punjab.everybody is very backward.but karachi have some what modern thoughts.it is a crime we shifted our capital out from such a marvel

:yay::wub:
nice city with peace now its rising more and more
sarji bachiya karachi ki:smitten::smitten:
 

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