Documentary: Jewel of Peshawar: Sethi House.

Abstract

Peshawar is a city which has existed for more than 2500 years, been ruled by Iran, Indian and Greeks, its rich in history and culture. Peshawar has had been populated from the days of the cavemen and is one of the oldest cities of Pakistan and even south Asia. Many different names were given to the city before it was officially named Peshawar (Dr Abdul Samad, director archeology & museum of KPK). We see Peshawar’s geographical importance due to silk route which brought many traders to the area. One of Peshawar’s famous market place is called Qissa Khani bazar (story tellers market) where traders sat and had tea, telling stories of their journey, near this bazar a family of traders thought to settle and built houses. This area to us is known as Sethi muhala, the neighborhood of the Sethi’s. They were rich tradesmen settled in Peshawar and built seven neighboring houses, built on a total of 33 marlas. Each of the houses took about approximately 20 years to be built. The foundations of the house were laid down by the German architect, styles inspired by vernacular architecture of Bukhara and Uzbekistan. Techniques and goods from all over the world were brought to embellish the house. The windows have red and green colored glass which was reminiscent of post renaissance art in European churches, the glass was imported from Belgium. These houses are three stories high and are built with excellent wood craftsmanship. The design if the roof inspired by the Islamic art with different symmetrical designs and colors. Sethi muhala which is located in the famous Walled city of Peshawar is an eye catching wonder which a lot of people haven’t witnessed. The series of seven houses were owned by the Sethi’s and some of them still live there and don’t welcome the visitors as these street attract a lot of tourists as the neighboring houses were once of Dilip Kummar, Shahrukh Khan and Raj kapoor. In the recent years one of the lower standard houses came into the possession of the local government and they established it as a heritage site. The reason for documenting this heritage site is because it has not been given such importance as to other historic building as we see, this house is almost 200 years old, built even before partition in 1884. This heritage site is almost like a treasure to us which we haven’t looked after, this documentary will serve the purpose of showing lifestyle of the rich in the ancient time as well as documenting a historic site as to proof something this magnificent existed, since the condition of the house isn’t very well.