Friday, December 7, 2012

Some observations on Dr Naseer Dashti's book "The Baloch and Balocistan" by Waja Akbar Barakzai

The Baloch and Balochistan: A Historical Account from the Beginning to the Fall of the Baloch StateI am sure many of you already know that the word history is derived from the Greek word 'historia' which simply means investigation or inquiry. It later came to mean knowledge acquired through investigation, and still later, the investigated story of an individual, people or a country. History in popular perception is a record of the past events. It may, on the surface of it, seem easy to compile a history but for a historian involved in gathering millions of pieces of information, some of them totally unconnected and random, is definitely not an easy task. Investigating, collating, organising, selecting and finally compiling and presenting the relevant information can be a most gruelling and, at times, an extremely agonising task. When we see the finished work we do not fully realise that it is the outcome of years and years of painstaking research for which the author would have encountered enormous challenges. To write about a people or country such as ours about whom recorded information is either scanty or at best very sketchy is an extremely difficult job. Naseer Jan deserves our thanks and congratulations for not giving up half way through and succeeding against all odds to produce such a brilliant work of historical importance.
Read More;
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16SMiMnAoQXe1sWHShJtOoUeyH8JpuBm_UdgXYsxc8yo/edit

Please also read "Tracing the Baloch footprints"by Hassan Hamdam;
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-0bWnSJJkkgUXBfY0diZGVGNm8/edit

1 comment: